The Lazy Yogi

seekingserenityy asked: Hi. My close relationships tend to bring out the worst in me. I get easily annoyed, angry, ignorant, selfish, almost even mean. These emotions come with such strength, it seems impossible to just observe them. I get caught up in them. Even when I try to let them go, they still effect my mood and the way I act, speak, think, feel. When this happens, I often feel ashamed and pull back. I would appreciate some advice on how to just.. be. How to not get caught up. Namaste

When you realize and accept that relationships cannot give or take anything, your ego has a lot less to kick up a fuss about. 

Relationships are for relating with and enjoying one another. 

It may seem impossible to remain the witness of your emotions but it is not. You are already the witness to your reactions, only you are so fixated on the reactions that you forget yourself as the witness. To remain as the witness means to remember yourself as not being your body and its emotive reactions. 

Come back to yourself. This is not a single action but a continual effort to return to yourself every time you meet the challenge of reactivity. Each and every time you come back to witness these emotions, you diminish their control over you. Over time it will become easier. 

Ask yourself why you feel so conflicted with your relationships. They are meant to be expressions of life enjoying itself; when they become sources of pain it is time to re-evaluate your reasons and approach. 

You are whole. No relationship can add to your wholeness or subtract from it. Therefore there is no reason to cling to a relationship out of selfishness nor put up a wall of anger out of fear that the relationship can somehow diminish your Being. 

Daily meditation reminds you and keeps you in touch with Being so that when you find yourself in the world among these turbid emotions, you can recognize them as a kind of transient intoxication and stand aloof as the witness. 

The act of witnessing itself takes the wind out of the sails of the ego, it removes energy from reactivity and allows the emotions to burn themselves out. 

Often our thoughts tune to the frequency of our emotions so that when we feel an emotion, our thoughts tend to reflect that perspective. When we are happy, we see the world as a beautiful place. When we are depressed, it looks like hell. And when we are annoyed, the world seems worthy of burning. 

The reason why you have trouble letting go is because your thoughts tend to rekindle the emotions. When you think in tune with the frequency of your emotions, it’s like adding fuel to the fire. Instead, shift your attention away from thought into direct feeling/witnessing/perception of those emotions. 

Patience is peace. Watch, watch, watch. Realize you are always the watcher and sit back as that witness. It is certainly not easy at first but effort is needed to break the inertia of your ignorance. 

Take heart and keep at it.

Namaste :) Much love sis

Peace is not an experience. It is a lack of confusion regarding what you are experiencing. In that clarity, there is contentment and the joy of liberation from the suffering of confusion.

The human experience is filled with moments of positivity and beauty interchanging with moments of negativity and pain. This human experience is characterized by the body, its associated physical senses and sensations, along with the mind’s thoughts and moods. 

When some embark on the journey to discover peace, they search for it in the world of human experience. The hope is that the experience of this body can be made permanently happy and positive, forever forsaking the negative. 

Such a perspective is dependent upon your experience being a certain way; and since experiences themselves are transient, so is the happiness and pleasure they bring. 

You are not your experiences and the conviction of this truth born of direct perception will take the pressure off avoiding negative experiences and clinging to positive ones. You become less fixated on your experiences, enjoying what comes and no longer lamenting letting go of what goes. 

But where does peace fit in? Peace is not an experience but the way you regard experiences. It is not a thought or a mindset but rather the place of eternal awareness from which you live. 

By the place, I mean your Self. When you no longer mistake yourself to be your body or mind, where does that leave you? It is the opportunity to become aware of your own existence without the context of human form. 

In that clear awareness, you are at ease and at peace. Or rather, you recognize yourself as ease and peace itself. There are endless ways to release our confusion in order to re-discover clarity, and I like to recommend meditation and self-enquiry.

We are a lot less like individual beings and more like a spaceless and timeless dimension that is endlessly conscious of itself.

Trippy but true. :P

Namast, sangha.  

a-polo-nia asked: Hello LazyYogi! I just a simple question about your personal interests: I was wondering if you could give us a quick short list of your favorite books of all time and maybe a little bit about why you like them? Namaste!

Awesome, I’d be happy to! I’m sure I’ll forget some good ones, though, but here goes nothing:

The Invisibles by Grant Morrison — This is one of my favorite graphic novel series of all time. It challenges our notions of reality/society while at the same time painting a beautiful possible future for us all to grow. 

Promethea by Alan Moore — Another fantastic graphic novel series. This mythic story celebrates the figure of the heroine and the true power of imagination. It takes place in a future human society and also heralds the coming of a new time in history. Simply amazing and awesome.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson — I just love the way Hunter thoroughly rejects conventional reality and substitutes his own. I don’t think his insights are by any means final conclusions but they are sharp, humorous, and witty indictments of the western world.  

Harry Potter — Enough said. 

The Sandman Series by Neil Gaiman — Another graphic novel series that is marvelous. It draws from various mythologies, conspiracy theories, and its own imaginative world to create enthralling stories both dark and moving. 

Tales of Horror and the Macabre by HP Lovecraft — A gifted author who had eyes and thoughts completely out of place for his time period. He would have been an amazingly successful writer and film director in the current industry. His stories are both disturbing and vividly hypnotic. I recommend The Call of Cthulhu.

I’m sure I’m missing some, but those are a few to start you off :)

Namaste! 

theworldismyplayground0 asked: hi lazy, what book got you in to spiritualism? a book that change your view on life, that shifted you from a sleeping person. ty for the time Rigo

Oddly enough, despite the fact that I’m always recommending books, I did not get into spirituality due to a book. For me, it was a natural evolution that arose from the invariable questions life posed. 

The first spiritual book I read was Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda. It came highly recommended and was interesting but didn’t teach much in the way of spiritual living, especially for a westerner. 

