Lo nodded. “You have literally been denying yourself self-love. I’m glad you’re here. You need to be here.”
Ethan
DAILY AFFIRMATION:
The most important love of all is self-love.
I would not have been accepted into the fold were it not for Amaya. She and Yoni have a special bond that can only come from practicing together for more than a decade.
Amaya met Yoni right after she graduated from a very progressive college in upstate New York. She thought she wanted to work at an NGO fighting for the rights of the indigent. But she spent three months in India and Bali and returned a spiritual seeker. She joined Yoni’s Vikalpa commune, which was then operating in a Crown Heights brownstone but is currently on hiatus. She described it to me once on a break from our shift at Green Wave.
We were sitting in the barren, windowless break room, drinking green tea that Amaya had brewed in a hand-thrown ceramic teapot. Our supervisor had gone home sick for the night, so Amaya and I took the opportunity to get to know each other better. I remember that it was so hot outside that the sidewalks were still steamy even during the night shift. Amaya was wearing a nearly sheer white dress, and her hair was twisted into a high bun that managed to be both sloppy and elegant at the same time.
“We would get up at five and meditate for two hours in the nude at the commune,” she told me. “Then all of us women would make the clean porridge we ate every morning.”
I didn’t really know what to say back. Because I hadn’t yet come to see the unclothed body as the soul in its most pure state, I thought it was creepy that they were all naked. Because I hadn’t yet learned about how each role a member of the community plays is of equal importance, I wondered why the women had to cook, and was curious about what clean porridge was. I ended up asking, “Didn’t you get bored?”
Amaya smiled and sipped her tea. “When you’re fulfilled, it’s impossible to get bored, at least in the worldly sense. You are at peace with a blank mind.” She always made intense, direct eye contact. She seemed sort of crazy. But also really, really hot. Looking back, I realize that things weren’t great with Dana at that point. She was in her second year as an associate and she was working ninety hours a week. She was always afraid she’d burn out before she made partner, and that all her work would be for nothing. It’s what drove her.
But I felt like she was always too busy to care about what was going on with me. I couldn’t remember the last time she asked me how I felt about anything. And here was Amaya, sharing her spirituality with me, a virtual stranger.
“And what about you?” Amaya asked. “Are you a seeker?”
“What do you mean, a seeker?” It’s funny to recall how ignorant I was about Amaya’s enlightenment at the beginning.
“Are you interested in learning more about yourself and the world around you?”
“Of course,” I said. “Who isn’t?”
“You’d be surprised,” Amaya said. “Most Americans are immune to the deep soul work that needs to be done to understand the world around us.”
“Well, I’ve always been a really spiritual person,” I said, unsure if it was remotely true but wanting to impress her.
“My guru, Lama Yoni, would love that about you. He has a whole philosophy about how good things happen to people when they follow the laws of karma,” Amaya said. Then she closed her eyes and clasped her hands more tightly around her mug. She looked like she was about to say something else, but instead she got up slowly, nodded at me, and left the room.
On my way home from the office that night I couldn’t stop thinking about Amaya. When I saw Dana sleeping peacefully in our bed, her lips slightly parted like a cartoon Sleeping Beauty, I felt guilty, but only a little. I was starting to feel the burgeoning of a spiritual awakening, and I owed it to myself to listen to those feelings and see where they led me.
DAILY AFFIRMATION: Let the spirit fill up the empty spaces left by missing other halves.
I took Dana out for Valentine’s Day to our favorite restaurant. It really felt like old times again, and I know she was happy then. She got off work early, like she said she would, and I took the night off from Green Wave. That alone felt like an accomplishment for us. But I was already starting to feel like I was holding a crucial part of myself away from her.
Part of what helped that night was drinking. She hadn’t noticed that I didn’t have a sip of alcohol on New Year’s, or that I had not been joining her in her boozy brunching. Because I wanted us to have a harmonious night, I split a bottle of wine with her at the restaurant, and since it’s an Italian restaurant, I even gave up my clean eating for an evening to indulge in this Nutella calzone we always get for dessert.
