Lately there have been some ‘manifestos’ by Yoga Dudes, or Yoga Guys (or whatever) speaking as if for all yogis. I’d like to lovingly offer a counterpoint, or at least an alternate viewpoint.

This practitioner is a sadhaka, an aspirant. This one doesn’t claim to be a yogi, just a guy heading that direction. This one doesn’t claim to be a guy or a dude or anything, just your brother in yoga. I’m not one of the younger, hip, yoga guys who would look good on your calendar or at your side. I won’t fall in love with you, because I already am in love with you—with the essential you that reflects the Divine and Divine Light.

I won’t have an affair with you if I were your teacher, and I won’t try to tell you that Brahmacharya means simply appropriate sexual conduct, because it doesn’t. I won’t try to put a modern spin on yoga or water it down to meet our modern desires. I’ll just try to follow the Path. Not just the holy path of an aspirant, but the only path I know, my personal one, the one the Goddess whispers into my heart and soul, the one she breathes into my lungs.

The end result of this path would not be a hip yoga lover or companion. It would be to tune my spirit to a higher plane, to make myself an instrument of the divine. It would be to love everyone, to love myself, and to love in actions, not with kisses, sighs, or chapters of the Kama Sutra.

So many of these Yoga Guys who espouse their own enlightenment and coolness end up somehow whipping it (their ego) out somewhere along the way.

’I would never be a creep like those famous Yoga Creeps, but if you wanna, I’ll make love to you on the beach.’ or some subtle subtextual variation of that ancient and ego-ridden bit. Now, I am not saying I wouldn’t make love to you on the beach, but it’d have to be in praise of the Highest in us, or not at all. It’d have to be after I loved you as I love a leper or The Goddess, or anyone, non-sexually, with Pure Yoga Love first. It would have to be in the most open, honest, fully present and respectful way possible.

After all that PYL, the more mundane type seems sort of sordid and cheap. Unless you are That Woman. Yet yoga guys have no business looking for, hoping for, or chasing after That Woman. Because that would be looking for the solution outside of ourselves, wouldn’t it? That’d be like looking for peace in a bottle of wine, a vial or crack, or a Big Mac. That would be attachment to the sensual world, seeking enlightenment from the outside. That never works, as we’ve all discovered in our own lives and throughout history.

I won’t deny the beauty of feminine companionship (or any companionship between people), and I have experienced how we can help each other ascend in ways that seem impossible alone. In their defense, most of these ostensibly enlightened yet horny yoga guys are young and acting appropriately for that particular phase of their lives.

It’s good to be fully in a phase, yet realize that it is indeed just a phase of life, and we need to be attached to it.

The phase of my own life is in now is one where a person releases attachments to the world, to mundane and quotidian concerns, and focuses one’s energy and efforts on deepening one’s practice. This is the phase where one focuses one’s concentration on the Divine, and on dharma, not on sensual or social gratification. At this phase, having only one lover seems almost counter-intuitive, when I have a host of angels as lovers, where goddesses visit me each night, not for erotic adventures of yore, but for healing and teaching.

I have a host of yoga sisters as soul lovers, where we can share pure love without getting any on us, making a mess, or pissing boyfriends and beaus off. No one gets hurt in Our Love, no one gets disrespected or left behind. All of it is directed towards the purest and best in us, towards the Divine, towards Isvara.

Yeah, these days, I’d rather share Isvara Pranidhana than orgasms.

Don’t get me wrong, for the right Special and Holy Woman, I can and will be her Siva, right here in the flesh, and rock her world if need be, if it serves the Divine. Not if it serves my itch or my ego. I refuse to use a woman as a sort of human sex doll. Ugh. I think they call that objectification, and is the root of all disrespect and evil between humans.

The pure love I seek and pray for is the root of all love and respect between us. The sexual add-ons are mere icing on the cake, not to be mistaken for the cake itself. Merging together for a divine purpose is the crux of the biscuit, and need not be accompanied by purring and moaning and cumming. Those animalistic options are just that, options…ones we often get quite attached to.  I love them too, and dig kissing and cuddling and getting wild and gentle and etc., but I recognize those things for what they are, gifts along the way, gifts that can become distractions or detours from our Ultimate Goal. What really matters is the real love, helping in actions and intent. Our feelings are just results of that, not actual love.

Actually, I think most yoga guys who see it that way will never pant on your heels, or even be too forward. They don’t want to be mistaken for the hunters or the opportunists, or the Worldly Joes who just don’t get it (or have their elbows jostled by the herd of the above who seem to follow fine women around like suckers on a shark). They’ll just breathe and practice and figure if Earth Angel has plans for him, she’ll let him know in the gentle yet obvious ways that socially dense guys like me require.

They trust that the universe will manifest what they need, without any explanatory manifestos or sexual come-ons or pickup lines.

If it is right, nothing can stop it, except our own egos and fears, which will be under our control if we just focus on our individual practices, not on hooking up or getting laid or defining ourselves as potential overs or as awesome sexual beings.

That’s my manifesto, and I will try to manifest it. Every day. With every person, from lovers or potential lovers, to those I love in an entirely non-sexual way. Love is indeed the answer, not romantic, ego-based love, but Pure Yoga Love, love and compassion for all beings, in whom we see both ourselves and the Divine.

Aum, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.

Mark-Francis Mullen is lucky enough to live in Boulder, Colorado amongst a vibrant yoga community. He is called to be a guide to those who think they are ‘too something’ for yoga (too old, too sick, too fat, etc.). He loves life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Editor: Tanya L. Markul