Ashland Commons is another place you can stay during the retreat. It’s a really cool hostel close to downtown and with a big kitchen you can use. .https://ashlandcommons.com/
The town of Ashland has tons of organic cafes and there is a great food co-opwith a huge prepared food baras well.
Ashland also has a really fun downtown which is right next to Lithia Park where you can zen walk in nature near the creek for miles!
If you have any questions or want to sign up : email motherlight108@gmail.com
$216 retreat tuition. (does not include food or accommodations but some exceptions may apply)
$108 deposit to reserve your spot.
💛a list of places to stay, camp, eat and so will be provided for those who sign up.
I hope to see you soon!
RAMRAM, Jai Ma! Hanuman lives! Om Mani Padme Hum 💛
life can be really hard. we go through things that aren’t so easy to get over or we ourselves have a chronic condition- physical health, mental health or otherwise. Realizing you’re going to need to make an inner declaration- when it’s either me or this thing I struggle with- who will it be?
Did I come this far to lose my autonomy, give up on myself now?
Is surrender really throwing in the towel or is this a challenge to my ability to maneuver and realign myself so that I can not be taken down but transformed into a bigger, brighter more powerful version of me?
No direction. Feels like stuck in a pattern or a hang up.
Yoga without asana is a thing, it’s the real thing. The asanas are a tool for grounding and connecting and practicing non reactivity but the so called yoga doesn’t end there bc truly, that’s not it.
Everything I talk about is the subtle practice the challenges the reality of what becoming a complete person, not a western person practicing hinduism but a real person practicing the authenticity of themselves- and it’s not easy as there’s no ground in this place – and everyone wants what’s obvious and marketable but we are westerners and learning sanskrit words etc does not make you adept at yoga – nothing external does – not flexibility/ not any of it.
motherlight yoga is the way I have made sense of it all based on my experience, knowledge and practical wisdom. we do need a baseline and that’s for each person to discover. within that process of that very personal self discovery there are basic ancient truths to work with. the truth of sound moving light (nada yoga) the truth of a secret fire at the base of our spines being the light of creation. (kundalini yoga) and the truth that we ourselves are the deity we are worshipping (bhakti yoga)
so there is light, love, music and silence that form creation. we are expressions of that creativity and motherlight yoga intends to refine that truth from the inside out.
because there is something in the darkness that is feeding us the light.
What matters is that you understand the urgency of the situation.
Every day we wake up, born again but alas, still blurry…still doing what we are programmed and commanded to do- by our families, jobs, conditionings, karma…endless ways we stay in the comfortable prison box.
But I say get up. In the dark early morning – and face the shock that ultimately is inescapable anyway- face it. Die by your own hand. And do it daily.
Face the ice water bath. Get fear out of the way. Command yourself. Reprogram your nervous system.
Personally, I sit submerged under the ice water and do tummo meditation- it’s how the (real) yogis – dissolve the ice around them in the Himalayas – by becoming the flame. I do it because I’m obsessed with death and I’ve been traumatized repeatedly in my life – nothing works like the nonverbal messages we send out subconscious mind- nothing works like getting down to the bare bones of the problem.
We all face the same problem. We forget our power to burn through the lie. The truth lives within us as a flame.
This flame burns in your cauldron. You have to give it a reason to burn more brightly.
It’s you. No one else can do it.
I’ll offer you simple things. Like courage and reminders – of who you really are.
An an inextinguishable flame in a world of (false) warm and comfortable darkness.
But it’s going to take some (real) tapas to shine like that. Sharada Devi
Do you understand how important it is to learn how to die?
After you accomplish that, you enter the in-between where everything churns and if all goes well, you’re born again.
In the big picture that’s the birth and death of the body.
In the immediate picture you need to learn how to do it in life.
This ranges from second to second – to year to year- to chapter after chapter.
Your life should become an interesting, poetic and beautiful book that would inspire anyone who read it to also transform themselves.
Use the past to make now work. Let go of the past that drains you and keeps you entrenched in its habits.
It’s an art to die. It’s the exact same as creating – but in reverse.
So everyone must be an artist in their life, sifting through the past for valuable remnants – and burning the useless for more fuel – for the fire of life-
death must come first in all its fiery anguish. Fear is the battle. The fear has deep and deceptive roots.
This is a game, just like Pac-Man. Don’t stay at the beginning only eating the apple and getting caught.
No, get to the banana and fuck all those little wicked monster ghosts who used to catch us in corners and suffocate us – for their demon food.
No, empty that screen of its dots, it’s demons and it’s it’s fruits.