Dana looked really beautiful sitting across from me in the tight red dress she wore every Valentine’s Day. She’s a sucker for tradition and doing things for old times’ sake—hence the return to this particular restaurant and the dessert. She took solace in these rituals, and I was trying to apply my newfound discoveries from Yoni to our marriage. Lama Yoni would definitely approve of the idea of ritual giving people comfort.
I hadn’t mentioned anything to Dana about the Urban Ashram at that point. I had been trying to think of a way to introduce her to everything I was learning, but I couldn’t figure out how to do it without her saying something nasty. Dana has always been caustic, as long as I’ve known her. I remember when we first met, in our nineteenth-century lit class. Dana said she didn’t like the main character in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park because she was “a weak little ninny.” I wondered who that spunky blonde was, with her bob haircut and square glasses.
But that was long before I started my work with Yoni. It was starting to feel like another lifetime, in fact. Now all those sharp edges that seemed so bright and shiny when we were in college began to feel like razors, slashing up the meaningful work I’d been spending so much time on.
But during the main course Dana asked me how the yoga was going, and seemed to truly want to know the answer. “Can you do a headstand yet? That always seemed like the most complicated thing,” Dana said.
“I can! It’s not that hard when you put your mind to it,” I said. “You should come with me sometime. I think you could get something out of it. You’ve been so stressed at work lately, I think it might help you unwind.” I tried using subconscious persuasion techniques with targeted eye contact, which was something I had learned about in one of the classes at the ashram. The trick is to connect without intimidating.
Dana was a little drunk, and I could tell she was not in the mood to fight. “Sure. I could always use some de-stressing.” Then she smiled a crooked little smile at me, and I wasn’t sure she meant it, but at the time I accepted it. I knew she was in a good mood because she even let me pay for dinner, a gesture she didn’t always make, since most of the money in our bank account came from her salary and we both knew it. She would usually say, “Why are you pretending that you’re paying for dinner? We know who is really paying for dinner.”
We walked arm in arm up First Avenue, and while we were waiting for the light Dana leaned over and kissed me, a kiss that made my experiences at the Urban Ashram disappear, for just a little while. We went home and had the best sex we’d had in months, maybe years. In that moment, I felt like our lovemaking had reached another level, not just physically but metaphysically. I was so pleased she’d agreed to go to a class at Yoni’s. Maybe she was really ready to understand the true me. But after she fell asleep, I remember that good feeling faded into a whole lot of nothing.
DAILY AFFIRMATION:
“You cannot plan the path of a glacier.”
—Lama Yoni
At this point, though I still attended my classes at the ashram, I was trying to avoid Amaya between classes and kept our break room talks to a minimum. Things weren’t perfect with Dana, but I had made a marriage vow to her. My parents’ marriage was not the most actualized, and since my mom died my dad barely talks about her. I refused to repea
t that pattern, especially considering the conversation Dana and I had the morning after Valentine’s Day.
Dana woke up in a good mood, still beaming from our connection the night before. “I love that you’re awake with me,” she said. “It’s been so hard since we’ve been on opposite schedules. We’re like ships passing in the night.” She leaned over and kissed me, then put her head on my shoulder. “Us being together and it feeling so good . . . it makes me start thinking about making some little Ethans together, watching them running around our apartment.”
I pulled her closer to me and said, “Mmm.” We were having a nice morning and I didn’t want to ruin it with a prolonged discussion of our child-having prospects. I always figured we’d have kids someday, but since our marriage wasn’t in the best place, I didn’t think we should rush. I didn’t want to risk bringing a brand-new soul into such a dark environment with so many conflicts.
I didn’t even think we should plan. I’ve never been a huge planner. Dana was the planner, and I was usually happy to go along with what she envisioned. Like she’d say whenever we traveled, every marriage only needs one suitcase packer. But since I started studying with Lama Yoni, I had become concerned that her need for control was altering my natural stream.
