Helpful Pains

 Shakti collection. I said before self-denial was a way to collect Shakti, this life force, God Force if you prefer. More than no this and no that it’s also no grunting and moaning and groaning if you hurt like shit. Taking pain without expression of any kind is a way to collect, and since I have arthritis and osteoporosis still in my right hip, this stuff all hurts like a son of a bitch. I pushed myself harder today. I sat for forty-five minutes. At the beginning of this, I was getting 22. Stretches first. Then, finessing my legs into half-lotus, which as I’ve said, has a tendency to push my knee out of place. A good forward kick, maybe with a little help from my arm, takes right good care of it. It hurts like hell, though. Once that’s done, I practice posture, asana, which means I have to roll my bastard hips forward, which stretches the knee. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I had a rubber patella. That’s what it feels like.

Big Prana in the sitting. It’s very cool. You can actually feel the energy move in a figure-eight along your knees, then collect under your ass, spin, and shoot straight to your head. BAM! I love it, man. Shit is nuts. It also makes the pain fuck off for a bit. After the kundalini is humming away within me, I open my eyes—you can pry my M dash from my cold dead fingers—and stare up toward the ceiling. Videos have you looking forward for this, but I get a faster result from looking up. Pineal activation comes out of my head and begins on the wall. Bursting light. Spinning fractals. I am not on drugs, this is that real psychedelic right here. Colors invade, and there are diamonds now on the wall. It won’t be long until the orange dot, but I can’t fucking take it anymore.

As I eased myself out of asana today, I didn’t make a peep, and it hurt worse than usual. But I remembered…I am the collection plate. This pain doesn’t feel like anything. Now, that’s a lie, a gaslight, but it worked. And I got to keep all the Shakti. This is good. I do feel clearer (or more clear as they have it these days), cleaner from the inside out. I am getting stronger. My brain feels more my own. The internal pathologies are quieting, and the mental pathologies are almost nil. Almost. I don’t think I can kill my whole inner monologue (though that would be wonderful), but I can for damn sure redirect it, and it’s becoming much easier to shut it off at will. I guess that’s why Shakti. So far as I can tell, it beats the hell out of any anti-depression pill.

Even better, it makes pain…kind of a friend. If you can bring yourself to do it with your pains, you get an advantage over people who don’t have your pains as long as you can take them. By this, you transmute debilitating pain into lifeforce. Start easy. Start tiny. Go in baby steps.

No matter what state I’m in, whether I am in jail or the looney bin, whether I’ve lost a limb, as long as I am not paralyzed, I will find a way to yoga. I want that lifeforce. That feeling of clean union. Not obsessively enough to castrate myself so that all I have is a pair of balls that act like a recycling bin more than reproductive organs. But I do want it. I get it from the earth, the sky, and my pain.