Please join us for an evening of ancient ritual and celebration as we honor the Winter Solstice as the New Year in the Northern Hemisphere. 

Solstice translates as “Sun Stands Still”. This is the moment where nature holds her breath, lingering momentarily in the mystery, before the sun makes its ascent once again, carrying the living symbology of rebirth and the return of light.We will be sharing in the beautiful ritual of elemental (water, fire) honoring, prayer, song and more….

Led by Chief Don Valerio Cohaila, Incan Priest, Sundance Chief, Spiritual Teacher & Ceremonial Leader from the Andes of Peru. 

Friday, December 20 7:30pm-10:30pm
One Yoga: 721 W. 26th St Minneapolis, MN 55405
For More Information Contact: Miss Ascentia
(310)482-0240 or [email protected]

The Hindu mystic Osho urges us not waste our time asking questions unless the answer will change us into a different person. Don’t ask abstract intellectual questions that won’t change your life, he says. Ask only questions upon which your very life depends.

And so this:

Halloween is coming and I’m thinking about the power of the mask. The popular culture tells us to be thinking about what mask we will put on for Halloween. I’m thinking about how to take off the masks I’m already wearing.

Humans are always masked creatures. We know that we present a different persona at different times. Persona, from which we get the word personality, is Latin for “the sound that comes from behind the mask.”  We understand that, every time we speak, no matter what the situation, we speak from behind some kind of mask. This is a human thing. We speak from behind different masks depending on the situation and the people we are with.

We seem to spend our early life being taught how to craft and wear our masks, and we spend our adult spiritual lives learning to, one after the other, take them off, to find out which ones are false for us, or who we really are under them all.

We also sometimes have our masks pried – or ripped – off, through losses like divorce, or when we enter a deeply intimate and honest relationship, or through an economic crash. We hardly ever revel in having our mask taken off, but so often we realize later that it was a healing transformation, the only way our true self was ever going to emerge into our lives.

It begs the question, “What do we find when we take off mask after mask? What is under all those constructed layers?” The sages of the ages say we find silence. Or the breath of God/dess. Or the hum of the universe. Or pure love. Or silent light-filled love that hums. I don’t know, I’m not sage enough or maybe I haven’t gotten that far through my masks to know that answer.

And here’s where Osho’s warning comes in. Don’t spend time asking the questions that don’t change your life.

So rather than asking what abstract mystery lies under all of my masks, I’ll stay up here closer to the surface, where all of our masks are dancing at the bus stop, in the malls, and at the water cooler, shouting and singing at one another all day long.

I’m thinking about a story the psychologist Carl Jung told. He met a “venerable personage,” a seemingly perfected soul. He spent four days and nights following the saintly man, watching him closely and never once did the saint exhibit a single human failing. Jung’s sense of inferiority grew steadily by the hour in this living saint’s presence. On the fourth day, the venerable man’s wife came to Jung privately. She was an absolute wreck. Jung saw how when we don’t see our own mask (in this case that mask of the “perfected human-saint” worn by the venerable man) we radiate unconscious toxins into our environment and they are absorbed and then manifested by those around us.

This makes me think a lot about my marriage before it ended. And parenting. And teaching. And every other role I’ve played in this life. I wonder how much of this unconscious radiation I’ve absorbed and manifested on someone else’s behalf. But more importantly, how much have I perpetrated?

So today’s life-changing question for me is “What is the mask I’m wearing right now?” Asking that twenty times a day can change your life. And the follow-up question is even better: “What is this mask covering up?”

Many years ago I taught a semester-long spiritual theatre workshop at Winona State University. I guided the fifteen students to make masks as part of the work. I made a mask that I have had with me ever since. I call him “Mr. Doom.” He is an embodiment of the deep pessimism permeating my family of origin. He is the voice I grew up with that whispers “Whatever it is, it will turn out badly for you.” And: “When they say they love you, it is a lie.” He is the one who reminds me I am worthless. He is the one who chortles that my mother had her tubes tied three years before I was born.