In college, I read the first scripture that really moved me. It was The Avadhuta Gita as translated by Sri Purohit Swami. That text made a vast impression on me. 

After graduating college, the first spiritual book I read was the very same book put in my hands by the parents of my departed close friend: The Power of Now. There’s a story in that, and perhaps I will tell it sometime. 

Regardless, it was Eckhart Tolle’s book that really made spirituality come alive for me. It made clear to me how spirituality is meant to be lived, not solely done through action or belief. 

Namaste :)

th0ughtsfromabalcony asked: Boredom has been the biggest hindrance to my spiritual practice as of late. How do I deal with it?

The need for stimulation is a manifestation of restlessness. Boredom means being discontent with the simplicity of peace. Let your boredom suffocate itself. 

When you feel bored, don’t act from a place of boredom. Don’t seek to entertain yourself or distract yourself from the feeling of boredom. Instead, allow it to be there and to intensify. If you practice daily meditation, then this will happen naturally in due course. 

I think one reason I felt such rage during my first few months of practicing meditation was a result of resisting boredom. Just sitting can be infuriating at first. 

Someone who relies on entertainment to feel at ease will fear and hate boredom. Such a person is continually fixated on “what’s next?”

Peace isn’t next. It is only ever now. It is not entertaining; it is engaging. Be engaged with the simplicity of the here and now, and in that engagement you will find yourself filled. Patience, peace, and contentment will be there. 

Namaste :)

junkonapage asked: Hai there, your blog fills me with inspiration! Thank you. I actually just wonder how and why you became interested in such ventures? And did it come naturally to you or did it take time and effort? I dabble in such ventures myself and you make me curious to hear another perspective :) Namaste and all :)

When I was a kid, I didn’t buy the version of reality pandered by adults, parents, teachers, and peers. This led me to an interest in the supernatural and the occult. 

It was fun for many years but as I grew older, life’s hardships made me re-evaluate my perspective. The death of my father the summer before I graduated from high school had a significant impact on me. 

What is the use of the supernatural and whatnot if it all ends in death? What is death anyway?

Going into college, these questions equally inspired and confounded me. From there, my involvement in the occult led me to spirituality. 

While the direction was a natural progression of existential curiosity, the changes in my understanding and experience of myself took effort at first. It takes effort and sometimes time in order to break the momentum of our ignorance. 

However, effort, when put in totally, always leads to effortlessness.

Glad you’ve been digging my blog!

Namaste :) Much love

elixerz asked: Hello wise one :) I'm half way through my medical degree. Although I'm happy with my choice to study it, I feel uneasy about a lot of what I learn pills for this, that and everything. We did one tiny module on nutrition last year and it was really just biochemistry. It makes me angry that we don't learn about holistic health and I feel like I can't put 100% into my studies. I want to bring my values with me when I graduate but I think the whole system will corrupt me :/

You are in the perfect situation to change medicine from the inside out. You have found a flaw in the system and this is the opportunity to create the space for growth. 

A few people have asked me why I want to practice western medicine as opposed to ayurveda or forms of holistic healing. My response is that I feel western medicine is tremendously effective and powerful, but also powerfully ignorant in a few areas. 

Instead of deploring western medicine, I want to help it grow into itself, if that’s not too bold to say. 

You cannot be corrupted—you are too smart for that :P

Why don’t you take some courses or strive to educate yourself in the areas you feel your medical school is not? You will be able to set yourself apart from the other doctors by offering a more comprehensive understanding and outlook. 

Namaste :)

latnemirepxe asked: Hi! I feel isolated and alone often (a side effect from my gender dysphoria) thus feeling sad or depressed. Any things that can help? I am a people person but feel like I put a lot and don't get much back and am disappointed and have a negative outlook..

I am not especially educated when it comes to the experience of gender dysphoria, however I can understand that it might be a confusing struggle. My advice is to remember that you are not your gender. Think of gender more as an expression rather than an identity. 

In spirituality, it is told that we are not our bodies, or rather our body is not what we think it is. This body we experience now could be likened to the body we experience during dreams. While it may seem real, it is more like an ephemeral hallucination.

This doesn’t mean the body is an enemy by any means but that we create pain and confusion by seeking to know ourselves through our bodies. Perhaps by meditating and coming to know your formless nature for yourself, you may take the pressure off your gender dysphoria. Then you will feel more at ease with figuring out what gender you wish to express yourself as. 

One of my favorite comics, The Invisibles by Grant Morrison, explores the ramifications of spirituality leaking into culture as society evolves into the future. He tries to imagine a world in which gender is not constrained to the male-female duality. It’s pretty rad.

The depression you feel is understandable given your current state of confusion. The sense of isolation comes from seeking community, or rather communion, through your body-mind. But we are told that separation is an illusion. What does this mean?

While it may appear that bodies are separate, existence itself is unmixed and One. Therefore to look at reality from the perspective of the body, you see many individuals and may feel isolated from them. To understand reality from the perspective of existence, you may know that no matter where a body is or whether it lives, all life is together always like a soup of existence. 

You are entitled to put in whatever effort you please in terms of socializing but you are guaranteed no results. Because you assume results necessitate from action, you grow disappointed with your efforts. Personally, I prefer a friend who goes with the flow and puts little pressure on expectation rather than someone who tries too hard and grows negative at the lack of response. 

In the end, I strongly feel that daily meditation will help you to settle down, take the pressure off your body-confusion, and allow you to find a degree of peace that is independent of your body and its associated circumstances. 

A book that will definitely help you through the pain and depression is The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron. 

Namaste :) Much love

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great when a couple of cute girls show up to yoga, even late, but it sucks when they post up behind you and one reeks of perfume and the other is chomping on bubblegum the whole time