I see a very close parallel to what happened after the end of the Second World War. At the end of the Second World War, the focus was on atomic weapons, the technology. Today, the analogous idea is on information technology. We believe that’s the cure-all for everything.

There’s an art and science to war. The science is in support of the art. The science gives you the weapons systems; it allows you to have the communications; it allows you to have all the things that support the actual conduct of war. War, as it is fought, is an art. It’s not a science. If you try to make it a science, you’re bound to be disappointed.

- US Gen. Paul Van Riper, PBS Interview

Substitute preaching for war, and I think that you have a good assessment of the relationship between information technology and preaching.

These two articles: Disposable Worship: a caution about using too much technology in worship, and The Gospel According to Electronic Culture: What if the medium really is the message? from the blog of Leadership Journal also examine the tension between the art and science of preaching in an age where the dominant science is IT.

These are important points to ponder as we adopt and adapt current technologies to use in Krishna’s service. As Swami Tripurari once said, we run the risk of becoming more absorbed in megabytes than in their maker. Anything used in Krishna’s service is spiritual, but as Srila Prabhupada explained spiritual life is a razor’s edge. It’s good to keep thinking about it, and watching as things swing from one extreme to another to try to find the middle path.

(Random example) Sure, giving all the Atma Yoga guests a membership card with a barcode on it would enable us to process them efficiently with minimal staff, and allow us to capture an unprecedented level of detail of statistics - but is that really a good idea?

I think the example given in the Disposable Worship piece is very good:

Borgmann says technology can make certain wonderful “goods” in our lives disappear without us even knowing it. Example: the central fireplace is replaced by the invisible central air furnace. In the process the family that once gathered around the fireplace to get warm before heading off to bed no longer engages in the community-building routine. The family no longer talks about the day, tells stories, or prays together. Through technology we lose what Borgman calls a “focal practice.” We lose a concrete, formative, and simple activity, and our lives are changed without ever noticing.

At the Sunday Feast we have the projection screen with the graphics, the stage, the mics, the polished practiced performance of kirtan (in the line of that envisioned by Srila Prabhupada for the World Sankirtan Party), and we also have the mrdanga and cartal kirtan with dancing. Keep it simple and direct. Look at people, touch them, move around them and influence them, allow them to influence you, smile, loosen up, have fun, don’t take it seriously, play. This chanting of the Holy Name is immersive and enchanting - and necessary.

The first one cannot replace the second - it can augment and enhance the overall presentation, but the main course is the combined enthusiastic chanting and dancing. Whatever contributes to enthusiastic chanting is favorable, whatever detracts from it is unfavorable.

This morning’s yoga teacher training course lead practice was a restorative class - think Atma Slow Deep Stretch. There were some rope inversions and some partner work, which I did with Elliott. I left my ‘99 vintage hooded Icebreaker on through the whole class, and kept a kashmere shawl over me as we relaxed into the postures. It was just what the doctor ordered after the weekend.

Here are the highlights:

Om Gurudeva His Holiness Devamrita Swami arrived in Brisbane on Wednesday night. Due to my working schedule the next time I saw him was on Friday night at Atma Yoga, where we had 30 guests for a discussion in the Atma Lounge. Sorry, no photos, and no recording.

Saturday I worked in the morning and raced back to Red Hill for sat sang with Gurudeva at midday. I think I recorded this one, but I haven’t checked yet. There were about 15 people there.

Sunday morning there were initiations before the Deities in Graceville. I’ve stopped referring to it as “the temple” because that just creates these phantasmagorical expectations in new people which are complicated to manage. The Brisbane Temple is under construction at 17 Mile Rocks. Until we move there “No, we don’t have a temple”, we have a temporary housing for the Deities. Yes I know that where ever the Deity is, is a temple, but that’s not what new people hear when you say: “temple”. When you say “temple”, they hear “Temple with a capital T” and imagine something exotic and opulent with gold plated domes, robed monks, incense burners, ancient tradition, and so on. Having to then reduce that expectation, or worse, deal with the disillusionment that arises from disappointed expectations, and explain our center in Graceville and introduce the idea of the as-yet-unmanifest Temple in 17 Mile Rocks is a real trip. Best not to go there.

“Do you have a Temple in Brisbane?”
“Not yet, we’re currently building one at 17 Mile Rocks.”

To me that evokes the “exciting future” that we are headed toward.

People who want to have the “Hare Krishna experience” should come to Sunday Feast to experience enthusiastic chanting and dancing, and take prasadam in community. For those who want to go deeper into it, they should get direct association in one of the environments that we have created for that. Once they are sadhana bhaktas they should go to the Deity for their sadhana. When we have a cultural presentation facility that is useful for making an impression on people’s consciousness with the opulence of the service of the Deity and the cultural tradition surrounding that we can invite them to that.

Of course there will always be rare souls who can hook in to the existing facility, but it’s not effective as a general strategy.

Anyway, I digress.

Antje is now Adina-lila devi dasi. Anantara is now Ananta Vrindavan das. I received my second initiation.

Now that I have my second initiation, once my work situation stabilizes again I’ll be getting a moped in order to get to my yoga teacher training, and I’ll also use it to go to the Deities in Graceville to do some personal service for Them.

I recorded the initiation lecture, but again, haven’t checked to see how or if it came out.

Sunday night was the Sunday Feast. We opened with our stage performance of bhajans, Sukanthi Radha dd gave a slide presentation entitled: “Have You Got Time? Or Has Time Got You?”. Then we had a Hare Krishna Network Show with Devamrita Swami as our special guest in the studio, interviewed about his book Searching for Vedic India on the subject of the Vedic Conception of Time.

Again, I didn’t record this. This was an amazing presentation. There are some photos, but no recording that I know of. I was a bit overwhelmed with everything, and you can’t do everything - some things just have to be sacrificed. I apologize to you, the Internet audience, because you were sacrificed in preference for the 150 guests who came on the night.

Vrajadhama was away on a catering gig (he missed out on being in this fire yajna for his second initiation), so the HKN team was a bit understrength, and I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything. It’s always like this these days. A lot of change, a lot of responsibility. Anyway, that is what life is for. We keep praying for the strength to do the needful for the mission, and begging for forgiveness for all the failings.

In regards to my second initiation, it has been four years since my first initiation, and I’ve spent the time researching and reflecting on the role and duties of the brahmana, and my own capability to carry them out. After this brief time I still don’t feel qualified to do it, but I feel a need to synchronize my role in the community with the formal positional structure of ISKCON, and I know that by the mercy of the Vaisnavas everything is possible. Under the advice of senior devotees here I’ve taken second initiation, and if I am able to successfully discharge my duties in this regard it will be due to their mercy only. If I am unable to do it then that is due to my own insincerity in receiving their mercy. Let me try my best realizing that that alone will never be enough and depending on Guru, Krishna, and the Vaisnavas as my ultimate refuge.

Read this brief article: What You Need to Know About Power Yoga.

Basically Power Yoga is a version of Pattabhi Jois’ Astanga Vinyasa Yoga created in the 1990s by some of his American students to make it more accessible to westerners.

One of the main differences between Power Yoga and Pattabhi Jois’ Astanga Vinyasa is that:

Power Yoga does not follow a set series of poses. Therefore, any Power Yoga class can vary widely from the next.

So there you have it.