Yoni once told a parable about the formation of the Panch-chuli Glacier in northeastern India. While we were in savasana he described the hard snowpack accumulating year after year, compressing into a pile of forbidding ice and helping to create the Darma Valley. He talked about the compression pushing all the air out, so that the ice turns an otherworldly blue. He emphasized the fact that glaciers are always changing, that’s their natural state. But you cannot plan the path of a glacier. It will shape-shift in a preordained way, at a preordained pace.
I knew that Amaya was in my life for a reason, but by that same logic Dana was in my life, too. And even though our bond was frayed, it would be moving that glacier to break that bond. I would need a loud and clear sign from the universe that my time with Dana was over.
After Valentine’s Day, things were slightly better between Dana and me for about a week. But the following week we were back to our old inertia: I was asleep when she left for work, and I was at work when she finally got home. On the weekends, all she wanted to do was sleep and watch really ugly, soul-searing reality television. I kept trying to get her to come down to the Urban Ashram, but she kept finding reasons to avoid it. She’d say her ACL was acting up, or that it was too cold to go so far downtown. She knew she was hurting my feelings because she wouldn’t look me in the eye when she gave me her excuses. I knew she thought yoga was boring, but she didn’t care that this was important to me.
If our marriage had faltered a year earlier, I would have asked Dana to go to couples therapy to help us reconnect. But Lama Yoni believes that psychiatry stands in the way of our spiritual development, because it intellectualizes our instincts. I was sick of intellectualizing everything, like I’d done since I was a kid, so I was inclined to agree with him.
DAILY AFFIRMATION:
“Desire is the engine that runs the world.”
—Lama Yoni
One morning Dana shook me awake at six thirty before she left for work. Her eyes were shining. “Hey,” she whispered, her breath minty fresh. “I want to come to a yoga class tonight. Can you set it up for me?”
“Sure,” I said sleepily. “What made you change your mind?”
“I know I’ve been really stressed lately and I haven’t been spending enough time with you,” she said. Then she kissed me sweetly before leaving. I was so grateful and happy that Dana was finally coming around. When I woke up for the second time I looked at her chart, and found that her transiting Venus was in strong trine with her natal Midheaven: in other words, the relationship energy of Venus was charging up her personality with more sympathy for others.
I called the ashram after I looked at Dana’s chart and scheduled an eight P.M. class for both of us. Yoni was supposed to teach this class, and I wanted Dana to get the best of the best. I even remembered to e-mail her to tell her to get there fifteen minutes early. Dana was always annoyed with me for not remembering details like that. I hoped she’d give me extra points for being so responsible.
On the subway to the ashram, I was so excited I couldn’t sit still. Yoni always said that one enlightened event can change a lifetime, and I was hoping that this might be one of those events. If I could start taking Dana to the ashram, I wouldn’t need Amaya to fulfill those needs. It would take a while—first she’d have to get into yoga, and then I’d have to show her the spiritual stuff—but it would be worth it. Wouldn’t I prefer to live an honest life, with my wife knowing all sides of me?
I walked into the ashram and waited in the lobby for Dana. I watched person after person walk into the class and set their mats down. I kept looking up at the clock that sits above the reception desk. Dana hates being late, so I couldn’t imagine why it was 7:56 and she still wasn’t there. I did some of my deep breathing exercises to calm down, then looked up at the clock again: 7:57, still no Dana. I started whispering a mantra to myself to keep tears from gathering in my eyes. Was Dana really going to let me down after all that?
At 7:59 she rushed through the door. From the look on her face I could tell she was in a dark mood. “I. Ran. Here. Subway. Stalled,” she managed to get out while she put her hands on her knees and bent over to catch her breath.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to retain my Zen bearings. “Yoni just really hates it when people are late. He says it disrupts the energy in the room.”
