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This could have been written 100 or more years ago and it would have been just as relevant. The fact is we’ve earned what is going on within us and around us.

You’ve allowed yourself to get caught up in politics, money, name, fame, power or whatever is your addiction. You have the lethal ignorance and ego that prohibits you to see reality and has you believing that the “side” you’re on will change the world and the other side will harm it. All the while blissfully unaware that having a “side” is what’s hurting the world, and yet no side can save it.

You’ve given your power to political parties, blind faith or checked out completely. Your fear has you hiding behind a belief system which was founded by the same fear, fed by it and then that system which you keep feeding has made rules and regulations that take over whatever control you feel you have left.

You can’t see they want to divide us, to weaken us more, and they have done that. “If you vote for Trump, you can’t be my friend anymore.” “If you’re a liberal, don’t speak to me.” “If you are anything my fear and ignorance don’t like or don’t understand, fuck off!”

How did it get this way? The fall of the human intellect…

The mass of people think independently less and less, question less and less, while the few take advantage of thoughtless folks. Our therapists are asleep. Our yoga teachers are good business people, marketers at best, and haven’t a clue. In fact all personal help basically falls under the category of “selling quick fixes, feeling good and/or making money”. You pine for it, because you don’t want to do the work. Your attachments/addictions keep you from breaking free and wishing, hoping and/or praying that someone or something aside from you will make your life the way you want it. Those that know this prey on you, feed on you and you are actually encouraging them to do so. Quick fixes don’t exist! Feeling good is overrated and doesn’t have a thing to do with transforming oneself. In fact feeling good is the number one impediment when it comes to personal growth! And per making money? Find me one person who claims money bought them friendship, a partner, a loving family, self love, joy…

Sounds bleak and it is! Even when you finally acknowledge that your head is so far up your ass that you can’t see, hear or function properly, you’d be hard pressed to find someone whose head isn’t in the same place.

The solution is simple. But the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do, and you won’t do it. You must tune out the world; that means your job, family, friends, all of it for as long as it takes. You must find a teacher and teachings, a program, a system, a blueprint, if you will, to live by. Next, you have to wrap your whole life around it. Every person, place, and thing must be consistent with this “way” of living. There is no room for the slightest deviance. If there is, you will suffer immensely and so will the people around you.

You must have daily practices, processes and systems in place! Safety nets are needed all around, for when you fuck this up and you will; that is, if (which is highly unlikely) you ever do this for yourself.

After a while, and I mean years, and you are living a different life than the helpless ignoramuses around you. Folks will want to be close to you. They will ask you questions. They will want your council. They will want to emulate your lifestyle and soak it up under your sun.

You will be like the lake. All that come to it can use it for whatever they want and it will remain the same. You will simply be. They can shit on you, piss in you, swim, float, or feed from you and you will simply be “the source” of it all.

If you do one tenth of this, in your world, you will no longer be in “this” world of chaos, violence, oppression, and neither will those who stand with you.

That’s the change! That’s the life! That’s the world you can create! Instead you will post away spewing your fear, stupidity, and selfishness mistaking it for brilliance (humiliating, if you ever wake up) and all the while doing everything possible to hide your misery.

There’s another way folks. Trump The Stump nor Biden Whose Hiden, can’t give it to you, nor take it away.

Stand up for yourself, stand up for human greatness, or at the least sit down and shut the fuck up!

Peace,
EP

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Eric Paskel & Rina Jakubowicz on Feb 13, 2015

india flowers

As we sit here on a bus in India on our way to hear a lecture about “When is Enough Enough?” from our teacher Swami A. Parthasarathy, we reflect how we have gotten to this place together.

 

Two strangers who happen to be in the same elevator at a Yoga Journal Conference in Hollywood, Florida over a year ago have now joined together in their own spiritual journeys to walk alongside one another.

Part of this “spiritual” walk includes our first trip to India together, which we booked during the dates of February 1 to 15. Neither one of us thought that the trip would fall during Valentine’s Day. We placed our emphasis on a common, higher ideal for ourselves; we knew we needed to see our guru and the time was now.

When we were asked by elephant journal to write our first joint article about what we were doing for Valentine’s Day we chuckled because Valentine’s Day isn’t important to us but we knew we had to do it; not for PR but for RP (Right Purpose). We hope that after reading this, you may have a difference outlook as to what this holiday means to you.

Valentine’s Day can be important, not necessarily to exchange dinners, jewelry, flowers or the like, but to remind ourselves what love is and what it means to give it.

The philosophy of Vedanta explains that true love is neither preferential nor personal; it’s selfless and universal. According to the teachings, when we love correctly, we assess and accept ourselves along with others. This allows us to begin to see ourselves in all creatures, which is called identification. Therefore, our Valentine’s Day gift to each other is making ourselves better people every day, while learning how to love with these definitions in mind and all the while respecting each other’s struggles and natural ways.

These Vedanta teachings are what have helped us create our short yet powerful relationship together. Without them, we wouldn’t have made it thus far.

On this Valentine’s Day, we are at an ashram, sleeping in separate beds in a small room, waking up at 5:00 a.m. to study, wearing the same uniforms, eating the same foods and unable to display public forms of affection due to respecting the Indian customs.

To us, that makes every day romantic, sexy, and a beautiful expression of love because we are engaged not to each other but to discovering something more profound…our true Self.

Peace,

EP

 

Authors: Eric Paskel & Rina Jakubowicz

Editor: Cat Beekmans

Photos: Dennis Jarvis/Flickr  

Rachel Thompson/rachelthompsonphotography.com