Well Gosh! What's Gregg Doing In NYC?

How the hell did that happen?

I just wiggled my butt. Really.

You know, when I wiggle my but it makes the same sound that Samantha Steven's nose does! I'm not kidding. (See magic with a k post for relevance)

Woke at 3:30 this morning after packing until midnight. Whew! T1 & T2 picked me up at 4:30 and we headed up to B's to catch our ride to the airport. It was a good flight that went by fairly unnoticed as I was immersed in Grey's Mission of Art. I usually will pause whatever I am doing and focus on take off and landing, but I just let this one pass by without taking notice. There was a momentary smile when I thought, "I love the fact that I'm doing this."

Post flight, we grabbed a cab and headed into Manhattan. I got out at the Krishna Temple where I'm staying and the cab just pulled away without letting me get my bags out of the trunk. I had to call T1's cell and request they pull back around. I stashed my bags at the Temple as they won't have my room ready until noon. Now I'm sitting in Earth Matters, this cool little health food/veggie restaurant/internet/coffee joint that I fell in love with last year. I'll probably be held up here for a great deal of time in the next week. They've a kick ass Tree of Life light sculpture on the ceiling. Last year, I ran into Daniel Pinchbeck here in the exact same way I ran into him on the Playa in 2004.

I never thought I would feel comfortable or peaceful in Manhattan. My experience last year totally changed that and now that I've returned it feels like something of a home coming. If it were not for the fact that Guruji seems to visit here yearly I never EVER would have considered NYC to be the ideal location for a retreat like this. Yes, it is true that the energy here is tweaked out but I find that to be quite life affirming. The ability to enter into what, for lack of better words, I'll call a spiritual mindset and walk through these streets with the masses is a testament to the work I've done in the past few years.

There are of course boons to keep me on track while here. Ashtanga with Guruji grounds and energizes me to the point that I feel on balance with the hyper energetic New Yorkers. I'm also staying in a spiritual shelter created by a group of Krishnas and just being near the Temple seems to filter out energetic aberrations. Then there's the Chapel Of Sacred Mirrors, which is really turning into the focus of this years trip. At noon I'm going to head back over to the Temple, check into my room and do some pranayama for a while before hitting the sack. I need to get as much sleep in as possible because I'm going to the COSM at midnight for the Entheocentric Salon. My only concern about the event is the word "trance" in the flyer. I'm pretty sketchy when it comes to trance. Maybe if it's psychedelic enough I'll be able to deal. Regardless I'm going to hang there until my 6 AM practice with Guruji. Sure, that's a bit backwards, but it's all about mixing it up and running at it from different angles. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The next post will most likely be a report on the Entheocentric Salon and my first day of practice with Guruji.

I leave you with a quote by William Blake from A Vision of the Last Judgment that was brought to my attention this morning by Alex Grey. It struck a cord after yesterday's installment in the Signpost Series.

This world of Imagination is the world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after death of the Vegetated body. The World of Imagination is Infinite and Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or vegetation, is Finite & Temporal. There exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see reflected in the Vegetable Glass of Nature.