The majority of people do not like to do the same set over and over again. That’s the traditional way, the way that it’s done in Astanga Vinyasa, and it works for some people who are hard core into it. You might remember that I glorified Atma Power Yoga for this previously. For the vast majority of people, however, it’s too much. Thus, Power Yoga was born - where you don’t do the same set each time.

Atma Power Yoga has only one set which is repeated each week, so in that sense it’s more like Astanga Vinyasa. The whole idea of Power Yoga was to make it more accessible, and part of that was a variable set.

So we are working on four different Atma Power Yoga 1 sets in order to vary the set each week.

This is the way that hatha yoga systems develop - through experience. There is no substitute for experience. In preaching, teaching, and other forms of leadership, there is no substitute for the hard yards.

Let’s look at the macro level first of all. If you look at the history of hatha yoga, the earliest hatha yoga texts contain a small number of basic asanas. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, considered the primordial yoga text, dedicates only one line to the question of asana, mentioning it in passing between a discussion of the ethics of the practitioner and the preliminary practices of meditation, saying only:

Postures (asanas) should be steady and pleasant.
Asanas are mastered by relaxed effort and remaining unaware of the body.

The oldest known Hatha Yoga text, the 15th century Hatha Yoga Pradipika, contains instructions for only 15 basic asanas.

Over time, practitioners of yoga have developed the asanas through their personal practice and deepening realization. Many of their poses are named after animals. Yogis lived in the woods and learned by observing the actions of animals, whose lives are in tune with natural processes. They also learned through practice and introspection.

I have practical experience of this. My first contact in this lifetime with Hatha Yoga was through Ramacaraka’s Hatha Yoga - the Yogi Philosophy of Wellbeing.

I read through this book, which talks about the holistic yoga lifestyle in terms of eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, bathing, and began practicing the things it talked about. I found myself naturally stretching my body and feeling how it responded - where the tension was, how different movements made me feel.

That book covers asanas at the very end, but I hadn’t made it that far when I found a flyer for the Manly School of Yoga. I wondered what they would teach there - would we discuss lifestyle management? I went along, and was surprised to find that it was all stretching exercises, and I could see how they were more sophisticated and refined versions of the rudimentary stretches that I had spontaneously begun to do.

So that is how Hatha Yoga systems of asana develop. As Power Yoga pioneer and luminary Baron Baptiste explained in an interview:

My style of yoga practice developed over many years of trial and error, and in finding what worked for myself, and for the everyday folks who would walk through my classroom doors. My focus has always been on “what works” and throwing out what doesn’t.

That is how asana has developed from the very beginning, and that is how it will continue to develop. There is no “one right way”. Yoga asanas are not revealed knowledge except through a practitioner’s personal practice and development of sensitivity to their own body and what it tells them.

There is no substitute for the hard yards.

As a teacher, you have to make the difficult trek to the ocean and then return carrying some water to share with others. You have to make the pilgrimage to the mountain to hear from the teacher, and carry back the teaching to share with others.

In teaching asana, you need to go deep into the practice and share your realization with others. You have to be a source of inspiration for them. The guru represents our highest aspiration manifest before us. We see the teacher and we say: “That is what I want to become”.

If you want to be a credible teacher you have to be a credible practitioner. You have to be a credible leader. You have to lead in practice. If your students practice once a week, you have to practice once a day. If your students practice one hour a day, you have to practice two hours a day.

The commitment of the people will always trail that of the leader. Your ability to teach will be proportional to your personal commitment, in terms of your ongoing practice and also the duration of that commitment - the length of your experience.

There is no substitute for the hard yards. There is no short cut - no magic formula. You have to practice, practice, and practice. Then you can inspire and guide others based on your personal experience. You cannot replace the depth of experience of the teacher with a system. You cannot teach if you do not practice.

If you want to be a teacher, first be a practitioner.

I just wanted to comment on this piece over at stuff.co.nz: Internet Dater found not guilty of sexual assault.

I’ll leave all the complex social analysis to social commentator Krishna-kirti. I don’t agree with everything that he writes, but his social analysis is from the same playbook as mine.

Let me give a brief commentary inspired by the lyrics of some hardcore band, the exact origins of which escape my memory right now:

She uses sex for love, he uses love for sex.

The lady in this situation was looking for a long term partner because she was lonely. The man was looking for a random sexual encounter. Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Because she is “a professional lady in her 40s” she is expected to look after herself and be accountable for her actions, so the court has found the man not guilty.

The very fabric of the social structure around her has left her completely unprotected. There is no-one to look after her. No-one to be concerned about her loneliness. No-one to shield her natural vulnerability. She has been left to try to deal with that as best she can. In isolation she reaches out to try to make contact with someone, and is brutally taken advantage of.

Living enmeshed in a complex world of frustration and insatiable desire, this man has been driven to perform a despicable act which has brought shame upon him and upon this woman.

This is not an isolated incident, but a massively increasing wave across the world.

Our mission is to create authentic community. To bring people together, with Krishna in the center, to experience authentic community. To answer that primal need within so many people today who are alone in a crowd, isolated, alienated.

Our mission is to provide protection to those who cannot protect themselves, by strengthening the social fabric. To create strong bonds of support and sustenance. To create a vibrant culture that nourishes the body, mind, and spirit.

Our mission is to help protect people from themselves by educating them and giving them a higher taste, allowing them to act as they see fit, while helping them to see clearly.

Our mission is to mold our daily lives in such a way that these aims are realized.

This is not the work of a day, it is not the work of a year, it is not the work even of a lifetime. We should not expect victory, nor should we accept defeat in this life, or the next, or the following. Our mission, as Srila Prabhupada put it to Tamal Krishna Goswami is “to be recorded in the annals of history as having saved the world in its darkest hour.”

That hour is approaching.

We’ve run a trial of Atma Power Yoga here at Atma Yoga for the past two months, and these are the observations.

Power Yoga, for the uninitiated, is the “generic brand name” for any dynamic strength building series of asanas inspired by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga ™ Yoga (r)

Big names in Power Yoga are Baron Baptiste, author of “Journey into Power” and creator of the Baron Baptiste Yoga Boot Camp / Brian Kest, an early American student of Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga, and Beryl Bender Birch, who is credited with coining the term “Power Yoga”.

Atma Power Yoga is a power yoga sequence handed down through a secret tradition to Atmananda das, the founder-acarya of the Atma Yoga sampradaya.

There are three main components to the Atma Power Yoga class. There are the asanas, obviously. As well, there is “root lock” (muladhara-bandha), drsti (fixed gaze), and ujjaya breath (”psychic breathing”).

Root lock is the activation of the muladhara-bandha, or lock in the muladhara or base chakra. This is accomplished by directing awareness to the….. anyway, either you know what the whole thing is about or you don’t. If you know, here are the observations:

People do not like to lose.

That’s pretty obvious, but how does that relate to this class? Well, as they say over at Creating Passionate Users, the whole idea is to help the user kick a** - not to leave them feeling like a loser. If you get people into a class and then lay muladhara-bandha, drsti, ujjaya breath, and asanas on them all at once, with the Atma Power Yoga Countdown to Destruction over the top of that, there is no way that they are going to experience a feeling of mastery in that class. No way.

They are going to feel overwhelmed, inadequate, and ineffective. For a few of us these feelings inspire a response of ferocious determination to dominate, but in most of us they lead to resignation and renunciation.

How to fix this: at the moment our thinking is to create a Power Yoga beginners class, and a Power Yoga general class. In the beginners class there is no count. The focus is on helping the students to have a “mastery experience” with the asanas.

