Yoga For Life – Page 2 – Ray Yoga Blog

Faerie Ring ~ Elf Circle

Well ~I really feel that calling this ‘Faerie Ring’ alone would immediately have some readers jump to the conclusion that this story has to do with being ‘gay’ or about ‘gayness’ . But no, that’s not it. Elf Circle ~ I can relate to more ‘personally’… And Yes, it is about my relationship and experience with these beautiful beings ~ faeries and elves who also populate our planet ~ or nearby our planet in a dimension so close but so far away. Perhaps Now ~ because of the transformation of the ‘etheric web’ of our world due to exponential expansion of the human ( over ) population, the internet, and the increasing saturation of ‘ human-made ’electromagnetic fields ~ cel phones with their microwave broadcast towers ~ they exist more rarely in the same vibrational frequency that we inhabit ~ but they still Do Exist ‘on’ our planet in a nearby ~ but safely enough, far away ~ vibrational dimension.

Caroline pointed out to me that when I shared this with her back in the 1970’s that I was one of the ‘L’ people. The ‘L’ vibration is in my mother’s maiden name ‘Truell’ or True L. It’s in my father’s name as well Louis NichoLas IasieLLo. The vibration was passed on to me as my parents named me RaLph Louis IasieLLo.

The Elves are who she was referring to.

In the late 1950’s , approximately 1958, I was 7 years old and in the 3^rd grade of Saint Joseph’s Elementary School in Brookfield, CT. It was a good year in contrast to the fear and misery I had experienced since kindergarten in the Catholic school system. Sister Marvelous was kind and recognized that I was truly bright. She did not punish or humiliate me as every other teacher had done and I experienced much less anxiety both in and outside of the classroom.

I came home from school one day in the Springtime, after Easter past the middle of April. Mom, Dad and Gail my sister, were not there. I was alone. The sky was a light pale blue that afternoon, the misty clouds were dispersing and the budding trees and plants were waving in the breeze. It had been raining for a couple of days and now it was clearing. You could sense that rainbows appear in conditions such as these. My heart and spirit also felt bright and felt relieved to be ‘by myself’, sort of. I gazed out of the large picture window that faces the Southeast from the ‘ living room’ into our sloping yard. Almost a mile away in this direction past the yards of two of our neighbors, across Huckleberry Hill Road towards Green Knoll Day Camp. At that point in time all of that property on that side of the road belonged to Green Knoll ~ most of it a thicket of undeveloped woods with sloping hills and valleys with trails, while the camp facilities were laid out around a small natural pond beyond these woods and further down the road.

The camp was not yet open for business @ this time of the year. I was very pleasantly surprised that I could see right down into that field near the pond ~ even though the view is definitely blocked ~ even to this day~ by the woods the hills and trees, even in the Winter when the trees were without leaves. Some years later , the camp owners son fell into the blades of a large mowing machine and they got out of the business, selling off many of the acres to developers ( perhaps to help pay for their sons medical treatment) who interspersed the landscape with rather large houses and new roads. A few decades later in my 20’s I walked again in these woods ~ once with my friend and soul brother, Alan Blackman as we searched for solace from our intense demanding , post-high school, college lifestyles. On another occasion by myself ~ the soul of the forest communicated to me that it was waning ~ it’s “ spirit was crying for leaving” as Led Zepelin expressed in ‘Stairway to Heaven’.

On that day when I was 7 years old ~ for me the vista was clear. What I saw with my young heart and innocent mind was a group of tiny luminous translucent beings who’s heads and 4 limbs ~ two arms and two legs each ~ were shaped like pentacle stars shimmering with pink and green fluids within. I could see their bright happy faces and hear their tiny voices twinkling like wind chimes, singing with joyful laughter as they pranced and danced around in a circle.

They were calling to me ~ even calling out my name ~ to come and join them ~ to be like them ~ and to go with them to be happy forever and ever. I was delighted and felt no fear whatsoever for a moment. Then I instantly realized in my heart that going with them would be the end of my life, the end of being the person who I was in the ‘outer world’. That did not bother me because I knew that in my innermost essence I was one of them. However I realized that I would become ‘ disappeared ’ to my family, my friends and from my community, mysteriously vanished. I knew that everyone would be devastated by my abrupt and sudden absence. Perhaps my parents would not recover from the shock. There would be fear throughout the land that other children were in danger of ‘being kidnapped’, perhaps murdered or sold into slavery. All efforts to locate me would be in vain, fruitless.

