You know the dangers of such latitude of plan in any but the best conducted Journal!
Life is a cup! And what does one do with a cup? ONE DRINKS FROM IT FULL-THROATEDLY AND WITHOUT HESITATION, YOU MOUSE!
WHEN WILL YOU SIGN YOUR NAME ON THE BOOK OF LIFE
You are reading drowsily!!! You must read fully awake!!
Will you cling to the aether?? –or cleave it?
You are embracing Plato, while also keeping him at arm’s length.
Have you read the Upanishads???? You have to read the Upanishads!!
Stranger! Why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?
You do not travel. He who cannot fill a role at home can no better fill one abroad. Who are you, that has no task to keep him at home?
You are measuring no hours but that of sunshine.
Young man, let instance ripen to truth! Young woman, do thou likewise!
MILTON SUCKS
Do not falter at this, the precipice of your very destiny!
[Image via]
Will you cling to the aether?? –or cleave it?
Seriously though, this is tickling my ponderous bone. Can I get back to you on that? Or must I transcend before lunch?
This is stirring up some really terrible high school memories.
“I am a Transparent eyeball” is an extremely clunky metaphor, take that, English teacher!
I will never get over that stupid transparent eyeball.
All you had to do was leave out the -ball. “I am a transparent eye” would work just fine! It still wouldn’t be especially subtle or anything, but at least it wouldn’t be a disembodied organ.
When people use so many exclamation marks you really start to worry about their sanity.
Don’t look at my tumblr, then. ;D
I’m starting yoga teacher training in September and there’s a not-insignificant portion of the year of study devoted to the philosophy of The Bhagavad Gita and I’m honestly a teensy bit worried that some of it is going to sound like this to me. I have the utmost respect for the woman who does this training series but I do not have a high tolerance for Spiritual Things. eeek.
As a fellow Grounded Person who survived yoga teacher training, I strongly recommend taking a journal. You’ll look like you’re taking industrious notes, and at some points you will be, but then at other points you can be writing things like “THIS HAS NO PRACTICAL MODERN APPLICATION, IT’S OKAY TO NOT BE ACCEPTING OF CERTAIN THINGS, JESUS FUCKING CHRIST JUST LET ME EAT A HAMBURGER NOW AND THEN” and that way you won’t have to shout those things at your fellow trainees.
Thank you for this excellent advice that I shall most definitely heed. Also, so reassuring to know another Toastie survived a similar experience. I am 100% down for chanting (I actually enjoy the occasional kirtan I voluntarily attend!), and I do think there’s something in the notion of chakras/body energy centers but taking any of it as My Truth? Erm. Nope.
May I ask you for details, like if you’re teaching now and if so, what style and do you still love it? If not, why not, etc. etc.? No pressure if you don’t want to go into it, but I am curious about hearing from another decidedly non woo-woo yoga person.
I teach Vinyasa and aerial yoga, when I teach. I’m primarily a pilates teacher and I did my yoga certification because (a) they complement each other so well and being able to bring elements of both to whatever I’m teaching is really useful and (b) it’s just better from a self-marketing perspective to be qualified to teach both. But I do love teaching yoga, particularly when I get a good flow going. I used to be a dancer, and Vinyasa scratches that itch pretty effectively.
I will say, there are a fuckton of yoga teachers out there already (which is why I don’t teach it often – I moved last year and all of my new sites already have more than enough yoga instructors), so – depending on what kind of market you’re in – do be prepared for there to be a ton of instructors vying for not a ton of classes. But that may or may not be an issue for you. 🙂
The plan is to offer optional yoga classes at the writing retreat the Burgomaster and I are planning. Again, eeeek. But I’ll have a rather captive and ever changing clientele!
Thank you for the details. I do Iyengar and that’s primarily the focus of this training, but from nearly 20 years of classes and home practice in yoga and belly dance, I share the joy of finding a good flow!
That sounds amazing! That’s an angle I’m trying to figure out how to branch into, actually – better pay, in some cases, and there are many many benefits to not teaching to the same group all the time.
