Recently I happened onto a Huffington Post blog about The Harvard Psychedelic Club. As part of a 1950’s Harvard experiment, check out this self-acclaimed normal housewife who’s amazed to observe molecules of air moving around her after drinking water spiked with LSD. When the interviewer asks her to describe the particles, she exclaims it’s impossible to put into words what she is seeing. And she is surprised the interviewer can’t see. She reports being completely free and connected to everything as one living organism. Watch her facial expressions for their genuine innocence & wonder.

During a 6-year stretch starting in 1989 while residing at Kripalu Center I experienced hundreds of hours immersed in the exalted bliss of Goddess Shakti. To my fellow ashramites I described Shakti as the Cosmic Party Girl. When she’d show up in my meditations, the walls of my mind would blow out into vast seemingly infinite dimensions. All of this creation was me. And this creation was all Shakti. So it became impossible to determine where I stopped and She started. These mind-blowing meditations forever altered my personal identity as well as my capacity to surrender to the big-picture of life.

Watching this woman’s LSD trip tickled memories of my ashram days as she flashed from one epiphany of self-discovery to another. The incredible openings elicited from this experimental acid trip must have presented her with a quandary. Once she came down to her normal life, how would she return to this place of oneness? Did she seek out dealers to score hits of LSD & eventually become a drug addict? Or did she seek another pathway through a spiritual practice? Most likely she omitted the experience altogether from her memory so she could continue with her normal life? Facing this quandary in my life required letting go of expanding out further and further into the universe. Moving forward with the day-to-day affairs of living required dialing down the Shakti Acid Goddess. I learned to discover wonder & contentment in a more energetically mundane sadhana (yoga practice). Each day I attempt to bridge the exalted bliss of Shakti which still resides in my nervous system with the opportunity to serve people in my yoga classes.

What’s fascinating to me is when I showed this video to two yoga studio members, both saw something completely different. They latched onto the creepy feeling that this interviewer was manipulating this innocent woman. How curious? Where I was seeing this acid trip as one of the greatest treasures in a woman’s life, these studio members saw a crime. Is this because I’ve been repeatedly on receiving side of a positive mind-expanding experience as a gateway to higher consciousness? And these two relative newcomers to yoga were firmly attached to their own set of past life events? So many human beings are terrified of expanding their consciousness. Or they get addicted to foreign substances in an attempt to get back to the bliss of expansion. Why not court the favor of Yoga’s Acid Goddess? Why not learn how to invite Shakti into your mind/heart/body? While she is the ultimate Cosmic Party Girl, Shakti doesn’t blow out the walls of the mind to injure anyone. She does it to invite each of us to come & play! One key is to remember surrendering every emotion & thought to Shakti? Especially the fears

So where do you stand? Invite the Cosmic Party Girl Shakti into your meditations & yoga practice? Or is yoga best served sans Yoga’s Acid Goddess?

Peace, Love & Buckets of Sweat      Peter Sklivas  Director – Yoga Passion: Source of HotCore Yoga