From my heart I sent a message to my faerie elf friends that I knew I would be happy happy happy with them in their Land of Forever Never-ending Joy and Light, but it was the wrong thing to do because of all of the pain it would cause to my present ‘world’. I turned my attention to other amusements available to me and awaited the return of my mother, father and sister, our evening dinner homework and television shows followed by sleep and returning to school the next day.

COPYRIGHT – RAY IASIELLO 2010- AL LRIGHTS RESERVED

Ray Iasiello

Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher

Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner

http://www.RayIasiello.com

617-852-6479

Now i remember ~ connecting the dots ~ My relationship with Melinda Bruno – Smith

Yes ~ we realized back in 1995 after watching the film , ‘ The Little Buddha’ that we had been incarnated @ the time of the first Buddha ( Gautama ) in India and had known each other as friends ~ we were part of a wealthy affluent society @ the time. We could not help but notice the increasing interest in the teachings of the Buddha and those who chose to travel upon the path he showed as the way to enlightenment. I do not believe that we ‘followed’ the Buddha’s teachings but we knew them in our hearts and to some extent understood them within our minds as expressed by our own personal dharma in daily life. The buzz around the Buddha’s satsang was reverentially devotional to a high degree and we had sparkles in our eyes and smiles upon our faces before during and after attending ~ a feeling and perceiving of a kind of non~ dual wisdom awareness initiation. We were very good friends in that life.

There was yet another lifetime that I knew her in . I remember that Now too. It is more like ‘on another plane of existence’ rather than a discreet human lifetime.

In 1978, Caroline and I were in Maine camping out on a private nature preserve owned by the ‘Saint John’ family near Bath, Maine where our friend, Gunjan also had a yoga studio and produced her wearable weaved clothing and shawls.

On a perfect September day ~ we held a ceremony involving communion with ‘Mescalito’ ~ the deity of the peyote cactus, one living, healthy specimen of which we had brought with us for this purpose.

Mescalito revealed to me, in the perfect golden sunlight of that forever never ending afternoon that ‘this’ was not ‘what it was like back in ancient Egypt’ ~ instead ‘this’ was ‘ancient Egypt’ in terms of the state of consciousness that I was experiencing. I gazed towards the sun in that infinite blue sky as monarch butterflies sailed around me. I had a feeling ~ and then a vision ~ of a woman with deep dark eyes who’s look was connecting to me. Soul to soul.

Who was she ? ~

I called her ’Isis’.

Years later, in 1992 when I was in my office @ the Multicultural Arts Center in East Cambridge, Massachusetts, holding down the roles of both facility manager and producer ~ she walked into my office again. We smiled. I knew that she was very cool and I sensed that it would be a huge blunder not to be open to being her friend as well as working together professionally. She was on the Board of Trustees of the Newtowne Courts Art Center of the Newtowne Courts housing project near Polaroid corporate HQ. I had been briefed by the board @ CMAC that I was to give them the ‘best deal’ possible for a fundraising event that they were undertaking. It was a wonderful success and produced a lot of money and good will.

A couple of years later I was ‘out’ of CMAC and I wanted to follow thru on a proposal to show the film ‘Amazona’ about what was happening to the rainforests of Brazil. We connected with our mutual friend, Jon Sachs who ran the Media Center @ the time and we premiered the film @ the Brattle Theater near Harvard Square in Cambridge. In the planning process I visited Melinda’s lovely apartment in Newton Corner, near the Charles River.

There was a painting of her there.

It reveals the power and beauty of the woman who she is in this lifetime.

She is wearing earrings in the painting.

The ear rings are in the form of Isis, with her wings extended.

Soon we began to put into action a weekly seasonal plan that got us to go to the beach every Saturday, as many as possible, from June thru September ~ up on the North Shore of Boston, Cape Ann ~ most often we ended up @ ‘Singing Beach’ in lovely Manchester by the Sea. We always got there after 2 PM, relaxed, did yoga circa 4 PM as the sun was going down, we then ritually adjourned to a bistro near the train station half a mile away where we had seafood and my favorite drink of the latter 20^th century ; the margarita. We did this from approximately 1996 until 2003, 7 years.

In early November of 2010, we resolved to meet @ Whole Foods Fresh Pond Cambridge and take one of our seasonal walks around the Fresh Pond reservation. It was raining We decided on tea and lunch@ the WF café instead. When she insisted on buying me lunch and ALSO something to get for dinner later, I experienced yet another revelation about who we were before.

