The Screaming Maples of Kripalu

Sounds like a good name for a band.........

Universe Denter

       Came across this email that someone wrote to me a little over a year ago. When I read it then, it moved me. When I read it a few days ago, however, it still moved me, but it’s context is different today than it was fifteen months earlier.
       The email means something more to me now than it did then, because of where I’m at today and what I’ve come to. I have a viscerally different experience today when I read this little note than I did even just a few short months ago. That excites me to no end. Because that is true evidence of progress, of growth, of some sort of transformation.  
       And, if that were not enough, just now, as I’m writing this little prelude to the aforementioned email, a feather flies right in front of me. It hangs around for about half a minute, floating and darting, riding the air currents, just like in the movie Forrest Gump. In fact, exactly like in Forrest Gump. I’ve got goosebumps watching it here, outside of Starbucks in Cohasset, Massachusetts. Most coffee shops where I go to write don’t have tables outside. This one does, and I felt the pull of the outdoors. Taken with what I’m writing about, this little episode was yet another sign from the universe that I’m on the right track.
       Man, I love this shit…….

“Got a chance to read some of your stuff. I continue my thought from the other night....you are truly a fascinating guy. I've got a challenge trying to rationalize the whole package in my head - there's some really contradictory pieces you put out there. So for now, I'm just going to think of you as "the onion” (as in, you clearly have a lot of layers).

Glad you got inspired at your seminar yesterday. You inspired me too. You are clearly living your life out loud. I've done the complete opposite. I have done some really cool stuff, but have almost put the sunglasses on so people DON'T notice. Almost like, "if you have to tell people your cool, you aren't". They always have - I just always brush my stuff aside like I'm too cool to care. Or it would be arrogant to ask people to pay attention.

I've decided to take the sunglasses off. Time to live out loud a little myself. Granted, you'll never see me sporting a purple satin shirt kind of out loud, but I'm going to put my stuff out there and watch what happens. Meeting you was just one open door I happened to walk through, and I met a truly unique, authentic, cool person. And if connect all those dots over the course of a year, I bet I'll have a pretty amazing year.
So thanks for kicking it off. You made a dent in my universe. And that's pretty f'ing cool.”

       Today, I see this touching note as yet more testimony to my dharma, to my life’s calling, to my nature, to my way. I see it as more validation for what has become progressively clearer to me over the summer, especially during my time at Omega and Kripalu.    
        I dent people’s universe. Clint Piatelli: Universe Denter.
        I’ll take that.

©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.   

Osprey

   

       When we open ourselves up to childlike fascination, wonder, excitement, awe, and curiosity, we increase our capacity for love. And we increase our capacity to experience the world anew.
        Think of how a little kid might look at this magnificent Osprey, maybe for the first time. The jaw dropping gleam in their eyes surpassed only by their complete rapturous engagement. They would stand there, transfixed, by what appeared to be a magic animal from a different realm. They would stare, simultaneously studying the animal and also engaged in a mindless awe.
       I know this, because this is how I experience not only this bird but lots of life. Whether its nature, the music I’m listening to, the woman I’m with, or the conversation I’m having, I strive to bring that passionate involvement, that sense of awe, wonder, curiosity, and fascination, to all my life.
       My summer at Omega and Kripalu opened up my heart and deepened my connection to my truest self. In the process, I experience both a quieting of my mind and the ignition of an engine within. I want to bring more of my fire to the world, and I want to help others find and ignite their fire. The book I’m writing will be a platform for that. But my whole life can be a platform for that too.     
       So here I am at fifty-one. I find myself with more capacity to love, more capacity to let love in - in all of its forms and manifestations - than ever in my life. I find myself with more capacity to experience the world anew. Furthermore, as I learn to more fully engage, as I learn to more fully allow, my capacity for love will only increase as I get older. Isn’t that fucking exciting? Isn’t that better than the other, conventional party line paradigm of diminishing returns of love as we get older? Isn’t the potential life altering expansions and experiences that are possible from the increasing love paradigm worth the risks? Fuck yeah.
       Fuck yeah.