Good luck!
As a non-Christian student in a Christian seminary, I second this advice. No one needs to know that the notes written in my margins are mostly “HAHAHAHA no.” and “What were you smoking, Karl Barth?” and “Fuck you very much, Augustine.” (Got back a paper on Augustine’s Confessions with a B grade and the note, “This seems like more of a rant than a reflection.” WELL YES HAVE YOU READ AUGUSTINE?)
Fuck you very much, Augustine
BUT! Augustine wrote a ton of stuff on marriage/sexuality that’s an absolute hoot if you’re aware of the general chaos that was the political/doctrinal landscape of his time.
I’m sure there’s lots of good stuff in there, but wading through the Freudian swamp isn’t worth it for me – surely somebody else said it with less self-loathing? Lol. (I DID, of course, read excerpts from the chapter on adolescence to my two teenage sons, mostly when we were in the car and they were trapped so they couldn’t get away. Nothing like watching a 14-year-old squirm while Augustine maunders on about his perversion and lust.)
You’re starting teacher training?! Awesome!!
You’ll be such a good yoga instructor!
I never realized that Transcendentalism was so shouty.
I’ve never been inside a Unitarian church, but now I imagine that a worship service consists entirely of parishioners whooping and cursing each other, then facing off and ceremonially reciting elaborate self-aggrandizing “brags” like frontier keelboatmen.
The one time I went to a Unitarian service, there were rain sticks and bongos but no yelling — it was a very let’s-all-be-mellow vibe. I tried very very hard not to be annoyed or roll my eyes at the whole experience. Of course when I went to a Catholic church the next weekend I was openly weeping, so YMMV. It was a very self-exploratory moment in time.
was this west coast or east coast Unitarians? Not that bongos don’t happen everywhere occasionally, but the New England services tend to be more recognizably church-y, while I’ve definitely heard that others really embrace the drum circle vibes.
I grew up in an east coast Unitarian church. We never had bongos, but I used to tell friends that it was like attending a lecture series with an occasional “photos from my trek to Thailand” thrown in. It was great!
This was in Virginia. I really wanted to like it, but I just wasn’t feeling it by the end.
yeah, I’m not sure I would’ve enjoyed that either! I grew up both UU and Catholic, but my hometown UU church was pretty staid in its hymn-reading-hymn-sermon-offering-hymn structure, just with less bible stuff.
Even in individual cities it varies a great deal. I live in Portland, and the big downtown UU church is pretty churchy, but I’ve also been to a little UU congregation that was pretty new-age. And tiny.
In the Catholic Church we’ve been practicing our emotionally-manipulative schtick for literally centuries! It’s the best. If you like that sort of thing (I do).
I was raised Catholic so very deep wellsprings of profound emotion are just waiting to be tapped. I am mostly lapsed, but have mystic-adjacent tendencies when faced with great difficulties or unexplainable events.
Wait, what there’s several of us who sob at mass?! Oh thank goodness. I have literally worried that it’s a sign of serious mental illness that’s just lurking in me, roiling just under the surface. (as opposed to the mile mental illness I know about and am doing okay with.)
I don’t cry at Mass but I almost starting sobbing in Notre Dame when I came across the statue of Joan of Arc. I was raised Catholic but seriously doooo noooot belieeeeeve nowadays, but that was an experience.
Okay, but that’s more Great Art stuff.
I also was just really emotional over poor Joan.
With reason! Her whole story- even if the religious/supernatural aspects are discounted- is so astounding and moving.
At my midwestern UU church, the bongos are an optional separate activity, rather than part of the main service. We do talk about Transcendentalism a lot, though.
One thing to understand about the Transcendentalists is that they were mostly reacting to Unitarianism as it was: formal, staid, upperclass, intellectual rather than emotional, rational rather than spiritual, snobby, and suffocatingly polite. If they made too much use of exclamation points, it’s because their church was awash in full stops and semicolons.
We’re still about 75% like that, but now we sometimes incorporate transcendentalist readings into our services so we can remind ourselves of the value of spirituality and wild passion (in a very quiet, intellectual way).