In a recent lifetime, I was an orphan who lived pretty much in the streets of New York City. I recognized her that day as a stately Italian woman who lived in Brooklyn during that same lifetime as I ~ late 19^th century, waves of Italian immigrants coming into the USA and the metropolitan New York area to make a new life here. She would often show me kindness and made sure that I had enough to eat, could bathe and take rest @ her home.

I declined her offer to buy my dinner for later that night. Instead I went to the Golden Temple and had scallops with shitake mushrooms preceded by a martini made with organic blueberry puree.

Ray Iasiello

Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher

Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner

http://www.RayIasiello.com

617-852-6479

My Relationship with Lucia Misa

In late Winter,1992 ~ I was on a bus on the elevated expressway portion of I- 93 South ~ the ‘Green Monster’ that traversed the North End, Harbor and the Financial District of Boston before the Big Dig submerged the highway and the Rose Kennedy Greenway was planted.

I had been living in mystical Marblehead way up and ‘out east’ on the North Shore since 1988 and it was no longer proving to be workable ~having an early morning job teaching yoga @ the Boston Harbor Hotel, still being the general manager and main producer @ Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center in East Cambridge ~
and feeling that my need for the solitude of my 4 + years-long retreat to the North was waning…

I had been praying to and asking MahaLakshmi ~ the Goddess of Wealth and Abundance, to help me to manifest a place in town that I could live and work in.
That very morning on the bus, internally singing her chant ‘Mahalakshmi Stotram’ ~ a practice that I performed consistently every day since the the first of Spring 1986 when Gurumayi had sent the text and music to the Boston Ashram in Chestnut Hill, telling our community of Boston area devotees to practice this chant,
I had just asked mother Lakshmi to please help me.

As the bus sped by I saw a sign on the brick building near the end of Broad Street ~ ‘ thousands of square feet for rent’. Later that day in the damp misty March evening I took the ‘T’ to Government Center and walked down State, turned right onto Broad, past the disappeared location of ‘Cantones’ a small intimate and friendly punk rock dance club in the early 1980’s, and got the info from on a sign posted above the steel grate of the appliance store ‘Boston Ship Service’.

Soon I was living there ~ on a handshake and initially for $600.00 a month,
2,700 square feet on the 6th floor : walk up ( 147 steps from the street-level front door ) AND freight elevator with loading dock.
Featuring a kitchen, 1 & ½ half bathrooms, a curved brick wall, gas heat, rough hewn stone front walls beneath 2 working diagonal skylight windows, an abundance of of natural light , very expansive ‘rooms’ and internally connected spaces ~ enough for 2 bedrooms, office, library ,art studio, wardrobe and miscellaneous storage, access to the roof via a sturdy ladder in the attic that led to a hatch.
Yet Best and most significantly of All ~
that long room with the curved brick wall became my 800+ square foot yoga studio.

In those days I taught a Sunday morning class there that was attended faithfully by two women devotees, Ann Rahimi-Asa and ebony queen Cheryl Landy, a talented, gifted African-American woman who became a highly successful advertising genius who built an impressive portfolio of ‘maha’ advertising accounts for the Boston Globe in their heyday of the mid 1990’s. Cheryl was also very fond of ‘English’ culture and mannerisms in a non-uptight way. I believe her affinity for and identification with the English culture came from being strongly connected to a recent lifetime she spent incarnated in the form of a wealthy, happy and aware English woman.

