Thanks everyone for your encouragement and comments.

Please visit my new blog at www.atmayogi.com when you get a chance. I’ll leave this site up with all its resources. I can’t maintain two blogs effectively, so I will be concentrating my energy on atmayogi.com and merging into it my livejournal blog (jwulf.livejournal.com).

Initially the resources on atmayogi will be quite small, but they will grow with time. I will try to keep the main page light so that it loads fast.

Some, but not all, posts from atmayogi.com will feed into ISKCON News.Net and some, but not all, will feed into Fedora People.

Thank you for your support.

Today is the 2nd anniversary of this blog.

Today in history:

2004

We’d been in Australia for about six months.

Let the blogging begin

This blog is launched with the identity “The Virtual Pen of Sita-pati das” and the mission statement: “What I’m doing - What I’m thinking”

Welcome to my new blog. I will keep this blog up to date with information about what I am doing, for those who are interested in that, and also what I am thinking, for those who are interested in that.

Searching for a Home

We were looking for a new house. We found one a few days later and Acyuta Bhava moved in with us.

Photo of Prahlad

A photo of Prahlad on the lawn outside our first place of residence in Brisbane, on the corner near the temple. Prahlad is now four.

Passed my Exam

I’d recently started work at Red Hat and gained my Red Hat Certified Technician qualification. Two years to the day later, I started in a new position in Red Hat, in Engineering Content Services as a writer, with a Red Hat Certified Engineer cert under my belt.

2005

New Design at the Virtual Pen

I changed the design of the Virtual Pen to something similar to the one we have now, albeit with a different name.

ISKCON News.Net

The mission of ISKCON News.Net is to generate forward momentum in fulfilling Srila Prabhupadas objectives for ISKCON through information sharing. The vision is “more nectar than you can drink”. I’m happy with the way that it has evolved since its inception.

Ph.D. shortcourse in Leadership

A reader contributed article on leadership.

2006

Currently executing on The Plan

In his article Editing the Unchangeable Truth, H.H. Jayadvaita Swami describes a system under development now that is

a searchable hypertext library, perhaps accessible on the internet, that would enable a researcher who selects a particular verse or passage to view the relevant pages of the original and revised manuscripts, any editorial notes, the first and later editions, the Sanskrit or Bengali commentaries Srila Prabhupada consulted, and so on.

Also included for each title would be a production history, naming the original editors, typesetters, proofreaders, layout people, and other production people, telling where the prepress work was done, giving the size of the first print run, and telling who were the printers and binders for the original edition.

How cool is that?

Having vedabase.net online is great. Having access to this additional historical information will be nectar.

According to the Gaudiya Vaisnava history, Lord Gautama Buddha, who appeared sometime around 500 BC, was a saktyavesa-avatara, or an empowered incarnation of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The purpose of his incarnation was to teach the people upa-dharma, or sub-religious principles.

At the time of his appearance the then current implementation of the Vedic principles had become degraded. It is the nature of this world that everything tends toward decay and disorder. An original vital principle becomes implemented in a specific practice in particular environmental circumstances. This then becomes a doctrine that is preserved for its own sake as the original principles is forgotten.

As an example, there was once a Guru who spoke on the scriptures in the evening. He had a pet cat, which would run and play amongst the crowd while he was speaking. In order to curtail this, he would tie the cat to a tree. After some time that Guru left his body. His disciples continued to speak from the scriptures in that place, and they would tie the cat to the tree. After some more time, the cat left its body. Then they procured another cat and tied that to the tree. After four successive generations, one of the members of that disciplic succession wrote an essay on the venerable tradition of their sect of tying a cat to a tree during scriptural discourses.

That’s simply the nature of this world. Traditions require reformation and renovation, and our own spiritual practice requires it from year to year, and even day to day. We forget about the essence, about why we’re doing things, and start to just go through the motions.

At the time of the appearance of Buddha, the people had become very degraded. In the Vedic system structures are created that allow people to gradually advance from where they are at. Therefore progressive concessionary arrangements and positions were made for meat-eating. These were abused, however, just as marriage, the progressive concessionary position for sex desire, has become abused in the modern age. Therefore Lord Buddha appeared to preach ahimsa, or non-violence, in order to readjust the situation.