Once they have that, they can come to the general class where we have the count going, and students who have already mastered the asanas, or at least gained familiarity with them, can now tackle the coordination of the breathing.

People do not like monotony

From initially high numbers and high enthusiasm, we’ve watched that class go down. Early feedback that we got from students about Elliott’s Hatha Yoga classes, which used to faithfully mimic his personal practice, fanatically derived from Iyengar’s Light on Yoga, was that they wanted something different each week.

Of course Elliott, the consumate Hatha Yogi, was thinking that a stable sequence that enabled the students to gain deeper appreciation of the poses and develop their practice in a solid way was the way to go. That’s a kind of reflection on his own practice, which consisted of three hours of asanas “by the book” each day.

However, most people are not after that kind of level or approach to hatha yoga practice. They’re after an experience. Something different, something interesting, something stimulating. Most people are not going deep enough into the practice. They are acting from a platform of curiosity, rather than a deep-rooted desire for personal transformation.

How to fix this: In order to accomodate this motivation for coming to the yoga class, we are developing four different Atma Power Yoga 1 classes, and rotating them, so that each week the class is different, while remaining true to its objectives for those who actually wish to practise and progress.

So that’s where we’re at with the Power Yoga thing. We’ve basically killed one of our nights to find this stuff out, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’m interested in any insights that others might have on this subject. Send me an email, leave a comment, or write an article if you’re blogging.

Here is a disturbing report of the systematic rape of women in the African nation of Congo by soliders. The use of extremely violent rape as a strategy has become increasingly widespread in civil conflicts.

When you read what these women have experienced - one lady was raped in front of her children and husband by a group of soldiers, her husband was then disembowelled, and she was then gang raped repeatedly for three days along with her 8 and 10 year old daughters - you should become serious about doing something about yourself. Stop sitting around wasting your life worrying about how you can make things more comfortable for yourself. The world is sliding into a dark pit.

The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner, a suitable path to follow. You are here for no other purpose than to realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all that you encounter.

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.

Morihei Ueshiba, founder of Aikido, The Art of Peace

We must become the change we wish to see in the world

Mohandas K Gandhi

This world is burning! This world is burning! Wake up! Wake up and FOCUS! Get it into perspective and get moving.

I get over 200 spam email messages a day. I use Spam Assassin to handle most of that, but a few slip through nonetheless. Most of the more obvious ones like invitations to visit pr0n sitez are nuked, but a few get through. Here are the two spam emails that I actually read, as the titles were original enough for me to give them a second thought:

Screw the Cops, Let’s make some M0ney!

and

Some People are alive only because it’s illegal to kill them

Those two got a look in - not much more, but a look in.

The author of Searching for Vedic India, His Holiness Devamrita Swami, is my initiating spiritual master (guru), and he will be here in Brisbane from Wednesday this week to Monday next week. There will be a Sat Sang for the Atma Yogis on Friday night, a class at the temple on Saturday night, and an appearance at the Sunday Feast on Sunday.

I’m looking for my copy of Searching for Vedic India at the moment. I need it to help me with research for an end of term essay for the Yogic Philosophy portion of the yoga teachers training course.

Did I lend it to someone? Have you seen it? Please let me know if you have. I think it is a signed copy, and it may have my name in it.

This is the Nike Yoga mat that I’m currently using. I’ve tried three different mats so far - a 4 mm “sticky” mat and a 6 mm studio mat from Iyogaprops.com.au, and most recently this little puppy, which I picked up at Rebel Sports.

I initially got a green one, but I handed that on to Zoe when one of the other students on the yoga teachers training course, Ann, gave me her grey one, which is a little more subdued color-wise. I gave Ann and her partner Russell, who is also on the yoga teacher journey, a copy of Bhagavad As It is - the rice paper one with everything that the deluxe edition has (minus the color plates) as well as a “index of verses quoted”.

The Nike mat is thinner than a 4 mm sticky mat, and doesn’t have as much cushioning. It is lighter and less bulky as a result. It is a sandwich construction with two layers, giving it two sides which are a darker and lighter tone, and have different grip characteristics. I found this mat to have superior grip over the sticky mat. My studio mat, which is too heavy to take anywhere (hence the name “studio mat”) has a comparable grip.

The Nike mat comes with its own carry string, which has a loop at each end with a toggle, which allows you to loosen or tighten the loop to hold the mat rolled up, and sling it over your shoulder.

Another feature of this mat is a stitched centerline, which you can dimly see in the picture below. With this stitched centerline, which is dark on the light side and light on the dark side, it makes it a lot easier to align standing postures. In wide stance poses such as Virabhadrasana, the warrior poses, it’s easy to align the forward and back feet along the mat using the centerline. In poses such as tadasana it makes it easy to align your feet parallel to something, and you can be certain that you’re centered on your mat in all poses.

I definitely recommend this mat.

Pros:

• Good grip
• Two different surfaces with varying grip
• Light and compact
• Comes with carry drawstring
• Centerline stitching for superior alignment
• Feeling of leetness and technological empowerment

Cons:

• Has a cool Nike logo on it, so all the more “spiritual” yoga hippies think you’re a sell-out.

Cost: AUD $26.00 - AUD $39.95 / USD $20.00 from Amazon

It hit just after lunch. I had the day off work yesterday, so we took the opportunity to go to Murari Caitanya and Sukadeva’s new restaurant, Gopals, over in Sherwood. The prasadam (food) there is wonderfully light and tasty. It’s very sattvic - clear and clean.

I had the main course (menu in Spanish) - a plate of rice, subji (”vegetable curry” in common parlance), kofta (deep fried vegetable nuggets), fresh garden salad, and a bowl of halava (sweet) with custard.

That was fine, until Murari Caitanya’s wife brought us out a generous helping of her wonderful apple pie, and Murari Caitanya Prabhu poured custard over it.

After that I felt that I’d overeaten, and Param and I both commented that now would be a good time to take a nap. About 10 minutes later it hit me like a train.

I don’t think the lunch was the cause - more the trigger - it probably had more to do with the two day intensive yoga workshop we just did on the weekend. One day of partner yoga / bodywork, and one day of Okido dynamic Zen Yoga. You can check out a video of Okido yoga here. It’s very dojo-influenced, and Dr Oki would challenge the Westerners to be more group conscious and the Asians to be more individualistic to encourage them to become conscious of their cultural conditioning.

The Okido yoga brought back a lot of memories of my Aikido training while in Grammar school, including a part of the Okido workshop where I was supposed to escape from two guys who were hanging off my arms (of course I did it!). I might look around for an Aikido dojo here in Brisbane to take Prahlad to (thanks Google - there’s one in Westend near the West End Yoga Studio, and it’s the same school that my earlier training was in - Yoshinkai). I did some more training in Peru, as there was a dojo a few minutes away from the temple. The late night training times didn’t do it for me though, and I haven’t done anything since I got back to Australia.

If two six-hour days weren’t enough, after the Sunday feast that night we had our Monday morning led practice class, two hours from 6 am. You’d think that Kate would give us a restorative class - but no, she poured it on like Murari Caitanya pouring custard onto apple pie. Asanas that I’ve seen but never tried, and some I’ve never even heard of.

If you saw the Yo-Gah! video that Madhava Ghosh pointed out a few weeks back, I was like Jerry during the sun salutation sequence. It was ridiculous.

