Bhaktifest

              Just finished several days of chanting the names of god at Bhaktifest. THe headliners were ,







Kishna Das

 Deva Premal. 

Jai Uttal


. and


Shantala

 with Benjy and Heather Werthheimer. It was the opportunity to feel love in the most outlandish open and wonderful ways imaginable. As an example when I had returned from the festival to my car to change the clothes that I was wearing  I met  an attractive young lass who was using the hood of my car as a laundry rack. I did not mind and told  her to continue since I was not going to take the car anywhere. SHe asked me to help her get dressed as she was wearing bracelets that needed to be tied. First there was a passionate embrace and a kiss followed by the tying  of the bracelets followed by another passionate embrace and parting. This was  done in a very slow and delightful way and I certainly enjoyed it.

     I watched another supple young woman who was doing yoga exercises with a partner during the chanting.  She was balanced on her partners feet . She was also bald and and had a henna tattoo that was different every day one day it looked like a yarmulke , and the next it looked like a exotic sweatband , and third it looked like a crown. There was another woman who was dressed as the Hindu Goddess Kali. With the skulls around her neck and hands as a waistband. Most entertaining.
       I stayed with a long time friends  in Yucca Valley sleeping out on their patio under the stars in the cool high desert nights.
      They have many roles one of them being both are ministers and they had become the caretaker of a homeless  man who was ill. He is quite kind and well read on many subjects. He seemed quite intelligent but in talking to him it became apparent that he was something of a lost child who needed care and had not grown up.  I gave him some money mainly to help my friends since his leaving would lessen the burden that he imposed .
       I also listened to the drama that their lives involved a granddaughter who was illegitimate angry and rebellious . Who was turning from my friends back to her paternal grandparents whose interests seem to be auctioning estates , fundamental Christianity , and plastic surgery. I have a very limited picture I am sure but the suffering is real and the heartache undeniable. The mother is a very attractive young woman who has an affluent boyfriend with whom she is building a house. The boyfriend knows of the child but does not know that it is his girlfriends daughter. Confusing the child and striking a note of emotional dishonesty that draws everyone in.
        Interesting drama , but ultimately it is just drama. And both my friends realize that while it is they are caught in it.
        I got my big lesson from the family dog. A loyal but very distrustful animal that growls and snaps at everyone. Finding myself getting angry with the dog I realized that I had been taught a lesson of attachment. I started to feed the dog by hand . By open hand not holding the food in the fingers. THe growling ceased . Obvious in retrospect , by being loving and kind suspicions were diminished. It is not a one shot process . Now to discover how that applies to my fellow beings.
         During the festival I was convinced that I should to have an interview with Howard Wills  an energy healer. It was quite fascinating. After describing the condition and what are the modalities of treatment he had me sit and meditate. It was the experience of becoming extremely aware of various parts of my body. Starting with the nose, which has been runny and sneezing. The awareness or energy if you will descended in to the abdomen , the to the pelvic girdle and from their the feet. The culmination became an awareness of the body as an energy field that I was able to visualize and feel at the same time. Quite interesting in that thoughts were not part of this process and were entirely peripheral to the process that was taking place.

While this picture is more complex than what I was seeing in that meditation is does give an example of what  the vision was. And it was accompanied by  sensation of each of these lines as awareness or energy.