So far, so good, standard history as we know it. Now comes the interesting part - how did Buddha manage to get traction with his preaching? If people were into meat-eating, and he came along opposing that, why did people follow him?

The reason is that not only was there widespread killing of animals going on, but the Brahamanas were oppressing and exploiting the people, using the Vedic scriptures as their justification. We often hear that Lord Buddha preached “throw out the Vedic system” because people were killing too many animals on the basis of the Vedas, but what he preached, and what the people responded to was: “throw out the Vedic system because it is being used to oppress you”, and the people said: “Yes!”

He was able to encourage them to a non-violent lifestyle that was aligned with the real spirit of Vedic human civilization, while throwing out the pseudo-system that justified itself on external adherence to Vedic teaching.

When Sripada Sankaracarya forced Buddhism out of India in the 9th century AD, we usually think that he forcefully preached the doctrine of the Vedas with a nirvisesa (impersonalist) conclusion that resembled the sunyavada doctrine evolved in Buddhism. That is what he did, but how he did it, is that he got the support of the now weakened and irrelevant Brahmana class by basing his preaching on the Vedic scriptures, and he got the support of the people by preaching that one can become a brahmana no matter what his family background, if he is qualified to act as one (guna-karma vibhagasah).

(Sripada Sankaracarya took sannyasa at the age of 8, and left his body at the age of 33, by the way.)

Again, by the time of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the situation had deteriorated to one of debauchery in the name of Vedic injunctions, and caste brahmanism. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, while preaching His divine message of Love of God, reached out to and connected with, validated, and empowered socially excluded and marginalized groups, as exemplified in his relationship with Haridasa Thakura, born in a Muslim family and considered “untouchable” by the standards of orthodox Hindus of the day.

Srila Bhaktivinode Thakura, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, and Srila Prabhupada did the same thing, with Srila Prabhupada going outside India and for the first time demonstrating on a large scale that non-Hindus (people outside the geographical boundaries of India) can apply the Vedic principles, and that a Vedic framework can adapt to their environment.

So we can see that these personalities appear when there is a large excluded sector and their preaching gains popular momentum amongst the disenfranchised sectors of society. One of the symptoms of disturbance in the correct social order is when one sector of society unnaturally gains dominance and utilizes the social structure to oppress the other sectors.

As people begin to wake up to the reality of global warming and climate change, and realize that it is not possible to stop it without fundamentally altering the nature of power in society we will see things polarize more and more.

The other day I got a letter from the Australian Conservation Fund asking me for a donation to help fight climate change.

The thing is that climate change is the natural consequence of the current economic structure of the world, which is the result of the dominance of the vaisya mentality - seeing the world as a global marketplace. The only way to halt climate change is to change the structure of society. Most people are comfortably numb these days, but they are beginning to wake up to the impending disaster. After some time their consciousness will rise sufficiently, and their actions to stop the symptoms will lead them close enough to the root causes that they will realize what is going on.

And at that time, we will be ready.

This is an article by Marcus Buckingham, best selling author and thought leader.

What sets a great boss apart from an average boss? Research on this is rife with provocative writing about the qualities of managers and leaders and whether the two differ, but little has been said about what happens in the thousands of daily interactions and decisions that allows managers to get the best out of their people and win their devotion. What do great managers actually do?

In our research, beginning with a survey of 80,000 managers conducted by the Gallup Organization and continuing during the past two years with in-depth studies of a few top performers, we’ve found that while there are as many styles of management as there are managers, there is one quality that sets the best managers apart from the rest: they discover what is unique about each person and then capitalise on it. Average managers play draughts, if you like, while great managers play chess.

What does the chess game look like in action? When I visited Michelle Miller, the manager who opened Walgreens’ 4,000th store, I found the wall of her back office papered with work schedules. Miller’s store in Redondo Beach, California, employs people with sharply different skills and potentially disruptive differences in personality. A critical part of her job is to put people into roles and shifts that will allow them to shine - and to avoid putting clashing personalities together. At the same time, she needs to find ways for individuals to grow.