Anway, it all came back on me that afternoon, and I crashed like an Al-Qaeda Airways 747. First of all I lay down in the driver’s seat in the car, reclined back. Then I crawled into the back while Param drove, and lay on the back seat. Then when we got home, I stayed in the car on the back seat for an hour and a half before I managed to stagger inside where I collapsed on the floor for another hour and a half.

I’ve got another 4 and a half weeks of this in this term, and another 54 weeks until we’ve completed the teacher training. It’s going to be interesting to see how I come out at the end of this.

In other news we found a place for our retreat. After going out to the Samford Valley and generally putting the word out to the universe that we needed a place, the Lord within the heart made the arrangements for a flyer for a Brahma Kumaris retreat to manifest at the restaurant with the address of the Theosophical Society’s retreat center at Springbrook, on the way out to the coast.

I shot them an email last night to find out the details of hiring the place out. We are so totally there.

My server went into an Out of Memory condition a couple of days ago - I’m not sure why. It seems to have rebooted / been rebooted yesterday, so it should be ok now. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime I’m out of the habit of blogging already. Expect more updates soon. Right now we’re on a two day partner yoga / Okido training workshop as part of the yoga teacher training.

His Holiness Prabhavishnu Swami will give class tonight at the Sunday feast.

We’re opening a new initiative next Monday (not tomorrow) - Govinda’s Lounge - in the old Loft space. We need to hold on to that space for the advancement of the Sunday Feast program, including the Kid’s club. It involves a fair amount of work and sacrifice to hold on to it - but that’s what life is for. If you’ve seen “The Longest Day” - the famous trilingual epic movie about D-Day - you’ll remember the part where they need to blow up some German fortifications to clear the beach. American engineers plant explosives under fire and are killed, but the fortification is breached and the US soldiers clear the beach to penetrate the German line.

Sometimes you just have to work to create a breach under fire, and run the risk of being killed - because if you don’t the whole operation just dies on the beach. That’s life.

We’re dealing with a lot of change here at the moment.

In his classic book “Future Shock” author Alvin Toffler explains that human beings have a limited biological capacity for change. When they experience a level of change that exceeds that biological capacity they go into “Future Shock”.

He gives examples: if you change your job, and then move house, and go through a divorce or get married, all at the same time, you will probably experience Future Shock as your ability to assimilate all the changes is overwhelmed. You will face psychological destabilization, depression, irritability, reduce immunity, and even physical sickness.

Change is the only constant, it seems. When the army is on the move, the scenery keeps changing.

In my son Prahlad’s horoscope it said that his childhood would be characterized by a lot of instability. That’s definitely the case. We try to keep some things constant for him, as practically everything around him changes.

Right now we’ve gone from 14 people in the ashram to 7. Living with 7 people the place feels empty. All the schedules are disrupted. All the rosters are invalid. We have to renegotiate our living arrangement and work out new ways to do things. It requires a lot of energy, and is unsettling.

The irregular schedule at my job doesn’t help me. This week I’m doing 12 pm - 9 pm. That’s good for my morning yoga teacher training classes, but not good for the evening ones. This week I’ve swapped shifts for my two evening class nights. Next week I’ll have to see what my schedule is and work around that.

Here are a few observations on change:

1. There is a natural resistance to change. Change is scary - it’s risky. “We may not have the best situation now, but at least we have something, and we know what it is,” we rationalize. Many times we consciously or even unconsciously resist or undermine change. We’re happy when things return to the status quo.

Because the soul is eternal and unchanging the experience of change in the material world is unsettling. The more exclusively your perceptual orientation and sense of self is externally focused, the more unsettling it will be. Spiritual practice alleviates this. Some things may change, but getting up in the morning and chanting the Hare Krishna mantra has remained a constant for me in nine countries with different languages, climates, and cultures. My experience has been that this puts me in touch with something eternal. When change and the associated anxiety threaten to overwhelm me I take shelter of this practice.

2. At a certain point an organization tries to settle into a stable state. If you’ve ever tried to turn an organization around then you’ll know how difficult it is. Every single person in the organization, while they profess their desire for improvement, wants things to remain the way they are - at least for them. The aggregate effect of this is an unwieldy behemoth as each person’s individual resistance to transformation translates into organizational change resistance.

3. The only time change stops is when you die. If you succeed in your resistance to change, you just issued a death sentence. If we try to hold to things, keep them the way they are - we will lose everything. The only time a ball stops moving when it’s in the air is at the peak of its climb. This lasts for a momentary fragment of a second when its movement is arrested. The next moment, by the force of nature, it plummets back to Earth.

In this world things are either increasing or decreasing - growing or diminishing. Let go of yesterday, and seize hold of tomorrow.

My observation is that this mission does in a way resemble one writer’s description of war - “prolonged periods of extreme boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror” - in the sense that as we advance the mission we are continually breaking and reforming our instruments and arrangements (those are the moments of sheer terror). As soon as this stops, forward movement has stopped. Once your forward movement stops you lose momentum, and then the natural forces of this world just start to grind you down. Your team starts to succumb to inevitable attrition, dwindling around you until only the hardcore are left. Unfortunately, many times these are the people who are most comfortable with stasis and the most unsettled by change - the idea of leaving is too much of a change for them, so they stay while others who may have a lower organizational committment than they, but are more open to change, leave.

4. We have to live courageously - all of us. We have to accept that going forward means leaving something behind. Things are not going to stay the same. Yesterday finished last night, and the successes of last year are historical tales that can inspire us, but fade more with each passing day.

General Patton’s speech to the 3rd Army in England before the invasion of Normandy contains an inspiring example of the kind of conceptual orientation that is needed to sustain momentum:

I don’t want to get any messages saying that we are holding our position. We’re not holding anything. Let the Hun do that. We are advancing constantly and we’re not interested in holding onto anything — except the enemy.

Vince Lombardi in another famous speech says that “we must be committed to excellence and to ultimate victory, even though ultimate victory can never be won, and even if it is won, can never last”.

5. Change processes should be managed carefully to reduce the effects on the people. By clearly and repeated restating the vision people will find it easier to fix their vision on the guiding star that remains burning brightly ahead as the scenery changes. Efforts should be made to keep some stability in place - shared meals at regular times, regular programs and meetings. Some things should be kept the same for the sake of keeping something the same, while everything else is changed around it. Those things can then be changed once people have become comfortable in the new situation, if they need to be changed.

Too much change will overwhelm people. The more externally focused their consciousness, the less change they will be able to handle. Encouraging people to go deep into spiritual practice will increase their ability to cope with change.

So more attentive chanting is the answer. I personally find change useful in helping me to retain an internal attitude of helplessness. Over the last 10 years since I first took a leap of faith I’ve found myself in constant freefall, with no sign of a landing yet…

Part of my yoga teachers training course involves a three hour class each week on Yogic Philosophy. It’s taught by Dr. Tamara Ditrich, who lectures in Sanskrit at the University of Queensland. Her students have included His Grace Svayambhu prabhu and His Holiness Prabhavishnu Swami.

It’s an intense, interesting,and enjoyable experience. Last Friday two of the five of us doing the course went along. Others went to the Nrsimha caturdasi festival at the temple and manned the Atma Yoga program.

The processing of the information that is presented in this course is very good for my conception of Krishna Consciousness. I like to be conscious and intentional about what I’m doing. As Krishna das Kaviraja mentions in his Sri Caitanya Caritamrita, discussing things in this way helps to strengthen one’s faith. I am familiar with all the elements - the facts, the figures, the ideas, the personalities, that are being presented, and what I am really enjoying is integrating the meta-narrative that Tamara weaves them into.

