Soul's Code

“Before I learned how to know who I am from the inside-out, I thought I needed to become a model to be beautiful.”

GUEST COLUMN: LAURA HOLLICK — “People feel ugly when they look at beauty magazines.” 

I heard this saying and I thought it was ironic. . . Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever compared yourself to someone in a magazine and felt like you didn’t measure up, or have you thought, “if I just change these things about myself then I’ll be beautiful”?

I’d like to share a story with you about my quest to understand beauty. . .

California’s anti-gay measure is a case study in what dictates change: Consciousness. Not politics

BY CYNDI INGLE — Why does mainstream media, and a mass-market audience, get off on public displays of homo-erotic affection — in particular, “girl on girl” action? Madonna slipping Britney some tongue; Ellen marrying her beautiful blonde lover, Portia, and Lindsay Lohan’s fling with Samantha.

Does this mean that we are becoming more accepting of so-called “alternative” lifestyles?

Not likely, as the recent Proposition 8 victory in America’s most populace state, California, has exposed.

Guidance from a homeless man on a beach and Thoreau: disasters, money meltdowns and loss are blessings in disguise

BY VAISHALI — I was talking with a loved one who rode out Hurricane Ike on Galveston Island on the gulf coast of Texas. The Island took a big hit with a 14-foot storm surge, 120 mph winds and torrential rain. As will happen in the aftermath of a storm of this magnitude, a significant amount of the residents’ possessions were destroyed.

When we’re not happy, do you believe it’s because we “think” we know what happiness is? The short answer from Vedic psychology

Raised in an abusive, alcoholic family — and twice diagnosed, “terminal” — Vaishali is a new female mystic who comes by her joy honestly.

GUEST COLUMN: VAISHALI — Happiness. It is the No. 1 thing we all want. The constitution of the United States institutionalizes our protected right to pursue it. But what exactly is it? Someone once told me they’d found happiness. I honestly didn’t know it was ever lost.

“I spent a month at B.K.S. Iyengar’s yoga retreat, and my body has openings that were never there before”

BY RENEE TAVARES — We’re wrapping it up here, only two more classes with the best yoga teacher I’ve experienced, Geetaji Iyengar, the daughter of B.K.S. I feel my body has openings that weren’t there — and wouldn’t be there unless I had been here. Since body, mind and spirit are connected, I am trusting there are openings in the latter two

I have been practicing in the Iyengar yoga studio next to all my colleagues. Geetaji and Guruji (B.K.S.’s honorific, which literally means “great teacher”) are always there, as well as their Indian students who we can observe receiving teaching from Guruji himself. That’s me, in the picture below, bowing to B.K.S. Iyengar.

A very few lucky westerners have spontaneously received some personal instruction from Guruji by strategically positioning themselves right in front of him.

My life-long dream was to meet the greatest yoga teacher in the world. I’m living it this month at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute in Pune, India

BY RENEE TAVARES — I guess you could say that B.K.S. Iyengar is my “personal god,” not that I believe in a god as an individual. But in my world, he’s about as close as you get.

I started doing yoga in my twenties, and taught my daughter, now an instructor in her own right, when she was a young child.

I continued to practice and study through the next decades, and B.K.S. Iyengar was a guiding light. The single figure who made hatha yoga accessible to the West, he even gets profiled in this day and age, at 89, in Vanity Fair magazine.

I saved up weeks of vacation, and some life-savings, to spend the month of October at his school in Pune, India. I dish from my journal . . .

Sorry, no punch line. But the similarities are striking

BY JOHN S.  — As I’ve been watching “live” coverage of the brutal second-by-second collapse of the stock market — broken only by occasional reprieves — I have found myself thinking that I was witnessing a surreal representation of a drunk spiraling to his demise.

Cable TV’s cheerleader of capitalism, CNBC, plasters banners across the screen constantly: “When will we reach a bottom?” . . . “Is the bottom near?” . . . “Still no clear bottom.” The flashing numbers are bright red, the graphical charts all diving towards the gutter — down 340 points one moment, down 780 the next.

When Republicans look at Bill Maher, they see Lucifer. Democrats see a comic genius. We saw Religulous to escape election withdrawal

BY TERJE FOKSTUEN — As funny as he is, Bill Maher is a cerebral type who lives in his head — at the expense of his heart. He’s missing enough in the soul-department that I almost felt sorry for him as I watched Religulous, his big-screen collaboration with former Seinfeld-writer Larry Charles (now a guerrilla-cinema director, who made his name with Borat).

I say the above with “kid love”, which is Bill’s refrain after punchlines during his stand-up routine on his Friday night HBO series, Real Time With Bill Maher. Yes, I am a fan.

But Bill’s first feature film left me cold. Religulous (rhymes with “ridiculous”)

Did Tolle’s concept of the collective Pain Body drive the election?

BY DAVID RICKEY — September marked the 7th anniversary of what has become known simply as 9/11.

That horrific day flicked a psychic switch for Americans. For most of us, we suddenly had a sense of being a victim, and that completely wiped out any awareness of cause and effect. George Bush’s popularity jumped to over 90%, and the country pulled together under this unified field of “victim” identity.