Second Day

Here are two places I use my computer, this one free

And this one not free, but it has great tea. The same exact Tazo China Green Tip tea I have at Starbucks at the corner of NE 15th and Fremont!! So funny.

So, the happenings here in Vienna: after a fitful night's sleep, I sat through another two hours of Zhander talking and managed to stay awake. It was actually quite riveting and I experienced many 'aha' moments during both days. It was interesting, because he explained at the end of today that he was "testing" us. Apparently last year some folks, folks he trusted, took the prelude work and started teaching Shadow without his sanction. He said he doesn't want his work to become like all the other yoga around--purely a fitness program and empty of any real substance. So he wants to weed out the people who aren't serious about the yoga and also to show how deep yoga really goes and how much there is to know before you can say you know anything! His talking was definitely effective for that! I came in feeling I knew little and now feel I know even less! But that is, of course, why I am here. To learn what this man can teach me. Tomorrow we are going to do...I'm not sure. He is going to start us off slowly. I'm not sure I'll be bringing back any huge 'revisions' regarding the preludes. I think his real purpose is to get people to revise their way of thinking about yoga. I, personally, love it and am drinking it in like water to a sponge. A dry one at that.

Another aspect of this trip that has been so good for me, so far, is the solitude. I had an inkling of how badly I needed it while in Portland. The close-to-monastic life that I'd led for so long has come to an abrupt end, which is what I thought I wanted. I've led such an internal life that I felt it was 'time' for me to turn outward and take on the work I came here to do, which is work in the world, not just on myself! So the switch was necessary. But also overwhelming and I have felt lost, to a point, in all the swirling of it. Already I feel more grounded and centered, even while physically feeling very disoriented and out-of-sync. I slept badly, waking up in the middle of the night with my mind racing, seemingly unstoppably. After about 45 minutes of tossing around, I did a weird kind of paschimottanasana in bed, lying on my side, my feet against the wall in front of me as I went forward as far as I could. My lower back has been so bound up, my shoulders, my hips. I could feel a bit of release. Much of my angst as of late, and while here, is because I feel so much rigidity and tightness still in my body, knowing that it is rooted in my mind. And I have not really seen the way through it yet. The Vedic astrology reading Andy gave me has helped greatly in clarifying where I am bound and why and how to get unbound. And somehow that clicked last night when I was in this weird laying-on-my-side forward bend and I heard 'the key is within you.' I realized that I'd been, unconsciously, looking outward for some answer to how to move through all this stuckness I feel in my body, which is stuckness in my mind. At that moment, I felt a shift. The energies that will loosen those bonds are already within me, I carry them all with me. It is up to me to find the 'key' that will find its way through, and that key lives within me as well. It's all right here, right now. At that moment, I felt everything relax, I came out of my forward bend and went to sleep! The shift stayed with me, and there is more to come, I'm sure. So yes, I feel very appreciative of being here and having all this solitude. 

So here are some more photos--your reward for reading through all of my musings! These buildings are amazing! My next round of shots will, hopefully, be of my visiting some of these places. I think Mozart's and Goethe's graves are closeby. It's amazing to think they and so many others walked these streets. Many of the philosophers I studied ended up here in Vienna. Such an incredible history, so many conflicting and deep energies here. I feel the presence of the Holocaust here, which I studied so closely during my dissertation work, but I also feel the German Renaissance, which was so hugely influential, and which produced some of our most beautiful and profound Western music, art, philosophy, poetry. The people here are quite friendly for the most part, and most speak some English, which is a great relief since I speak so little German. That would only change if I visited Germany and/or Austria often, since there are other languages I would rather study.

Oops, where are those pictures! The first one is the street behind the hotel I'm staying at. And the other two are next to the Museum Quarter and part of the museum district. Here they are:

That's it for today!  Auf Wiedersehen, I think (don't have my German book with me!)....