A manager’s approach to capitalising on differences can vary from place to place but it is a tremendously powerful tool that leads to three outcomes. First, it saves management time; second, it makes each person more accountable; and third, it builds a stronger sense of team because it creates inter-dependency. It helps people appreciate one another’s particular skills and learn that their co-workers can fill in where they are lacking.

When you capitalise on what is unique about each person, you introduce a healthy degree of disruption into the workplace. You shuffle existing hierarchies, existing assumptions about who is allowed to do what, and existing beliefs about where the true expertise in a company lies. These questions will challenge the orthodoxies of companies like Walgreens and help them become more inquisitive, more intelligent, more vital and, despite their size, more able to duck and weave into the future. At some point, however, managers need to rein in their inquisitiveness, gather up what they know about a person, and put the employee’s idiosyncrasies to use. To that end, there are three things you must know about someone to manage them well: their strengths, the triggers that activate those strengths, and how they learn.

Great managers spend a good deal of time outside the office walking around, watching each person’s reactions to events, listening, and taking mental notes about what each individual is drawn to and what each person struggles with. There’s no substitute for this kind of observation, but you can obtain a lot of information about a person by asking a few simple, open-ended questions and listening carefully to the answers. Two queries in particular have proven most revealing when it comes to identifying strengths and weaknesses.

To identify a person’s strengths, first ask: “What was the best day at work you’ve had in the past three months?” What were they doing and why did they enjoy it so much? Remember: a strength is not merely something you are good at. It might be just a predilection, something you find so intrinsically satisfying that you look forward to doing it again and again and getting better at it over time.

To identify a person’s weaknesses, just invert the question: “What was the worst day you’ve had at work in the past three months?” Probe for details about what they were doing and why it grated on them so much. You might be quite competent at a weakness but it drains you of energy, you never look forward to doing it and when you do do it, all you can think about is stopping.

Although you’re keeping an eye out for both strengths and weaknesses, your focus should be on an employee’s strengths. Conventional wisdom holds that self-awareness is a good thing and that it’s the job of the manager to identify weaknesses and create a plan for overcoming them. But research by Albert Bandura, the father of social learning theory, has shown that self-assurance (labelled “self-efficacy” by cognitive psychologists), not self-awareness, is the strongest predictor of a person’s ability to set high goals, to persist in the face of obstacles, to bounce back when reversals occur, and, ultimately, to achieve the goals they set. By contrast, self-awareness has not been shown to be a predictor of any of these outcomes, and in some cases, it appears to retard them.

Always remember that great managing is about release, not transformation. It’s about constantly tweaking your environment so that the unique contribution, the unique needs, and the unique style of each employee can be given free rein. Your success as a manager will depend almost entirely on your ability to do this.

Don’t drink water from the bathroom - it leads to madness.

You should be able to find this in the Vedabase. I read it a number of years ago either in a letter or a conversation - I think a letter. It’s one of those things that sticks without the reference being remembered.

It means, as Gandhi said, “to become the change that we wish to see in the world”.

Then, if others are inspired to follow our example, we are leaders. The more we can enthuse and empower those who choose to follow our example, the more effective we are as leaders.

You are a leader if people choose to follow you. You are not a leader because of a title or a position.

You can substitute preacher for leader without any further changes. They are the same thing. You cannot force people to follow you, nor can you force them to accept your message. Leadership and Preaching are about inducing transformation - leading people to a better future.

As His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami explained, leadership begins from the inside-out. The person who will be a leader, who would be a preacher, is a leader in self transformation. When other people are inspired by their example and follow it, they are called a leader.

There are many misconceptions about leadership. Lately I have been reading some articles which are critical of the composition of “the leadership” of certain organizations. “The Leadership” are whoever you are following. You decide who that is. Leadership is a quality imbued on people by the fact that people follow them, formal positions and titles aside. Complaining about “the leadership” actually represents disempowering yourself by trying to shift responsibility for your destiny to others, or criticism of others who are choosing to follow someone, for whatever reasons they are doing that.

As Srila Prabhupada explained in The Light of the Bhagavat, and Srila Bhakti Tirtha Swami expanded on in Leadership for an Age of Higher Consciousness, the people are responsible for their leadership. Who you choose to follow is up to you. Who you elect as your representative government is up to you. The caliber of the people that you have to choose from is up to you. If you don’t like something, then become the change you wish to see in the world.