In the initial months I had no refrigerator so I ate out a lot; ‘Pizzeria Regina and Pomodoro in the North End, Milk Street Café, the Sultan’s Kitchen and right across from my front door ‘Country Life Vegetarian Restaurant’.
After class one Sunday morning, I wandered over to Country Life to partake of the fabulous vegetarian brunch where you could get an actual vegan breakfast along with a complete vegan Sunday dinner.
Reveling in my overall good fortune @ the time which was manifesting in that present moment as the ample and delicious vegetarian food I was enjoying, I noticed a young Asian family come in; sisters with their children a husband and a stately queen of an older woman who was obviously the matriarch of all of these beautiful offspring. They emitted the subtle yet brightly pleasant vibrational buzz of happy people ~ very uplifting. My eyes caught the sparkle of one of the elder woman’s daughters who had young children ~ a cute handsome boy and pretty girl with lovely Asian eyes noticeable even @ that young age. The mother daughter smiled. I did not ‘play it cool’ and pretend that I was not checking her out. In less than a minute we found ourselves looking @ each other rather steadily with a comfortably familiar yet uncanny thought-form: ‘ we can’t -place- who-is- this familiar-stranger !?! ’. She took the initiative and approached me; “ Don’t we know each other from somewhere ? “
I said; “Uh, maybe from another lifetime, or maybe somewhere in yoga “ She exclaimed “ Yes! That’s it ~ we both studied with Patricia Walden when she taught Iyengar Yoga @ the home of Victor Oppenheimer ! “ ( near Fresh Pond in Cambridge, 1983 and ’84 ).
“ Cool ~ that’s right “ I responded, very happy to be seeing her again. “ Ciay, when I last saw you it was in Wellfleet on the Cape when Patricia taught that weekend workshop and you came, probably 8 months pregnant dressed in white accompanied by that very handsome man with dark eyebrows and black hair wearing a white shirt.“ ( Her husband. who appeared to me @ that time, as a choir boy-graduate, then possessing another level of the awareness of reverence for his sacred experience with this beautiful woman who was carrying his child ).
“ Well, I still try to study with Patricia but it’s a challenge since she moved her studio and I have a job managing the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center .” She smiled as she said to me “ Well, you should come and study where I study ~ with Barbara Benagh on Beacon Hill, Joy Street very close to here”.
I said I would do that and probably see her there. “ Thursday nights”; she said.

After I left the restaurant I went up to Washington Street to Woolworth’s which was still in existence in the building that now houses Marshall’s, H & M and one of my employers, The Boston Sports Club. As I walked back towards my expansive penthouse loft I reflected upon my previous relationship with Ciay. She demonstrated herself to be a very proficient and capable yogini @ Patricia’s classes. We rarely spoke ( maybe 2 times + very briefly ) over that 2 year period. I would regularly check out the way she did poses which, along with internally chanting the Siddha Yoga Mantra ‘Om Namah Shivaya’ proved to be very helpful and inspiring for my own study and learning.

As I approached the beautiful ‘front yard’ of the Financial District known as ‘Post Office Square Park’ on that moist, balmy afternoon I had yet another memory of knowing Ciay. We had been together before ~ in a place that was full of water and streaming currents, beautiful islands and dolphins and sea beings who all lived together in playful joyous harmony ~ it was Lemuria ~ an ancient place in the area now known as the South Pacific Ocean, tens of thousands of years before Atlantis. She was like Tinker Bell and I was like Peter Pan. We were delightfully close friends. We swam, explored and played together in this age and place until the Earth changes caused our severance from one another and Lemuria ‘went down’ causing all of her inhabitants to travel to other continents and develop along different evolutionary pathways. It was wonderful to remember this ecstatic high incarnation that we had shared and I was very happy to anticipate that we would again be friends in this present lifetime.

To invite me to study with Barbara ~ this was a ‘no-brainer’ ~ a brilliant piece of crucial information handed to me by Ciay. I was still feeling the importance of continuing my yoga studies compelled somewhat by my need to ‘be grounded’ as I still often experienced profound expansive surges of energy and perception relating to the evolution of my consciousness – now having been accelerated by travelling upon the path of Siddha Yoga Meditation ‘officially’ since 1983, May – for almost 10 years @ that time.

I had already met BB @ the first North American Iyengar Yoga Teacher’s Convention held in the Summer of 1986 @ Harvard University, coinciding with the ‘Harmonic Convergence’ ~ a timespan during which our planet, solar system and the Universe were supposedly shifting into a higher vibrational frequency forerunning the actual arrival of the New Age ( sometimes referred to as The Age of Aquarius, or Sat Yuga ~ the age of Truth) following the ultimate decline being brought about as the present age of the Kali Yuga imploded upon itself, all life forms and the soon to be revealed obsolete way of life on this planet.

Barbara had been assigned to teach a Forward Bends workshop on the top floor of the Malkin Athletic Facility ( where in 1994, I began to teach yoga in the Harvard University Recreation Program, still doing that to this present day ).
My primary memory of my 1st encounter with BB was being very focused on improving my forward bending asanas ~ and she telling everyone to stop their pose in her bright, pretty Southern drawl to come over to take a look @ how terrible my pose was. I didn’t mind this @ the time as long as it was about improving everyone’s pose, including mine. Ciay had assured me that Barbara no longer ridiculed her students ( an Iyengar type of teaching-thing, because most of his student teachers imitated ‘Guruji’s’ fierce and somewhat caustic manner of relating to students ). Ciay had conveyed to me, somewhat telepathically, that though BB’s approach was softer than the traditional Iyengar ‘method’; it was potently capable to help you go ’to your edge’ and ‘beyond your edge’ making accessible places of greater possibility’ in your experience of the practice of Hatha Yoga ~ which Barbara refers to as ‘meditation in motion’.