©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

Vortex

       Moments fill up our lives like raindrops in a bucket, all blending into what we collectively call Life. But, unlike the raindrops once they fall, we are often able to separate the moments. We look at them, each a tiny universe on its own; we see how they created the water in the bucket, even as we experience each one as completely distinct. A few days ago, one of those raindrop moments hit me in the middle of my chest, its moisture now forever a part of me, as it made its way into the bucket of My Life.
       Kripalu is a magical place for me. It’s a kind of vortex. The Omega Institute, where I spent the last month before coming to Kripalu, is a vortex too. Certain experiences happen in a vortex that don’t as easily manifest themselves outside of that vortex. With practice, however, we can learn to create more of those kinds of experiences anywhere in our lives. Which is precisely what I’m aspiring to do once I leave these magical places.
       The other day, I had a brief, rather ordinary interaction with one of my fellow workshop participants. Immediately after that interaction, as I was walking to an outdoor yoga class, I experienced a visceral physical and emotional sensation, accompanied by a crystal clear image. I saw both sides of a giant, heavy double door made of iron and wood in the middle of my chest, suddenly open. The ornate door, the kind you would see entering one’s castle, opened naturally and rhythmically, at a smooth and steady pace.
       As the doors opened, I felt a flood of warmth spread throughout my chest and make its way throughout my whole body. This energetic escape floored me, as my lips trembled and my head vibrated, like one of those little electric motors that hums from the residual energy that can’t be translated into whatever it’s powering. Tears filled my eyes, and unable to be contained, streamed down my face. My voice made little quivering sounds, like the one a kid makes when he’s overwhelmed by the experience of receiving the teddy bear he’s always wanted.
       There was no voice in my head telling me that this private display of emotion was emasculating, or trite, or childish. In this moment, I gave myself full permission to just completely engage in whatever the fuck was happening to me; without judgement, without internal editorializing, without hardly any thought at all. Just feeling. Pure, beautiful, powerful feeling. For a few precious moments, all I felt was what I felt. All I felt was the unexplainable. All I felt was love.
       In that fleeting sacred space, I felt loved by all the everything that is My Life: all the people, all the things, all the circumstances. In that divine timeless vortex that made up but a single moment, I loved all that is, all that has ever been, and all that will ever be, My Life.
       Like I said. These places are magic.  

©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.

The Spirit Of My Perverse

       All these years, after reading Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, The Imp of The Perverse as a junior in high school, I’ve incorrectly referred to it as The Spirit of The Perverse. But this makes perfect sense. Because as perverse as Poe may have been, for him perhaps the perverse was just an imp. For me, I can definitely say that it’s a spirit. A monstrous yet playful, spirit; at once frightening and benign; both scary and alluring. An immovable object and an irresistible force.
       In countless interactions and situations throughout my life, at some point, my internal dialogue will go something like this: “Right now, what is the the most absolutely horrific, inappropriate, traumatizing, unforgivable thing I could do that would completely fuck up this moment and instantly ostracize me from the entire human race?”. Sometimes, it’s just a passing thought, let go of as soon as it enters my mind. Other times, it sticks around, and I start playing with it, riffing on it. I fantasize about how it would actually look and feel, and how people might react. I jam on the unspeakable act like a musician jams on his instrument, letting the music, or in this case, the madness, guide him.
       At a wedding, for example, the church full of people gathered to witness the sacred union of two people, I will think about running up to the alter during the ceremony. Then, embracing the bride, her and I start fucking, right on the alter in front of a stunned audience. The real fun begins when I start asking myself a bunch of very relevant questions. Like, how long would it take before we were stopped? What kind of fallout would there be afterwards? Would they be able to continue the ceremony that day, or even ever again? Would the groom still want her after this rather public indiscretion? Would I go to jail? Would I become a tabloid celebrity? Assuming it was consensual, is fucking in church a crime? And if so, what’s the actual charge?
       How about this stroke of demented genius: taking an eight ball of cocaine, a bottle of Percocets, and a fifth of Jack Daniels into Kripalu (one of the country’s most prestigious centers for yoga, meditation, and higher learning), and spending a week there, floating around the halls in a haze of chemically induced euphoria. I wonder, would anyone catch on? Would the highly attuned and conscious beings there see through my charade? Or could I hide it well enough that nobody would notice? If I got bagged, what would be the consequences?
       Funerals are incredibly fertile ground for my perverse spirit. In fact, Spirit Of My Perverse: Rule One is: “the more intense or serious the occasion, the more powerful the spirit, and the more insane and horrific the scenarios imagined become”. Going over to a corpse and trying to get him to dance with me in front of the receiving line would be a winner. As would preparing a speech beforehand and, in the middle of the church services, running up to the podium, uninvited of course, and telling the mourners about the dead’s true hatred for his mother (who’s still alive and in the front row, mind you).
       More times than I could count, I’ve wanted to run up in the middle of a beautiful, heart warming, full-of-adoring-praise eulogy and yell “Bullshit!”, over and over again. Then, the stage mine, I would launch into a diatribe about all the fault’s of the deceased, maybe reminding people that “These character flaws that I’m ranting about make the dead more human, thus endearing him to our hearts even more. So I’m actually doing us all a valuable, albeit unconventional, service. My ramblings actually help us keep his spirit alive all the more. Certainly more than that sappy amalgamation of sentimental and highly embellished word drool coming out of the official eulogizer.”
       For now at least, these perverse thoughts remain in the confines of my mind, and here, for the first time, on the page. Owning and embracing My Spirit of The Perverse, in all its glorious perverseness, has subtly and perhaps paradoxically allowed for a greater capacity for self acceptance. In fact, it’s subtly shifted my relationship with my very own life experience. Maybe all of that will form the basis of a follow up post, entitled “The Spirit Of My Perverse, Part Two:Under The Hood. Welcome To My Hysterical Nightmare”.
       Imagine. All of this from wanting to jump the bride’s bones on the alter…….


©2014 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart LLC, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.