This is a video of me and Bhagavan Das talking about the twilight…it’s on YouTube also. Putting all the videos we made out to the public again. It wasn’t all for nothing. It never is. Time will tell us where we are and only in facing that reality will time set us free from this illusion. The illusion and the clinging hurt us. To lose one’s identity is a huge calling but the time will come when the final crutch must be kicked away. Nothing is in our hands but faith. Faith in yourself and the one you lost who is also yourself. Love has a way of erasing and filling all at the same time. I hope I can fill my own empty shoes one day. Until then, may my ❤️ be yours.
I’ve been known to stare at the wall for days. No joke. I won’t even change my clothes. There’s no mirror to show me who I am. There is nothing. There’s just me, the ball and these walls.
It’s just so much to ask.
Maybe I should look in the mirror.
That fucking ball. Makes me tired just knowing it’s there.
How did I become this person. I suppose there’s no self, whatever they say – why not? I’m willing to give believing it a shot. It hasn’t worked yet. I really believe that I’m nobody, which keeps the ball asking…”move me, won’t you move me?”
God, daily, it’s all just too much. Nothing doing something – SOMEHOW. ALL THE TIME.
I have two really stupid dogs I’m supposed to love. I can take cute pictures of them – I can edit. But it’s just me showing you what I want you to see.
The truth is, they fight over the same worn out pink bunny all day, every day. They bark like idiots. And they beg for food that they know they’re not going to get. They both have their balls that they covet but are too dumb to play a game of fetch with. It’s painful. They clutch these little rubber balls in their mouths and sit there fixated- staring at each other’s ball for hours. They won’t exercise. One time I drug them around by their leashes with my electric bike. Omg. That was bad.
Then there’s Jingle Bells who sits in the tower watching it all – It’s rare that my cat gives a fuck – but when she does, those shadows better watch out.
And this is it for me. And I shut them out. And when I’m supposed to be meditating, I start writing with no purpose in sight.
Does God really have a “plan” for me?
It’s hard to believe, but like I said, I’m willing to give it a shot.
But my mind. And the ball. And the walls that I watch like they’ll move if I’m still – are REALLY in my F’ing way.
I’m writing a book about my 24/7 twelve year marriage to Bhagavan Das.
The memories are contained in me like how the icloud holds my poetry. In a huge ball in the sky I am imagining.
I need to free up some psychic space and tell a story that nobody on earth can tell but me. There is nobody who knows BD like I do. I literally hold his memories in my own mind. I know all his stories. Even now, wherever he is, he is always with me. Not the personality that pretends I no longer exist but the bigger thing I feel between us that neither of us can destroy.
There have been a lot of movies he’s been in. There have been interviews. But he gave them BD, not himself. He put on the show, it was an act. Nobody cared about the person, he didn’t even have one at a certain point. Deep inside he always feared everyone would find out the real truth about how insecure he really was and “not come to see him anymore.”
All I’m saying is when I left him- I told the truth about why – and a lot of people didn’t like it and didn’t understand my behavior. It did disturb me – all the attempts to censor me, seeing the true colors of people I had known for years – and so I went away for a few years. But I have changed since then – and I just don’t care anymore about people and their opinions- like AT ALL anymore. I have nothing to lose by being myself whether others agree or not – because they obviously don’t know me – and they therefore don’t matter. I did not “destroy” his career. I stopped him from doing more harm to himself and others, especially women. Is it my job, in a way yes it was. In a way, no it isn’t.
Nobody knows what I know. I think it’s ridiculous that people act like some sort of connection to him immediately bestows powers upon them. I was given every transmission possible by BD. He gave me everything he had (both good and bad) It was very real and it came with a price, which I paid. He always said he was so relieved that he met me before he died because he had felt everyone he had ever known in America was a groupie except for me. I’m just telling you what he said. He would cry like a little child and tell me I was his “only friend in the whole world.”
More than once I said to him, “God, you guys are all stuck in 1967 talking about “Be Here Now.” Don’t you think we should instead call it “Be Here Then?”
He laughed every time.
(He always said, “if I don’t laugh, I’ll cry.”)
I really know now what he meant by that. Sharada Devi
at some point in your quest for spiritually and politically correct perfection you’re going to have to say FUCK IT.
Otherwise implosion is immenent, who were you fooling anyway?
If you knew what was really going on (or went on) behind the scenes of all these holy people you’re pumping and striving to become your intact ideas about life and where you might be headed would become a virtual wasteland.
Sometimes, the fucking truth is too fucking much, but too bad. Own it, pump your SELF. FIND IT. Learn how to be your own spiritual quote, not somebody else’s.
It’s not written in stone. It changes. There is NO MAP but for the fire inside you.
If they can they’ll get you in a corner and they’ll poke you, they’ll dissect you, they’ll course correct you, they’ll “pray” for you because of how much not like them you are.