Here is something very interesting that H.H. Tripurari Swami wrote:

In our daily life we should test the metal of our faith in God with the fire of reason. If it starts to melt, we should withdraw to spiritual practice and saintly association - the company of men and women of faith. If it is strengthened through the fire of reason, this faith is no longer tender (komala), and such firm faith will fuel our spiritual practice, and more, it will grant us entrance into spiritual life and enable us to fuel the practice of others.

I am going to write about the material that is being presented, especially the meta-narrative - you can read about all the elements in Srila Prabhupada’s books, but how they fit together is something else - and about my processing and integration of this presentation into my conception.

This is the activity of the madhyama-adhikari stage - the integration of reason with faith. Kanistha adhikari means something like a religious fanatic (outsiders will consider this person to be a bit “dogmatic”). Reason and critical deliberation is unimportant and even suspect. In the madhyama-adhikari stage reason comes more to the forefront. At this point, almost perversely, a practitioner becomes susceptible to doubt and even conversion, if they are not solid in their practice, as mentioned above. In the uttama-adhikari stage, beyond this, reason again retires.

An example of this:

Reporter: “What would you do if you found out tomorrow that Krishna wasn’t God?”

Srila Prabhupada (smiling broadly): “I would do the same thing, because I am happy.”

That is the realization of the Uttama-adhikari - topmost faith - beyond reason, and based on experience. Pratyaksvagamam - direct perception of the self.

Let me first of all talk about the weakness of a purely academic approach to understanding the information and constructing a meta-narrative.

The western ideal of study is to be the impassive, immutable “objective observer” who is neither involved in nor modified by the material they are studying. In this model you try to explain everything from a supposedly neutral point of view, which is in fact whatever subjective state of consciousness you possess, with all its assumptions, preconceptions, and limitations. You try to explain the tradition, and end up in many cases explaining it away.

The idea of the tradition, on the other hand, is not to understand it from your present point of view. The approach to the tradition recommended by the tradition itself is not to try to explain the tradition, but to try to experience it. You do not fit it within your frame of reference, you fit yourself within its frame of reference, and see where that takes you. The goal is not to explain it away, transforming it with the power of reason to make it fit where you are at and what you are all about, but rather to experience it and be transformed by it. You cannot taste the honey by analyzing it and licking the outside of the bottle - you have to dive in.

If I didn’t have a few years of trying to chant the Hare Krishna mantra and do service to my Guru and his mission behind me, then I might be negatively affected by the presentation I am hearing. That effect would be to reduce it to intellectually interesting information which doesn’t translate into a transformative practice. However, after having directly experienced the transformative power of the process and studied the teachings for some time, I’m in a better position to explain the meta-narrative from the perspective of our own meta-narrative, assimilating the presentation into the frame of reference of the tradition.

If you find the processing I do on the information disturbing then please don’t read the articles that I’m going to write about it. The madhyama-adhikari platform is characterized by contention and dispute, but I’m not so much inclined toward debate. I’m happy to share my processing of this information for others who may come across it and wonder how to integrate it with their faith. I’m not trying to promote it as a doctrine, however, but just as my processing of the information. There are many ways to peel a mango, many points of view and valid ways of explaining the same thing in a way that arrives at the same essential conclusion.

I’ve added a new category “Yoga Teacher Training” for recording my experiences on my Yoga Teacher Training Course.

That’s “Quote of the Day”

Remember, the reality of anything can only be perceived if you communicate it effectively.

Read on another blog.

atmavan manyate jagat - “One perceives the world as a reflection of their own mind”.

From “It’s all about me: Why e-mails are so easily misunderstood“: Christian Science Monitor.

Last night we had the Sunday feast. It was quite mystical how it all came together. After Saturday night’s Full Moon festival and Engagement ceremony at Atma Yoga we were all quite worn out. We left Atma Yoga around midnight on Saturday night.

No-one was there to help Param Satya cook until 3pm - usually a couple of people are there from mid day. Somehow, in spite of this, the prasadam was ready on time.

There was no-one organized to give the class, and no theme set. On Saturday I worked all day. I didn’t have much time to prepare for the Saturday night program and the talk I gave. I thought about it for a while, and decided to use the time for prayer rather than preparation. I think a balance of the two is the best. Prepare as if it all depends on you, and pray as if it all depends on the Lord.

Anyway, I had no time to prepare anything. I was quite worn out from Saturday night, and also in anxiety about my 6 am yoga teachers training class on Monday morning, followed by another week at work.

First of all, I thought of a tactic that I’ve used before when asked to handle the presentation at the Sunday Feast with no notice - ask for questions up front. It’s actually a good angle to take. Part of preparation is to try to understand the audience in order to tell them what they need to hear. It’s difficult, because the audience changes each week with new people coming all the time. Asking for questions up front allows the audience to do the targeting for you. Asking for questions at the end can be intimidating, as people don’t want to appear ignorant. Asking up front allows people to ask whatever they want, and to dictate to an extent, the direction of the presentation.

Of course, once you start answering you can direct things from there, but it allows people to participate and contribute - two essential elements of authentic community.

Over the last few days I have been repeatedly watching this video of a debate on O’Reilly, a TV show in the States. It’s a great study in how not to get slaughtered in a debate. Be clear and consistent about what you stand for. Have your own positive agenda - don’t simply try to negate or oppose the opposition. Don’t respond to your opponent - simply repeat the main points of your message.

I really liked the way that the presenter handled the interaction. It was an interesting, engaging presentation. Mash-ups are the rage right now, so I mashed up the two ideas.

We convened a panel of three devotees - one young brahmacari, Matsya Avatara das, who has been studying and teaching Sanskrit in Vrndavan for the last three years. Rasika-seva devi dasi, our singing and dancing guru, and Yadavendra prabhu, Brisbane’s book-distributing disciple of Srila Prabhupada.

I played the part of the presenter and fielded the questions from the audience with a wireless mic. Each of our panel members spoke to the question, then I gave a synthetic summary before taking the next question. It was a lively interaction, very stimulating for the audience, who had the opportunity to interact and influence the presentation.

Being open to influence opens influence.

Having three different personalities on the panel enabled us to address the questions from a variety of perspectives. No one answer will satisfy everyone. There are infinite ways of understanding and appreciating things, and some people will be more attracted to one presentation than another.

Afterwards we had a nice kirtan with beautifully choreographed dancing. When the dancing is consistent and predictable, and there is clear direction, lots of people will join in. If it is too difficult, or requires too much individual initiative, then people will be reticent. The idea is to perform the dancing as a service, with the goal of involving as many people as possible. As more people join in the momentum builds. It is beautiful, and a creates a real sense of community. The idea of community is involve others, to give everyone an opportunity to participate and contribute. When people experience this they feel the common bond, the experience of authentic community.

Then of course we had dinner. Everything fell together nicely, by the arrangement of the Lord.

The contemporary Vedic Ashram system of Atma Yoga / The Loft includes a relatively new samskara, engagement. “Classical” Vedic culture doesn’t have it, but people today benefit from a period where they get to taste “committment without entitlement”. It’s a formal position of regulated engagement to ease them into the full grhasta situation. Basically you’re married, but you don’t get to disappear off into your own scene.

I had the great honour and pleasure to address the 80 or so members of the community at Atma Yoga during the ceremony. For me it was a great privilege to be able to serve my dear god brother Vrajadhama in this way.