Within a month I started my 20 minute ‘by foot’ commute from Broad Street to Joy Street on Thursday afternoons to Barbara’s studio which was on the top floor of a community center known as the Hill House. The studio -room had a pyramidic shape which I believe enhanced the power of the shakti that accumulates when and where people practice yoga regularly. So the energy was noticeably good there. Because of a yoga teaching commitment, I began to come to the 6 PM class when Ciay also came to study. In November of 1993 that year Ciay invited me, Barbara and a few other students over to her home after class to celebrate her birthday. The Misa Volpe family then lived in a residence @ Upton Street in Boston’s South End. I remember that chilly Autumn night when Ciay first welcomed me into her home. I knew we were going to be good friends again.

After classes , we soon began to go out to dinner, attended a Christmas Carol vegan lunch @ Ann Wigmore’s Hippocrates Health Institute, then located on Commonwealth Avenue in the Back Bay which I found to be very ‘heart warming and welcoming’. We sometimes visited my former place of employment, the CMAC ~ where I was still treated like an honored guest, went swimming in Walden Pond, and a couple of times we found ourselves on the roof of my loft, watching movies late @ night with the Customs House Tower ( in its pre-Marrriot time-share days ) nearby, this scenario taking place beneath the cosmic presence of the urban full moon rising above the deep blue indigo of the North Atlantic. Also in the following Spring ,we saw Angelique Kidjo live @ the Roxy ( now called the Royale ) with Ciay’s friend, Johnnny, an AIDS survivor. It was like seeing that Motown had gone to Mali on the West African coast and had returned to America ~ excellent ecstatic dancing that night. Our attendance @ the concert was preceded by a dinner @ Addis Red Sea Ethiopian Restaurant on Tremont Street. We sometimes bicycled thru the city streets over to Buddha’s Delight in Chinatown and when BB was away, we would get together with Ali Righter and Lucy White and practice yoga in my loft, Ciay often encouraging us to make sounds as we took on the forms and shapes of our ‘asana friends’.

Come every Christmas mid- December, Ciay would return to her native land of the Phillipines ~ located in the geographical region of the South Pacific known to be part of the previous location of the civilization of Lemuria. On New Years Day of 1995 I was walking towards Cambridge Street towards the Joy Street studio bundled up in the face of sub zero winds and frozen ice to partake of a free yoga class that BB was offering that day. I was acutely aware that Ciay was present within me ~ we were connected on a very deep soul level ~ I saw her golden hued skin and short cropped black hair with it’s streaks of silver, I could feel her breathing within me and with me as I walked through the frozen hostile Boston architecture that seemed to have been unconsciously designed to make this city a place even more windy than Chicago with its great oceanic inland fresh water lake. I was clearly aware that Ciay was connecting her essence to a level of the mineral kingdom characterized by warm, active, solidified volcanic rock deep in the ocean and islands of the Philipines. I envisioned her skin glowing with sweat, heard the sweet whispering vibration of her breathing as she merged her essence with that aspect of the ‘earth element’, the volcanic oceanic realm of rocks that have been there since Lemuria flourished.

Ciay is skilled in her ability of being able to channel ‘prana’ . She knows about healing by sending the energy of the breath infused with ’love’ to different areas of the body and different levels of consciousness or ‘skandas’ as they are referred to in Shavite philosophy, which make up what is called a physically incarnate being which includes, but is not limited to the ‘human being’.
( Sometimes I think that species, ‘homo sapien’ might end up being aptly re-named ‘humanus extinctus’. )

In 1999, Ciay’s brother, Lito a creative entrepreneur had come to visit her in Boston and also to make contact with Coca Cola, presenting them with proposals about helping him to develop and market inventions he had created. Being enrolled in the certification program of Holographic Repatterning® @ that time, I gave Lito a complementary repatterning session one Sunday afternoon. I then prevailed upon my friend, JoAnn Rose, to give him a lift back to Dartmouth Street in the Back Bay so he could walk back to Upton Street for a family dinner. My friend Jo Ann wanted to know why I was so concerned and about my willingness to accommodate Ciay and her family members. Just before getting out of JRF’s car Lito turned to her and said : “ Jo Ann, you’ve got to understand that Ray and Ciay have been very good friends for a very long, long time“. Instant replay for me ~ of the visions of us swimming and playing together in the watery land of Lemuria expanded forth in my consciousness.