Dana straightened up and shot daggers at me. “I’m sorry I was working hard all day and then the fuckups at the MTA ‘disrupted’ Yoni’s energy.”
This was not off to a good start. “It’s okay. Why don’t you change into your yoga clothes and we’ll tiptoe in.”
“Fine,” Dana said before storming off into the women’s wing of the ashram. She came back out a few minutes later and seemed to have collected herself a little more.
Yoni noticed Dana straightaway when we took our places in the back of the classroom. He kept making eye contact with her as we went through our opening poses. She was trying to deflect his gaze by looking in the mirror and correcting her form—she’s a perfectionist in everything—but I could tell she was unsettled by his attention. When Yoni placed his hands on her hips to adjust one of her poses, she flinched like his hands were on fire.
During savasana, I kept my eyes half-open and watched as Yoni knelt behind Dana’s head and massaged her temples while her eyes were squeezed shut. He started telling a parable about a burdened goat who was resigned to his life of servitude in Afghanistan.
“The goat was old, he was tired, but he knew he had to keep doing the job of dragging water up the mountain so that his owner’s family could stay alive,” Yoni said. I saw Dana’s body tense.
“One day, the goat broke his leg. The owner sent his small son to put the goat down. But just as the boy was about to hack the goat’s head off with a machete, he hesitated. This goat had served his family well—and now he was just going to die? Was this really the ending this noble animal deserved?” Yoni took a long, dramatic breath. “Yes, the boy decided. This was how the goat deserved to die. He stuck the knife right through the animal’s back.” Yoni thumped his hand on Dana’s chest when he said this, pantomiming the goat’s death. I heard Dana gasp.
Yoni smiled. “You will never get what you want in life by doing a job purely out of duty, rather than desire. Desire is the engine that runs the world. Namaste.” He shuffled quietly out of the room.
As soon as the accordion door shut quietly behind Yoni, Dana sat up as if shocked by a cattle prod. She gathered up her stuff with such haste that she kept dropping her yoga mat. She ran out of the building before I had a chance to put my things away.
I caught up with her a block away. “What did you think?” I asked cautiously.
“I want to go home,” she said. She looked like she wa
s about to cry.
“Tell me what’s wrong. What happened?” I wanted my voice to project comfort and loving kindness, but I ended up making her defensive.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I want to get the fuck away from this place and I don’t ever want to come back. Promise me I never have to go back.”
“Okay, okay, I promise.” I saw how shaken she was, and we rode in silence back to our apartment. I was so disappointed that she would never be returning to the ashram, I had nothing to say. Instead, I held her hand.
Dana
I hadn’t thought about my interaction with Yoni since it happened, because at the time, it didn’t seem like that big a deal. I had no idea until a few days ago that Ethan had run off to teach at Yoni’s retreat, or that Yoni had been the leader of some bizarre commune before he became a slightly respectable yoga teacher. I just thought Yoni was your garden-variety creepy older yoga dude.
Furthermore, Ethan completely misread my reaction. I was angry at him, not shaken by Yoni’s energy or whatever. That’s why I ran off. I was not about to cry. I was pissed that he made me leave work early to meet him, and that he had given me a hard time about being late when I had made such a big effort. And I gasped when Yoni struck my chest because it was surprising. You don’t expect someone to thump you in the middle of a yoga class. I had barely been listening to his weird goat story in the first place. I was zoned out thinking about the case I was working on.
Ethan’s spiritual boner for Amaya became slightly less painful to read about as I went on. But not because I became inured to it. It was because learning his feelings about our marriage became more painful. I knew we hadn’t been seeing that much of each other in the year before he left, but I thought we were just coasting along reasonably happily in the paths we had set early on in the marriage: I was the one who made the decisions, and Ethan was happy to go along with them. If I didn’t take charge, it would take Ethan forty-five minutes to choose what kind of takeout we were having for dinner. He joked that my decisiveness kept him from starving.
Soulmates Page 6