Engagement Address

This is Vrajadhama, and Bhakticandrika devi dasi from Peru. I’ve known Vrajadhama for now, let’s see, 17 years I think - something like that. No, 15 years. 15 years, and we’ve been through a lot together. We came to this Hare Krishna movement, this Vaisnava tradition together, and then we went and we spent some time in Peru, spent three years there, and while we were there Vraj met Bhakticandrika. It was obviously fate’s divine arrangement for them to connect in that way, because being such a small guy, Vraj probably wouldn’t be able to find someone his size anywhere else.

(laughter)

Yeah, so it was perfect. Everything worked out perfectly.

So today we are observing the engagement, their engagement ceremony. Now, according to the “classical”, in quotes, Vedic tradition there is no engagement ceremony, because there is actually no engagement. People are either married or not married. You see, the ancient Vedic culture is very strict about the mixing of the sexes. In Yoga one of the preliminary practices is brahmacarya, which means basically “celibacy” - and it means conserving the energies, and so they have a very strict way of social interaction where they don’t have that. Today we don’t really have that culture so much in our society, but we try to follow the Vedic tradition, the Vedic way of life, because it promotes elevation of consciousness. Now, there is no engagement ceremony in that ancient tradition, so we are basically making one up ourselves.

Because you see the Vedic tradition - it’s not a stereotypical culture that belongs to a particular time and place. It’s actually a living thing. Just like within our bodies there is the living energy, and when the living energy is gone from the body, the body just falls to the ground. It’s inert - it’s lost its life. But while that living energy is there, the body changes. Once I was a small boy, like our young friend here, now I’m a young man, and I’ll go through different changes. The body has changed so much, but I’m still the same person - still me - experiencing that. So there’s something within me that’s vital, that’s living, and the outer thing changes. So it is with the Vedic tradition. The outer appearance of the tradition changes, but the inner thing remains the same always.

And the inner thing, the inner substance of the Vedic tradition, it is the platform of absolute transcendental reality - that’s the spiritual platform. You know, the part of us that doesn’t change during our life, that’s our spiritual aspect, our spiritual identity. The physical part of us - that goes through changes. So the idea of the Vedic culture is to help people to connect to that identity, to that aspect of our identity. And that thing never changes - that absolute platform, which is known as Brahman in Sanskrit, that doesn’t change. That is eternal and unchanging - immutable. But society does change, so therefore the Vedic tradition changes along with that. You know, it tracks along with that, to keep connecting the people with the absolute platform. So as time goes on the Vedic tradition changes, so now we are introducing the idea of the engagement ceremony.

So why do we have this engagement ceremony? Why are they doing this? What are they doing?

They’re making a public commitment. They’re not just making a public commitment to each other, they’re making a public commitment to all of us. Because life is not just about “me”, and life is not just about “you”. Life is about all of us, and we all, because we’re all interrelated, we all have a duty to each other, and especially in family life. Family is the basis of human society.Community, human community needs continuity, it needs stability.

So when you enter into this kind of relationship, it’s not just about “what do I want to get out of this? What do I want?” It’s actually about “what can I do for others?” It’s not even about “what can I do for this other person?” It’s about “what can we do together? What can we together do for everyone else?” Now if we begin to live from that platform, instead of thinking “What can everyone do for me? What can I do for myself?” If we begin to live from the platform of “What can I do for others?” then the whole relationship becomes different. Instead of “What can I get out of this other person?” it becomes “what can we together do for others?”, and that makes for such a difference in the relationship.

So the commitment is not simply the two of them to each other, but it’s a commitment to all of us. It’s a commitment to contributing to stability and continuity. Community needs stability, and it needs continuity. We need to create a stable community, a stable society, so that people can have a stable situation in which they can pursue spiritual realization. You know when you’re so disturbed and there are so many disturbances, and you don’t know what’s happening from one day to the next, and your future is so uncertain - it’s very difficult to concentrate on anything higher than just getting through the day. But if we can have a stable situation underlying us for our practice, then we can apply ourselves to that practice, and we can make advancement, we can make progress.

So the duty of those who come together in this way is to provide that stability, and making this public commitment in this way to all of us also helps them with their commitment to each other, because they can realize as they go through it that “it’s not just about us, it’s about everyone, and the public commitment that we’ve made.”

It’s called the “Edison method”. Thomas Edison was a famous inventor, and what he would often do is call a press conference, and he would announce a wonderful new product that was coming out. Then after making that announcement in the press conference he would go into his lab and invent it.

So by making a public commitment like this, it helps to achieve your goals, and to be committed to your goals.

There is another aspect to it, as well.

The other day I was reading Madison magazine. I don’t know if anyone here reads Madison magazine? I don’t - generally I don’t read Madison magazine, but this particular Madison magazine - I was waiting - OK, wait a minute, let me tell you how it happened.

I was waiting for the bus down in Adelaide St, and this particular Madison magazine, the cover jumped out at me, and it’s not because it had a picture of Angelina Jolie on the cover. She’s on the cover of practically every magazine this month - or at least the ones that Jennifer Aniston isn’t on. So what it was, actually, that jumped out at me was a headline that said: “Married versus Living Together: Who’s happiest?”

These are the kinds of things that I like to think about, and I was particularly intrigued to know - what did they have to say about that? I didn’t really want to saunter up to the stand and pick up the magazine in case someone coming from the class saw me reading it. So I waited until we were in Stafford, at Woolworths, where I was sure we wouldn’t run into anyone - but actually we did, we ran into Lou. Anyway, the Supersoul goes with us wherever we go - we can’t escape it.

Anyway, I picked up that magazine and I just flicked through the article, and one thing jumped out at it me, and it said: “Statistically it’s proven that people who don’t live together before they get married, have longer marriages.” That’s what it said. And then they gave their interpretation, or a little bit of their commentary on that. They said: “This is because people who don’t live together before they get married, these days especially, they often don’t do so because of cultural or religious reasons, and those same cultural or religious reasons often preclude divorce as an option.”

I think there is some validity in that, but at the same time I think that is a little bit of a disempowering view to take of it. I think a more positive and empowering view of that can be understood from a principle that we find in the science of Yoga, and that is something that Krishna explains about the yogi in the second chapter of Bhagavad-gita, where He says: “sama sukha-dukham dhiram”

In this particular verse He says:

yam hi na vyatayanyete
purusa purusarsabha
samo-dukha-sukham dhiram
so’mrta vaya kalpate

That the yogi, he is “samo-sukha-duhkam dhiram” - he is equanimous. He is the same - sama means “same” - dukha-sukham - dukha means misery and sukha means happiness. He is the same in both misery and happiness. This is this universal principle. This is something that doesn’t change. The rituals might change, the society might change, but let me tell you this - this is something that doesn’t change. This is an eternal principle: If you cannot regulate attachment, you will not be able to regulate aversion - and these two things are the two sides of the same coin. Attachment and Aversion. The two functions of the mind. If you watch what your mind does as you go around - your mind is always saying: “I like that. I don’t like that. I like it. I don’t like it.” Things that you like, the mind says: “Go. Go. Get it. Get it.” The things that you don’t like the mind says: “Get away. Get away. Give it up.”

“Sankalpa Vikalpa” it is called. So the yogi has to learn to control the impulse towards attachment or engagement. Our society today glorifies the uncontrollable whirlwind romance, you know, it’s kind of like: “I was just swept off my feet. I just couldn’t help myself. I just had to get up on the couch and jump up and down. I was madly in love.” That’s kind of celebrated - you know?