Mr. Doom is an ancestral voice that pre-dates my parents. He’s been dancing with my family for generations. He’s been the source of many of our most important decisions in life. He is the designer of most of my personal failures. He has always urged me to narrow my vision and obsess on my wounds, on the unfairness of life and my many shortcomings.

I wonder how much of Mr. Doom I have radiated out into the world, to my spouse, my children, my students. How much Mr. Doom have I asked them to carry, to manifest? No one in my family knew it was a mask, and therefore, the energy of doom always flew wildly, unconsciously, through the house, into our ears and up our noses, into our morning cereal, our toothbrushes, the air ducts. Have I done the same?

Yesterday morning, as that luminous pearl of the moon was falling over the western horizon, Mr. Doom visited me in my dream.  He danced around me, naked and taunting, as he always does. But then, in that mysterious dream way, I was suddenly inside the mask looking out – at myself. I was both “me” and “Mr. Doom” at the same time. I slowly reached down and removed the mask.

Under the mask of Mr. Doom is a face called The One Who Is Afraid To Love And Be Loved.

I lifted that mask, peeked under and gasped at the next layer: The One Who Sees The Dew On the Grass As Precious Jewels. Otherwise known as The One Who Loves Everything.

This morning as the delicate raindrops fell from that lavender-grey sky, Mr. Doom came again. He tried to get me to remove his mask from my face. He pulled and pulled and I fought mightily against him. He said lovingly to me: “You want to not feel the pain I cause you, but you don’t want to take the mask off and open a new layer of life.”  He bent close and whispered, “I don’t bring aspirin, only new life.”

So, my Osho question for today: Do I truly want to love? Do I want to be loved? That’s a question that can change a life. 

Jaime Meyer has been One Yoga's executive director since September, 2011. 

A meditation on Tree Pose 
from OY’s Executive Director

Targeting you at your most insecure times is the new trend in internet advertising.

I just read an insane article in the Atlantic Magazine: Marketers know that you feel ugliest on Monday mornings and sexiest on Thursday between 5 and 8 pm. So they target your Facebook and other internet pop-up ads to reflect that. 

On Monday mornings you’ll more likely see tips on how to feel better about yourself (with a product that will cure ugliness, of course). On Thursday afternoons you’ll see more ads celebrating how good you feel, and products for how to make your weekend hotter. Do your own research: watch your pop up ads. 

It’s all done through the magic of online data tracking. Every post you put on Facebook, every search you conduct, every email you send through Gmail and Yahoo helps builds data in the giant servers that tell marketers how best to exploit your insecurities. 

The servers are hidden in the bowels of an undersea volcano, watched over by expressionless people in red jumpsuits who no longer hear nor smell the sulfur-spitting pools of lava in their workplace. 

Okay, I’m not really sure about some of that. 

I spend a great deal of energy trying not be cynical or pessimistic about the human condition. But articles like this make me feel so depressed about the trajectory of human consciousness.

Oops, hold on. Keyword: “depressed.” An ad just popped up. Hey! Kittens selling jelly beans! Cute! And below that an ad for a “nocturnal stimulator” - a device you put by your bed. Its wireless signals flow into your sleeping brain, forcing it to manufacture more serotonin – the happiness neurochemical. It’s like having your own bedside foreman from the happy factory shouting at the night shift to work faster! It’s only $695 and worth every penny, I’ll bet. 

Friends, this is why, in our culture, a practice like yoga is not just nice, but necessary. This is why so many people say “yoga saves my life.” 

Our practice helps us see the world for what it is: a place with many winds blowing. Some of the winds bring us beauty; many bring us venality. Our practice helps us grow strong roots that plunge deep into this good earth, so that we can stand upright and firm against these many winds, so that we can choose for ourselves what is real for us and who we truly are.

This is what I think about during my tree pose, for those few fleeting moments that I can attain balance: the winds blowing above, through my leaves that flutter unceasingly, and then those roots growing deep, moving down, away from the roar of all winds of the human mind, down into the dark, wet soil, reaching into an underground pool of clear, cold water - the water that, when sipped, reminds me who I truly am. 

My ancestors, the Celts, put it like this: You are the sound of joy in all joyous things. You are the light inside the sunbeams.