@ Ciay’s 50th birthday party I got notoriously drunk. I was bored, and had made the mistake of not inviting a sexy, lovely woman, Lisa whom I had just started to date. Much of the food was dairy–based except for the poached salmon, which went very fast. There was ample champagne and to top it off ~ deadly to me ~ a tequila-based birthday punch. I got a taxi home and sat in the parlour of my Winchester Street apartment where I practiced inner healing, accompanied by the ‘Raga Bhupali’ ( Blue Pearl ) version of the ‘Om Namah Shivaya’ mantra to remove the drunken frequencies from my energy system.
@ 8 AM, I got up and bathed, then went to teach my 11 AM yoga class @ Wellbridge on Commonwealth Avenue.
By Monday afternoon, after work, Ciay called me and asked me “ Ray, why did you do that to yourself ?”
Apologizing to her, I told her that I had allowed myself to become totally bored and had sought to transcend my boredom by attempting to see if I could just get intoxicated enough ~ which I had failed to do. She received my apology and our friendship has continued.
After her return from the Phillipines in 2008 Ciay showed me a very exotic portfolio of photos of herself taken by an elderly Japanese photographer she had met and befriended that year. They are pictures of her in the nude practicing what can only be described as asana infused with elements of earth along with wood, water and sky. They, to me, are a living manifestation of the vision I beheld in 1995 walking on that Winter day.
They are featured in Ciay’s book ‘ Yoga in the Wild ‘
For more information about the living reality of Ciay ~ Lucia Misa – and to check out her book, please visit her website @
http://www.Talikwas.com

I attest to the truth of the above rendered account of my relationship friendship with Lucia Ciay Misa.
Love Light Laughter + Meditation,
Ray

Ray Iasiello
Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher
Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner
http://www.RayIasiello.com
617-852-6479

My Relationship with Chuck Watson

Hi Everyone ~

from the Brookfiled Connecticut high School Class of 1970 and Beyond ~
I last hung out with Chuck Watson in 1980.
The Chuckster was an elemental force for me to contend with.
We never really connected @ BHS ~ so I was pleased and intrigued when he called me in 1980.

Relating to him really reminded me that I had to be strong as in ‘for real’ no jive and to keep us in the ‘frequency’ of good humor.
As I said; he called me came up to Cambridge with his girlfriend and we tried to have a good time ~
a bit awkward since his g friend rammed my car accidentally crunching the trunk
She went to see Karmu the Healer in whose house my girlfriend Caroline and I had an art and media studio.
http://www.shaktitechnology.com/KARMU/index.htm

You can google Karmu ~ he was for real
Chuck gave me an acoustic guitar he had made himself and asked me to sell it locally ~ the neighborhood guitar shop ~ Sandy’s Music on Mass Ave in Cambridge said they’d buy it for $75.00
He did not want to part with it for that meager price so I got it back to him eventually.

@ the time he was living in a large former factory warehouse type of place in Hartford with a 10th floor view of Interstate 84
He and a few friends were squatting there ~
had figured out a way to tap into the electrics
and I recall enjoying a fantastic sunset with him accompanied by a couple of Heinikens
as well as some high-grade combustible entertainment one Friday afternoon when I stopped by en route to Brookfield.

A few months later he had landed in NYC ~ lived w same girlfriend in an apt on the Lower East Side
I had some business in Manhattan and they let me stay there overnight ~
the only barrier that kept the neighborhood flocks of pigeons from entering the room were a pair of long linen drapes ~ muggy ~
it was another sleepless night in NYC for me.

Chuck was working as an engineer for the metro water department
I recall him telling me that they were upgrading the system to plug the millions of gallons of aqua they were losing each day
I recall him telling me that the quality of H2O in NY state was considered to be very good.
A few months later after I had arranged for him to pick up the guitar from my sister Gail in Brookfield ~
I got a call from his same g-friend who told me that he had died from an aneurism cerebral hemorrhage rather unexpectedly

Was he not a cousin of Carol Watson of the class of 1971 ? Has anyone tried to contact her ? He and Karl Hansen were also good friends in high school. Paul Estok tells me Karl is working in Bulgaria laying gas pipelines these days.

Hey correct me if I’m wrong someone ~
but I have long since contemplated my times with him and said my Blessings.

I rest my case.

Love Light Meditation
Ray

Ray Iasiello
Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher
Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner
http://www.RayIasiello.com
617-852-6479

saying ‘Goodbye’ to Dr.Jasin Balbaky – the Art of Dying

Posted by Ray under: The Art of Dying .

