SOUL CRUSH

On today's show of Soul Crush I get into all things God, sex, death and the true understanding of yoga of the heart as shared by Mark Whitwell. Mark is a refreshing voice of reason in a mostly otherwise mad yoga world, and proclaims repeatedly that there is a yoga for everyone while speaking to the many misunderstanding of the popularized yoga of our time. He dismantles the ideas that we are winners or losers in our patriarchal power structures, including the spiritual world. And how we are going to restore hope in humanity by reclaiming the Mother Nature wildness that is this body. I am very grateful to have shared this time. Find Mark and his upcoming training in Bali on his website and on Instagram. Rate us on iTunes and reach out to me @artofloving with questions and feedback.

"Each one of us is the power of the cosmos that is arising s pure intelligence that even science cannot understand. It is unspeakable beauty, life. Everything in the natural world is utter beauty, sunlight on the water, each star, and each person is that beauty. And we are intrinsically in perfect harmony with the rest of the cosmos. That's just how it is.

You are the power of the cosmos, pure intelligence and unspeakable beauty, in perfect intrinsic harmony with the entire cosmos. This is the fact. It is not the hopeful spiritual language. It is not poetry. It is a fact. The ancient Yogas of participation allow your mind to be cognizant of this fact and rest in the natural state.

Without receptivity being half the process of asana, (the very purpose of strength is to receive) the popular ideas of Yoga are continuing the delusion of needing to get somewhere as if you are not already the power and beauty of reality. Yoga is participation only in what we have already been given; not an attempt to get somewhere. The struggle of mediocre gymnastics being called Yoga today were founded by misogynist men and unwittingly passed on by enthusiasts, men and women who exploit the gullibility of the public.

The public, already programmed by the dark assumptions of religious power structure that built civilization are already susceptible to the search for a future alternative state in the name of Yoga. This enterprise is the active denial of the natural state, the perfect harmony- union of all with All, including the female-male polarity, which is the nurturing power of All. A pathology abounds of the need to create teachings of all kinds, being teachers, passing on teachings, even after death, obsession over institutional and personal legacy.

When all the while Mother Nature is doing a perfect job in bringing us forth and sustaining us in her abundance. Man’s heaven has created a hell of this abundant paradise. There is no need for a teaching. For men to be absorbed in the natural state and committed to Mother Earth and women here is the perfect preparation for death. Not the obsession with teachings and legacy. The search denies the feminine and Mother Earth. It creates the vulgar denial or exaggeration of sex. God realization is in the other direction. We must wake down then we wake up; the embrace of all tangible conditions, body breath and relationship in that order. That’s where God is.

Mark is interested in developing an authentic yoga practice for the individual, based on the teachings of T. Krishnamacharya and his son TKV Desikachar, with whom he enjoyed a relationship for more than twenty years. Mark’s teachings clarify the profound passion and relevance of ancient wisdom to contemporary life.

Mark has taught yoga for over three decades throughout the US, Asia, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, and is the editor and contributor to TKV Desikachar's book The Heart of Yoga.