That is Leadership.

Next Monday is Queens Birthday weekend, so we have to go to this morning’s lead practice class.

No Austerity - No Mystic Siddhi.

What’s mystic siddhi, or mystic power? It means that when you do something that might otherwise be considered difficult it is effortless.

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.

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.

I sent this letter this morning.

Dear Sir,

It is with great concern that I read recent reports of events transpiring in your good country in the province of Almaty.

My first contact with Kazakhstan, as with many of us in the West, was through the personality of Borat, the alter ego of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

Your government spent a lot of time, money, and effort to counteract the perception that he created that Kazakhstan is a backward nation filled with bigoted, primitive people and with a repressive ruling regime. I, and many others like me in Australia and around the world, took note of your government’s communication and its intention. The 4 page ad campaign that you ran in the New York Times last year went some way towards correcting the perceptions created by Mr Baron Cohen’s show, but the recent events in Almaty threaten to undo all this public relations work.

Forum 18 (www.forum18.org) and ISKCON News.net (www.iskconnews.net) are both filled at the moment with news of the treatment of the Hare Krishna devotees in Almaty. If this continues it threatens to ignite a grassroots movement of international awareness and support for them. The international Hare Krishna community mounted an effective campaign of public awareness during the Soviet regime of Mikhail Gorbachev that was very damaging to the public perception of his government’s stance on human rights.

I implore you to communicate to your government that this action by local authorities threatens the recent good work that you have done in promoting your country internationally as a modern nation with a commitment to the modern ideals of democracy, tolerance, and freedom.

Over and above the publicity implications, I think this must be due to some mistake or oversight, as it is not at all consonant with the presentation that we have received on Kazakhstan’s values and commitment to the values of the international community.

with warm regards,
a well-wisher of Kazakhstan,
Joshua J Wulf
Engineer
Brisbane, Australia

I’ve added a Google Adsense banner to this page. I’m interested to see what ads it will choose as being relevant to the content that I post here. I’ll be keeping an eye on that to get an idea of Google’s algorithm for choosing relevant ad content, and also to get some kind of sense of the topic of this blog over time (I just think about each post as I make it).

I can block ads that I don’t want to appear on the site. I’ll watch it for a while and see if it produces ad results that I think are a useful service to readers.

Otherwise after some time I’ll take it off. It’s a little common, but if it can add value and useful content, then it’s all good!

Unless of course it starts generating megabucks, in which case I’ll give up the day job and become a professional blogger.

Our friend Marisol Da Silva came and took photos of the residents of the Red Hill Ashram for her photography class. She had an assignment where she needed to take photos of 10 people who share the same values. So she photographed us. Mantra, Rasika, and Zoe weren’t there at the time, so there are no portraits of them.

Wait for the page to finish loading completely and click on the thumbnails to be able to view these photos using the new Lightbox JS 2 plugin. (Please note that this will only work if you’re viewing them at www.urbanmissionary.info). You can also view these photos at higher resolutions in the photo gallery.

We’re currently in the market for an additional ashram. Here is the specification:

• 5-6 bedrooms
• 2 bathrooms
• Timber floors
• Gas
• Good kitchen
• Oven
• Easy to maintain yard
• Walking distance from the existing Red Hill facility, on the city side
• Rent up to $400/wk

This is in Brisbane, Australia. If you know of this place, please drop me a line.

Speaking of what’s new - Govinda’s Gifts just opened in the old Loft space next to Govinda’s Restaurant.

Govinda’s Gifts is a shop specializing in articles from India. The other purveyors of this type of merchandise in inner-city Brisbane, Scarab, are having their closing out sale right now. Among other things, as one of our neighbours at Atma Yoga they will be affected by the road works that are soon to begin that will turn our section of Albert St into part of the Queen St mall - r0ck! Great for us, but not so good for them - they’re below ground, where a lot of the tunneling work to get the buses under King George Square will take place.

So with Scarab closing down, it’s a perfect time to open Govinda’s Gifts.

Asi-kunda dd, disciple of HH Indradyumna Swami, has been moving things along there in her high-energy style, and Govinda’s Gifts is now up and running.