GRAPHIC by Caroline Lato ~ quoting Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn

On the 11th of July, 2009 I was invited to visit the legendary Sufi psychotherapist, Doctor Jasin Balbaky
who was preparing to leave this planet from a hospice out in the tranquil woods of Needham , Massachusetts.
My friend Caroline. who had met Doctor Balbaky back in the 1960’s in Cambridge
and who had also worked as a therapist with him @ a facility in Brookline in the early 1970’s
was going to sit with him to offer appreciation for his life and her blessings for his harmonious passage into the ‘Great Unknown’
I brought my beautiful Italian greyhound friend, Giorgio, who is a trained, licensed and insured therapy dog
and we headed out to Tippett House in Needham @ sunset.
We arrived well before Caroline and enjoyed strolling around and up and down the long circular driveway of the hospice in the cool Summer evening,
Giorgio smelling the plants and investigating this new place with curious delight,
there were fireflies blinking in the darkness, the cries of frogs from the woods, and @ one point a deer passed nearby.
Giorgio barked ferociously when this happened. I assured him that we were safe,
that he is a good watchdog and set him on the hood of my car until he calmed down.
Soon Caroline arrived and we went inside the hospice. No staff personnel were apparent,
except there was an elegant, beautiful woman sitting on a love seat in the parlour near the foyer.
We inquired of her where we might find Doctor Balbaky.
She introduced herself as his wife, Barbara and she led us into his room so we could All visit.
A portrait of Jasin as a handsome dashing young Persian man hung over a mantle.
The form of Doctor Balbaky lay on the bed. His body was contorted, a long man, his face resembled a cubist painting.
He wore a very cool multi-coloured fez.
Though he was ‘very present’ ~ I sensed that he was definitely not fully in his body.
I could feel that he was in the room with us as if he were floating nearby observing this scene
Yes, his essence, his soul seemed to be ‘on the way to another place’.
Giorgio requested to sit upon my lap and I held him tenderly as we made our vigil.
Giorgi is very much in his body by contrast ~ his slender muscular body pulsates with life and he embodies the perceptions of his finely attuned senses ~those we know of and can relate to
as well as those subtle senses just beyond our normal abilities. No wonder the ancient Egyptians regarded this breed of dog as sacred
It’s also noteworthy that the Egyptian god, Anubis who has the head of a greyhound, is associated with preparing the dead for the ‘Afterlife’.

We sat down in the soft light of the room on this beautiful mid-Summer night. Caroline produced a crystal, explaining that Dhyani Ywahoo( the Cherokee Indian priestess we had studied with in the 1970’s and ’80’s ) had explained to us that quartz crystals are recording devices, ‘like an mp3’; so if you hold a crystal close to your body, the crystal will record your feelings, perceptions, thoughts and energy. When another person holds the crystal he / she can receive that information from you though the crystal ~ which can often hold the information for 2 or more days. Smiling gently, she put it close to Jasin’s upper torso where his arm and face were resting.
Speaking softly in her humble yet erudite manner with unabashed honesty and a stream of consciousness that reminds me of Keith Richards speaking about his relationship with rock’n’roll guitarist Chuck Berry, Caroline spoke of how she witnessed over the years that Jasin had helped many of his patients who had been in very fragile frame of mind body and spirit,
Barbara , his wife was relaxed and accepting of the situation and seemed to be deligted with our company. Caroline told her that after Jasin had met her as a graduate student of psychology he admitted to her that ‘Barbara was the one ‘ for him. She was genuinely flattered to hear this.
She produced a copy of Thich Nhat Han s poetry about Love ~ ‘Not Caught in These Eyes’ that a friend had sent the couple just that morning. Caroline later rendered this into the graphic that is attached to this sharing
At one point she referred to her work with colour and light meditation and how she and I had studied with the Cambodian Buddhist monk, the Venerable Bhante Dharmanwara ~ who George Lucas had used as a role model for the character and persona of Yoda the Jedi master in the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy. Please take a look @ this spiritual master and healer by clicking on these links :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjTspJMJF3I Bhante Dharmawara
Also
thekai.com/Bhante_Lives.html
The air pressure and its texture began to shift as a gentle but pervasive wave of oxygen filled the room and we heard thunder roiling in the not too far distance. As Caroline began to prepare her drum to sing and play for Jasin and Barbara ~ Giorgi and I made our way downstairs into the foyer and with torrents of rain now pouring down all around us ~ we made a mad dash for my car.
By midnight we were home and preparing to sleep.