But there is another saying: “Easy come, easy go”. If he can’t control his mind on the way in, he’s not going to be able to control his mind on the way out - and wherever there is attachment or attraction there will always be aversion, that will always come. That is the nature of this world. Whenever there is some attraction, some desire, some attachment - there will always come a time where there will be aversion, there will be repulsion. So if we can’t regulate ourselves and control ourselves when the attachment comes, then we certainly won’t be able to control ourselves when the aversion comes. If we can’t control ourselves when kama, or lust, comes, then we won’t be able to control ourselves when krodha, or anger, comes.

So I think that persons who, for whatever reason - because of their own realization, their own control, their own understanding, or even by social tradition - if they can control, if they can learn to control on the outset - then when the difficult times come, and the mind starts pushing them to come apart, they will also find it a lot easier to control that. And then if they also have the understanding that “it’s not just about us and what we think and what we feel”, but “we have a duty to all these people around us, to the whole society, to the whole community” then that commitment that they are making now to all of us, that commitment will push them together. It will help to hold them together. So by doing it in this way they get the support of the whole community, behind them, to help them in their endeavour, together, to serve - to serve the community.

So that is something about the concept behind this engagement ceremony that we are doing tonight. As I said there is no formal ritualistic ceremony for this in the ancient Vedic tradition, so we are creating one as we go, because the Vedic culture is always relevant to our situation.

So it is very simple what we have planned for tonight. We have the garlands for them? And there are some flowers for puspanjali? So we have some flowers - and we are going to hand these flowers around. Last night we were hearing something about the demigods showering flowers? It is very auspicious.

So they are going to exchange garlands, and there is also a ring, which is a sign of commitment in the West.

Anything that is done beginning with the syllable OM is said to be permanent and binding, so we will chant the Guru Pranam mantra, then you can exchange the garlands and give the ring, and we’ll all throw the flowers.

Hari!
Om ajnana timirandhasya
jnananjana salakaya
caksur un militam yena
tasmai sri gurave namah

Esa puspanjali!

After we returned from the retreat in Taupo we held a strategic planning retreat to map out our priorities for 2006. You can see where we announced these and preannounced the new Loft facility in February in the post “Wanted: New Loft“.

Within weeks the place manifested, and we took possession on February 24th.

Looking back now I can see by analyzing the specification that we came up with that we were basically trying to reimplement the “success formula” of Gaura Yoga. It’s not an unnatural thing to do. We were successful once doing things that way, so we naturally gravitated toward that.

At the same time that we were discussing the shift, we were also discussing the rebranding of the Loft. We discussed how when I first came to the Loft in 1996 there were no yoga classes. Many of the early Lofties came before yoga even started. Rama das, Bala Gopal das, Khadiravan devi dasi, Sudevi devi dasi, Seva Kunja devi dasi, and many others. So yoga is not integral to the success of the Loft paradigm. Ten years ago there was no yoga, in ten years time there may be no yoga, but in the meantime there is yoga.

In 1998 in Wellington, after experimenting with so many of the things that had been successful in Auckland we gradually discovered that yoga was the way forward there. Eventually yoga displaced all the programs that had been the mainstay of momentum at the Loft in Auckland. After we left Wellington in 2001 the name of the facility was changed to Gaura Yoga, to reflect the fact that its identity was primarily as a yoga school.

So we thought that since we’re doing yoga, we might as well align our identity with that. I’ve discussed previously some of the factors that influenced us to go with Atma Yoga. It’s a powerful name, and it also allows us to contribute to building an international platform. I’m not a Lone Ranger. I’m happy to be out in front exploring new frontiers, but I’m very much concerned with contributing to wider success through my efforts, which is one of the reasons why I maintain this blog.

Looking back now, we would have better off if we had realized that basically we were opening a new center, starting from scratch. Of course all the relationship building that we had done up to this point is worth something, but “community needs continuity”, and we were discontinuing basically everything - changing the location, the name, the hours, the pricing, the staff, basically everything.

In the first month we made multiple changes to the timetable as we struggled to understand both our own changed internal structure (we have recently gained a number of team members) and the changed requirements and opportunities of our new situation. These changes further confused and demoralized the people who were struggling to accompany us through this transitionary period. Leadership demands clarity. In fact, one of my personal definitions of leadership is “the supply of direction and clarity in a situation of uncertainty and confusion”. We certainly weren’t able to provide this initially. Internally we were struggling with new processes of decision-making as the old processes no longer accomodated the increased number of team members.

I’ve learnt a lot about change management. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but if you only learn one thing in OCS it’s this: a leader has to make a decision. It doesn’t have to be the right decision, it just has to be a decision. By making a decision and issuing orders to implement this decision the officer retains troop confidence, unit cohesion, and momentum. He can then adjust things in response to the results. If he loses troop confidence, unit cohesion and momentum, he can make all the right decisions he wants later on, but there will be no ability to execute by then.

You can be wrong, but you have to make a call.

Anyway, by doing the radical 180 degree turn in midflight we made a bold move, betting everything on the new direction. Nothing wrong with that, but we should have been more aware that we were jettisoning a lot of the goodwill and momentum that we had up to this point along with the previous branding. Basically we were starting again from scratch and we had to work hard to build things up again - not rely on the existing momentum to carry us through.

The idea that you are starting a new place from scratch leads to a different internal conception, which subtly influences everything that you do. It leads you to thinking about process and steps, elements of change leadership, rather than processes and systems, which are more indicative of management of a status quo.

I don’t disagree with the idea that I expressed in March in “Reinventing the Wheel by Drinking Kool Aid“: “My conclusion is that the best way to convert an existing Loft center to Atma Yoga is to just do it“.

I would just add this addendum:

As General Douglas MacArthur, whose Pacific Headquarters, now a museum, is a block away from Atma Yoga, said: “It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it.”

Learning from our experience won’t hurt either.

Now let me start to run over some of the other things that went wrong, and what discovered through them. You see we made a number of small errors that cumulatively had a big effect.

First of all, we spent some money to get new tables and more of them. These tables were then set up in a separate dining area that we have at the new space. Each table is quite small and has four chairs around it.

This robbed a lot of momentum. We didn’t realize it, but the shared dining experience is a big part of the Loft / Atma Yoga experience. I mean, I keep repeating that “looking at the face of another human being while you eat is the most basic community experience”, but somehow that didn’t translate into our operational implementation.

This is really, really important. People are so isolated and alienated today, divided up and easily conquered and manipulated by economic forces. Have a look at this:

Over the last 100 years the average size of a household has halved. At the same time people’s habits have changed. People now eat their dinner frequently sitting in front of a television or DVD. Other statistics reveal that the average number of inhabitants in the metropolitan areas is significantly lower than in rural areas, so these national results are skewed toward the low end of the scale for cities.

People do not have the extended family experience. To sit with a number of people and have that communal experience is important. Seems obvious, but because of being overloaded with details and not being conscious and intentional about what we were doing, we unintentionally created a situation of division and isolation, putting people at tables with only three other people.

Upon realizing this we changed the seating arrangements to put six people in a circle, around two tables.

This was the first thing we implemented, but it wasn’t the first thing that we noticed. The first thing we noticed was the bain marie. We slavishly thought that getting a bain maire was the way to go. After all, didn’t we have one in Auckland and in Wellington? Isn’t that part of the “Loft success formula”?

Not at all. What we initially perceived as a limitation, not having a bain marie, had actually been an opportunity for us to stumble upon a significant discovery.