I’ll have some photos hopefully by next week.

I’m just cleaning out my desk, as I’m leaving my job, and I found some notes that I wrote around this time last year. Here is an excerpt:

Process versus Product

Examples:

Loft as product

• Get this type of place, do these types of programs in this way

Loft as process

• Get the right people, give them the right situation and direction, and let them do their thing.

Product is static and specific.
Process is dynamic and adaptable.

Product - what - imitation
Process - how - following

Process - enable Massively Parallel Development

• Generate reusable components and resources
• Allow resource modification and recontribution
• Enable multidirectional communication
• Encourage information sharing
• Maintain common “codebase”

Enable Infinite Scalability

• Empower the individual - distribute power
• Decentralize responsibility (avoid bottlenecks)
• Create resource along with requirement (0 net cost)

This is an announcement for residents of the Red Hill Ashram and guests.

The Internet connection at Red Hill is now active from 8 am - 9 pm 7 days a week. Between the hours of 9 pm and 8 am (in other words, at night) the Internet connection is not functional.

Thank you.

Have a look at atmayoga.com.au.

Talk to you about it later - gotta run to do the Sunday Feast now…

I’m on a training course at the moment, for the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) Certification. The course is supposed to take 5 days, but we’re cramming it into one and a half days, and then sitting the six hour examination tomorrow. My head feels like it will explode. Here’s hoping I can pass.

Today Param, Acyuta, and Elliot chose some furniture for the Atma Yoga discussion space from local Oriental furniture merchants Samsara. They have a scheme where you can pay it off over 12 months, so I was called in at the last minute to sign on the dotted line. They’ll be delivering that stuff tomorrow, so it will be there in time for the opening. There was also a wonderful stone fountain there that I would like to get. I’m pretty easy on most of the “interior decorating” stuff, but one thing that I do have a solid preference for is a water foutain in the place.

Yesterday’s post on the Kool Aid was a bit passionate ( ). My apologies to Madhava Ghosh Prabhu for unintended cultural misunderstanding, and of course to my god brother Ekendra for triggering the “deviant cult leader on the loose!” alarm yet again.

Check out the cartoons at the end of this post for some light entertainment. There are a whole lot of funny ones at Church Cartoons. I thought these two in particular were quite appropriate.

Anyway, as promised, here is something about the special characteristics (which would have been written “superiority” if this was another Sita-pati rhetoric post, but enough controversy for one week) of Atma Yoga (the system).

Nalakuvara left a comment where he said: “Atma Yoga is about presence, believability, and showmanship”.

It’s not just about that, but that is a part of it. It’s about a credible presentation, or as I like to refer to it: “contextualization”.

Imagine this: you are a first time visitor to the Sunday Feast. You have no idea what the thing is all about. “What will happen? What will they do? How long will it go for?”

All these questions are running through your head.

Then the program begins, and you are thinking: “What are they doing? How long will this go on for?”

Now imagine that someone comes out at the beginning and says: “Welcome to the Hare Krishna Sunday Feast. Here is what we are going to do. First this, then this, then this, then dinner”.

They then introduce and explain each element of the program. “Now we are going to do X. It’s origins are Y and the significance of it is Z”. You get a guide, who goes through the program with you and creates a consistent experience, introducing each element and contextualizing it - putting it into a context for you, in a way that helps you assimilate it.

Atma Yoga does this across the yoga experience. It has a consistent introduction and outro, which weave together to create a consistent experience, and beyond that, a consistent story.

Really what all these activities that we call preaching or evangelism or communication or presentation are, is story telling. We’re telling a story. Atmananda das has made the yoga part of a coherent story that is magical and charming, and wholly consistent with the philosophy of Krishna Consciousness.

He has created elements of communication and ritual, such as the intro and outro of the class, that weave together, and can be easily utilized by all the teachers. It gives the guests a coherent experience, and a consistent experience. Both coherency and consistency lead to increased comfort and increased assimilation. Redundancy leads to greater comprehension.

The elements of the system that he has so far created are good and sound, as are elements of existing individual presentations in different places. The fact that it is a system that can be reused and improved is what makes it unique.