Also, the dress code has changed from formal to casual, so there’s that.
Re: Unitarian keelboatmanship:
I am the most Unitarian son of a gun you are likely to meet in a month of your preferred Sabbath days! I went to see The Moffatts in concert, and after I shook their hands they spontaneously turned into a solo act! My father was a Catholic wildcat and my mother was a Buddhist hurricane! I can out-argue a Jesuit, out-stubborn a Puritan, and out-ornery a Calvinist, but I choose not to because I believe it is up to the individual to follow the dictates of their own conscience in a pluralistic society!
!!! 😀
(whoops, curses, hoots, stomps feet, respectfully supports expression of inherent worth and compassionate spirituality)
The Unitarian fellowship I grew up in was almost exactly like this, actually.
“I didn’t know there was enough money in poetry to support a man, even in the way in which Rocky lived; but it seems that if you stick to exhortations to young men to lead the strenuous life and don’t shove in any rhymes, editors fight for the stuff. Rocky showed me one of his things once. It began:
Be!
Be!
The past is dead.
To-morrow is not born.
Be to-day!
To-day!
Be with every nerve,
With every muscle,
With every drop of your red blood!
Be!
It was printed opposite the frontispiece of a magazine, with a sort of scroll round it, and a picture in the middle of a fairly nude chappie with bulging muscles, giving the rising sun the once-over.”
what is the source of this wonderfulness?
Oh, me, me, I know the answer!
https://youtu.be/byBQxOC-3ow?t=1m39s
PG wodehouse!
Bertie Wooster!
ARE YOU LIVING DELIBERATELY NOW?
HOW ABOUT NOW??
WE’RE NOT LEAVING THE WOODS UNTIL YOU LIVE DELIBERATELY FOR AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES, GODDAMMIT.
So that’s what happened after http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=1543 !
I DON’T SEE YOU CONNECTING WITH THE MAJESTY OF NATURE YET. YOU’RE STILL JUST LOOKING AT TREES
also how to tell if you are in a Whitman poem, only there would be even more naked men
This reminded me of my favorite story about my brothers-in-law, let’s call them Bill and Bob.
They decided to try mushrooms together, for the first time. They were in their early twenties, and Bill is two years older than Bob. Bob, a skinny, thoughtful young man of a philosophical bent, reacted to the shrooms with paranoia and began to comfort himself by reciting verses from the Upanishads, out loud.
Bill, by contrast, thought the entire thing was hilarious and responded to each verse by telling every fart joke he could think of.
I love my family.
I love your family too.
If only Seymour Glass had had a few fine fart jokes to make him lighten up.
<incensed> MILTON DOES NOT SUCK YOU TAKE THAT BACK
This reminds me of a video that HR made people watch as part of a resiliency training course. It featured a National Geographic photographer and his heaps of transcendentalist arglebargle. Just him, drawing spiritual sustenance from the majesty of nature, finding meaning in his work, learning lessons from plants and animals. Still not convinced that was the best video to show public servants in order to get them to roll with things like lay-offs.
I don’t care what I see outside. My vision is within.
Here is where the birds sing! <thumps chest> Here is where the sky is blue!
Let them have the view if they want it! Why not? Oh George, go after them!
“Beauty!” <falls out of the tree>
I do sometimes think of answering the eternal Why with a Yes! And a Yes! And a Yes! though.
So much love for this
I just picture Whitman eyeing a handsome young man from his writing desk. "Mmm, someone's got the body electric!"
They definitely DON'T all smell of mint. BO&Patchouli is also an option.
Nah, Bhagavad Gita is mostly Krishna telling Arjuna to kill a bunch of people because duty and karma and stuff.
Or: Thank the heavens, and the red, red bird, that Mary Oliver has made Reading Old White Dude Transcendentalists less necessary.
Let us now contemplate Nature as thinly-veiled God Metaphor, and celebrate our Inner Wildness with quiet tumult. Plus Good Dogs.