Let me tell it as we realized it. First of all, when we put the new bain marie (thank the Lord that we rented one and didn’t buy one!) we noticed that it changed the mood somehow. It made it more formal, it put up a barrier and created “us” and “them”.

We got rid of it, and continued to serve the plates in the kitchen and bring them out. Then we discovered something else. What had arisen as a spontaneous response to the burgeoning numbers at the Loft and our lack of staffing, the guests helping to carry the plates and serve, was actually a significant part of the Loft experience. It’s the experience of participating and contributing.

By now serving the people - we had increased our staffing level - even without a bain marie, we were robbing them of this opportunity to participate and contribute, essential elements of authentic community.

Immediately we bought some pitchers and put them on the tables, so that people can take control of the situation. Our motto is “we make it easy”. We want to make it easy for people to experience the nectar of serving one another. After all, it’s your place, so make yourself at home!

We also reduced our staffing level, and fixed on a core team who take full responsibility and ownership for the services. Community needs continuity - it needs consistency.

We had unconsciously raised barriers to participation.

The model that we have always used to create a clean environment is one of “guests” and “staff”. There are no “devotees” and “non-devotees” at Atma Yoga, thank you very much. Check that at the door.

What we did is add more people to our “staff” at Atma Yoga from the expanded team that we have. This was a mistake.

I am always a “guest” when I go to Atma Yoga, except when I’m teaching a class. Otherwise I basically model the guest role. I help out voluntarily when it’s needed just like other guests, otherwise I leave things to the professionals.

What we unconsciously and unintentionally (that’s a pretty heavy admission to make) did is an instructive illustration of the difference between position and influence. We put people into “positions” in Atma Yoga that did not relate to their influence.

We put a receptionist on the door. We thought that we would be better able to attend to people and give them personal attention, and after all, isn’t that what we did at Gaura Yoga? What happened in practice is that someone would come back after not coming for a few weeks, and the receptionist would say: “Is this your first time?”

Imagine it, the guy has been coming for the past year, and is an integral member of the community. He says: “No, but it looks like it’s yours!”

Things have suddenly become wierd.

So we nuked that. That person who was the receptionist is fired. They are now a guest like everyone else. If we have an urgent need for someone to help out on the door we’ll call out for a volunteer on the spot, but “appointing” someone creates an artificial distortion in the otherwise natural relationships between people. Let people negotiate their relationships based on real personal interaction. That’s why we dismantle the mental construct of “devotee” and “non-devotee” in our centers.

We also need to minimize the mentality of “guest” and “staff”. Staff has to be kept to a minimum, and everyone else has to disperse into the community. Lower the barriers to participation.

You’ve come to the right place to find out about Lord Vader. Last year I discussed the value of failure in an article entitled “Leadership Lessons from Darth Vader“. Darth Vader is the man, and he has some valuable lessons to teach us. It’s especially relevant to remember now that we’re talking about initial lessons from Atma Yoga.

We are going to absorb the Star Wars trilogy into the Vedic tradition, along with Lord of the Rings, and give them a Vaisnava conclusion. Just watch over the next few generations, if you’re sticking around for them.

If you read the transcripts, or listen to the Contemporary Urban Preaching Seminars by His Holiness Devamrita Swami, you may fall under the misconception that the information contained in those seminars simply fell from the sky fully formed, or was revealed in a mystical revelation. Of course, the information was revealed in a mystical revelation, but it was done in a process that took some time.

I know because I was there for a reasonable portion of that time and saw it happen. We didn’t work out of a play book, following the numbers. You may have heard of famous discoveries that were made by accident - a scientist is doing one thing and she puts one of her failed experiments to the side. A week later she notices something happening with that experiment and makes a discovery completely unrelated to the original experiment. Well, a lot of things were like that. We did things using our intelligence to the max, thinking about how to do things, what the effects were, and observing the situation, and being open to Krishna’s hand. In this way a lot of things developed organically.

I think understanding that this is the process is important. If you listen to the CUP seminars and get the idea that it is a playbook that you can copy 1,2,3… you may not have much success. Every situation is different. The environmental conditions are different, the people are different, your team is different. So you have to adopt the same process that was used to develop successful Loft centers in other places, rather than simply imitating them. This is why I have a strong desire to make a presentation of the CUP seminars interweaved with the stories behind the observations and developments. This will help to communicate the essential conceptual orientation and approach that is needed. Implementation of principles is what is needed, not imitation of practices.

Now, on to the latest discoveries. I’m just going to set up the situation in this post, then talk about the response in the next one.

We were quite surprised with how things went in Brisbane.

When the Loft in Newmarket was opened, and later on the Loft in Wellington, now Gaura Yoga, we had a reasonable capitalization, and were able to fund the construction and outfitting of a facility.

In Brisbane we started with what we had in our pockets after we got back from three years in South America, which wasn’t a whole lot.

Point 1: Don’t wait to get money to preach.

Using a bit of the good old Aussie ingenuity we cobbled together whatever we could. We extended into renting a small space next to Govindas, which entailed exposing ourselves to risk, and also meant a significant commitment of our resources to preaching. Call it a sacrifice if you will.

Point 2: No risk, no reward. Sacrifice is the secret sauce.

One of the things that we learned from starting out this way is that the active ingredients of the whole operation are independent of the money. As one preacher in a megachurch in the States put it: “Hey, we can spend thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars on our productions, but people can go around the corner and experience something that was produced in Hollywood for hundreds of millions of dollars. We have to be offering people something substantially different from, and better than that.”

We opened a place that had a terrible decor. We put in a heck of a lot of effort to make it look as good as we could, and people responded to the spirit of that. Professional, slickly produced productions don’t connect with the heart as much as authentic, “real” ones do. Because we put our heart into making the place it was heartfelt.

We didn’t have any money for tables, so we borrowed some rickety old ones from the shed out the back of the temple, propped them up with cardboard to stabilize them, and draped clothes over them.

A few people would come for a yoga class, and we would all sit together afterwards with the tables joined together and chat over dinner. We didn’t have a bain marie or anything like that. Acyuta and Channell would cook and would bring in the plates already served to give to the guests. We would leave a pitcher of drink on the table, and we would serve ourselves and each other.

As more people began to come the table started to fill up. There were three or four tables joined together into a long table, seating 10 or 12 people. Soon we had to start bringing in extra tables and chairs from the restaurant. We would have to do this after the class, because there was no room for them during the class. One of us would start bringing them in, and guests would spring in and help us out. It was taking Acyuta and Channell so long to bring plates over that guests started pitching in and carrying the plates over.

We thought to ourselves: “We need to get a bigger place.”

There were a number of limitations that we were facing with that facility. There was nowhere to hold discussions. Every Friday we would carry couches out of the small storage room and convert the yoga space into a discussion lounge. With poor lighting, bad ventilation and a huge empty space surrounding it, the discussion lounge was hardly ideal. Carrying the couches in and out every week was a lot of work as well, and we felt that with all that effort we were not able to create a nice atmosphere. Speakers would have to deal with the clashing of dishes from the Govinda’s restaurant kitchen as we couldn’t close the door because of the heat. The vast space swallowed up the voices of people trying to discuss.

We went to New Zealand to the Taupo Retreat, and spent some time at the Auckland Loft. We were all sitting around in the discussion room there when we suddenly said: “Hey, have you seen anyone sitting around like this at the Loft in Brisbane?” “No way! That place is terrible”

Lunch ti