Will you falter? My mantra is FUCK IT. Because you aren’t me. You weren’t married to Bhagavan Das for 12 years. You weren’t with him 24/7 like I was and you didn’t have the REAL truth about the delusions you’re living smeared in your face – about “holier” people than you. People who know the way BETTER than you. And I don’t mean just him, I mean EVERY single one I met. It was shocking – and the exact opposite of the enlightenment I was seeking from them. But I did see and now I do know.
Am I “angry” ?? Oh my, god forbid I be fucking OVER IT. Role playing, charades, parades, screen faces. Stop adjusting, it’s useless.
(No, I’m not angry. That wore off a long time ago.)
I found out I am on my own. I found out what “ignorance is bliss” really means. And I want to say, God made you NOT TO BE LED BY SOMEBODY YOU IMAGINE TO BE BETTER THAN YOU- so that you quote them, stare at their dead picture, act like you are SO POSITIVE any of those stories actually even happened. I used to tell BD “all you guys do is talk about 1967-1971 while preaching “be here now, be here now” don’t you think “be here then” would be better? It’s a joke, a scam. A career angle. I WAS THERE AND I KNOW THINGS THAT I CANT DENY.
Look at the facts, find them out for yourself rather than being too afraid of how bright the light can actually be.
I’m so used to people saying “who do you think you are?” Well I would like to ask you,
“Who do you think you are?” Do you even know? Has push come to shove yet? Did you find out that God is not 100% bright namaste’s?”
God isn’t anything but a gradient of awareness and acceptance. It’s not a contest or an exam of who walks the straightest line with the biggest stick stuck up their ass.
You might not believe me now. But when you’re lucky you’ll find out and you’ll be let out and you’ll be overwhelmed by the possibility that everything you were so sure of might just be wrong. It was just thoughts, fantasies, rules and regulations. Then, you’ll begin to see
“oh my God, it’s me. “
Sharada Devi
yes I am writing that book, “Be Here Then.” stay tuned…
Anyone can feel pain, but not everyone can be freed by that pain. As if suffering were the source of this bird’s salvation, this bird burns and burns and burns its earthy feathers away. For this bird, the sky isn’t high enough. The Phoenix must go through the sun to the other side where other Phoenix’s live.
For this to happen, this bird needs wings made of flames and a body made of ice.
For this to happen this bird must know that death is not the end but the answer to it’s prayers.
This bird has been alone for a very long time. Not knowing, not remembering – just thinking maybe it was a hawk like the hawks who raised it. Because of that the Phoenix, before it’s memory is kindled, is one of the darkest birds known to man.
You may ask how this bird finally remembers and enters the fire of salvation.
When all of its attempts at being a black hawk are exhausted. When failure and rejection become its friends. When it has nothing left but a little spark in its heart to depend upon for light. That is when it goes to where the fire began. And the more pain it feels, the longer it stays. Burning burning burning the lie that was forged from the start of this baby bird cracking out of an egg (that wasn’t even real) Into a world of gray skies and predators.
What the Phoenix was taught by them wasn’t true. This lonely little bird had nothing in this world to remind it of who it was meant to become. To find it’s way back to its home it would need to rise up from ashes created by its very own body and go into the heart of the sun.
Who can do that all alone? Who can kill everything they know with only a vague memory of faith?
The greatest bird ever born from the pit of death and suffering. That is who.
Because this mystical bird had no way to make light in the world of darkness but to offer its body to the hawks and give its heart to God.
For in the end, there was no difference.
And all the other Phoenix’s watched from a land beyond the sun- waiting for their ancient friend to fly through the portal and be free.
Which it eventually did, because that’s how every Phoenix is born- covered in a rainbow of flames.
These thoughts of me I wear like clothes. They are not me.
I could be free from myself, there is no other bondage.
There is no name for God, or me. None of it is real. That’s why everyone’s looking and nobody sees – “God” or “me.”
There is a place here and yet it is secret. Where there is only space, light, love and peace.
Everyone, including who I used to be – is stuck in a parallel dimension searching for the light and yet there is only one way to enter the secret place – which is unique for each being but always the same is required – you can’t do it by being told or making a proclamation – you must be ready – to finally exist and disappear simultaneously.
To end the fantasy of you- who is a prison separating you from nothing – which is what you are. To be refined by the friction of karma and to be capable of processing in a way that changes the identification for good.
I had imagined I was cursed because it’s been so rough. But now I see the light and only because I am finally becoming nothing – and becoming more of a nobody every day.
I have no advice but what I know – it’s only the love that I can share by being less of my imaginary self and more like a hollow force of nature – just balancing daily on the edge of what I must endure to attain yoga. It’s not a joy ride. It’s not a gesture or a reaching, this love- it’s just a state of existence that’s impossible to embody as long as you are you. It’s not the same every day. It is like riding on the waves of the ocean where annihilation is a given sooner or later.
For a very few, there is no choice. Life is a message, a choice how to move. There is nothing more than that.
