yoga: yuj with Isha

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can you meet me half way? i asked banshee, back in the day, when i was a teenager, sending secret codes through the payphone to her beeper. she said yeah.

we met on steinway street, amidst bronze shorties with nefrittiti doorknockers on their ears and dudes with high fades and flattops, pants so baggy they sailed through the music of october in queens.

it was never cold when we met, even when i was underdressed in oversized white-tees and the winter wisps cast goosebumps all over the streets.

we slid into mickey dees where my fake cuzin hap, smiled gold teeth from behind the counter, and hooked us up with big macs and fries. he smirked sly dimples and snuck in some bangla props for me on scoring banshee. didn't matter if he didn't. banshee and i were over the rainbow, on the border of venus and the neighboring seven-seas solar system.

when the light was too bright, when it didn't seem like we could get much higher, banshee and i dissolved into other galaxies. love became beyond the limit of our bodies, beyond seven-seas, beyond beyond. we disappeared from each other and briefly encountered Isha.

i saw banshee a decade later, on the ave, she was married and we barely said what's up, but i still longed for that feeling, for isha, and even hummed this song my boy moin translated for me: sanu ek pa chan na we. it's a qawwal by nusrat fateh ali khan, where he laments on “not a moments rest without you.”

i first heard the song shortly after banshee and i collided, but didn't get what moin was saying, about how the lyrics were not of a lover but of the seekers desire for the Essence. I didn't get how anyone could be singing love songs to Allah, to feel restless in their love for the One. i get it now. it was where banshee and i was.

these days i've been traveling through yoga and other galaxies, listening to meditation guru's, asana geniuses and bramcharya's dropping jewels about the soul and Isha.

the jana yoga sessions with the brahmcharya has been making me long to shed the prison uniform he says we carry. shedding it, this body that we are incarcerated by, places us in yoga, in connection with Isha – the almighy Allah – the One who is revelaed in the upanishads and purana's, who is spoken of in the bhagavad gita and reminded of through the prophecy of jesus (isa) and the revelations of the prophet muhammad (pbuh).

this is yuj, the link, connection with isha. this is yoga, the brahmcharya says with beautiful intense eyes that land in your insides and vibrate through his soft voice. the shedding of this baggage, of this inmate's outfit, through asana and mantra, ahimsa and jnana. this, he says, will set u into what the ancients call samadhi - to become One with the One.

all praise is due...