Ray Iasiello
Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher
Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner
http://www.RayIasiello.com
617-852-6479

Meeting the Dalai Lama ~ April 1977 Harvard Faculty Club Cambridge MA

Posted by Ray under: Encounters With Remarkable Men and Women .

I didn’t get to see ‘His Holiness’ this time around ( 2009 – 2010 )
But
I clearly recall meeting him with several friends in April of 1977
@ the Harvard University Faculty Club
which was then located adjacent to Harvard Yard near Quincy and Harvard Streets.
We were all members of Kagyu Tinley Kunchab,
a small Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Center located @ that time in the apartment
( nearby on Franklin Street in Cambridgeport ) of one of the devotees
who was then a professor of ‘feminist studies’ @ Wellesley College.
Our meeting was brief and profound.
His Holiness got right to the point.
The Center leader thought it was a good idea if each of us offered HH peace flags upon meeting him.
The first thing he said to us upon our arrival was;
“ Keep your peace flags for yourselves, I don’t need them.”
He immediately followed this statement with ;
“ Everyone should get a job and contribute positively to improving society.”
Then ~
“ Keep your negativities to yourself
and transform them through the practices “ ( of Tibetan Buddhism ).
I rest my case.
Love Light Laughter
Ray
copyright 1977 / 2010 Ray Iasiello ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Ray Iasiello
Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher
Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner
http://www.RayIasiello.com
617-852-6479

Transformation for relating to Prostitute Situations

Posted by Ray under: postcards to Cleopatra / Resonance Repattering

I withdrew from a situation last year that I initially helped out with as Cleopatra called several men to please come and assist, rescue her from a major plumbing problem that had flooded her home. I told her that that her outreach to all of these guys was excessive, to say the least. Her reply to me was that she was using ‘the Power of her Pussy’ to get these guys worked up so that they would run over and help her out ~ she had no intention of paying them $ ~ everyone knew she was experiencing financial scarcity @ that time ~ She told me that each man would fall into the mistaken delusion that she was probably going to ‘put out’ for him.

Having dealt with ‘her Royal Highness’ for 7 years by that time; I observed that she staged her communications with each one so that he would believe that he was the only special one who was really helping her out.

Instead of turning to her family ~ her well-connected and capapble beautiful princess daughters ~ to help her out, she was enjoying the energy of using this crisis as a means to get herself and these men all worked up so that they would carry out her wishes to her own ‘unique’ specifications.

I left that situation in the light of a beautiful Summer day ~ and never went back.

A couple of months later I received an invitation from her . I turned it down.

I could tell that her ‘ modus operandi’ or ‘operational motive’ simply had not changed,

Swa ha ~

I just want to steer clear of this kind of ‘maya’ in my life

When I find myself putting on ”an act’ occcasionally to please or fulfill the expectations of aother person ~ I want to be more effectively authentic, ‘ for Real’ so that the situation is what it is supposed to be and nothing more.

Though this is my personal connection with the ‘Prostitute’ ; here are the new, coherent resonancies that I’m in tune with as a result of partiipating in the recent Repatterning facilitated by my colleague, Liz Tobin ( part of the ‘Transforming Money $ Archetypes and Karmic Patterns’ series ) :

ON I realize that money is a natural out-flow of living in integrity.

ON I spend my time wisely.

ON People can get what they need free of having to prostitute themselves.

ON Humanity lives in integrity and trusts in the Divine that our survival is
assured and we will always have what we need when we need it.

ON I treat myself with compassion and understanding around money
matters and the choices I have made. I am at peace with my
choices and I welcome change in the present. I am courageous,
aligned and safe.

The next session is coming up on April 14th, 2011 .

It is called ‘The Money $ Avoider’

As it’s being done by proxy you can participate just by registering, giving your permission, and be @ the location of your choice @ the time of the session. You can even go about doing other activities during the session. You’ll be sent a report once the session is completed.

Resonance Repatterning™ is an authentic way to create real change in both the inner and outer fabric of your reality. What really I like about it is that it is a ‘non-political’ way of doing so.

I’m looking forward to being in this proxy group session with you on April 14th, 2011 ~

with All Best Wishes for your

and for Our

collective Well- Being,

Ray eye

Ray Iasiello

Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher

Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner

http://www.RayIasiello.com

617-852-6479

Recent postcard to Cleopatra ~

My friend in Maine, who i visited last September;

She has a sticker in her enclosed patio kitchen ~

I can see her sitting across the table from me

with a happy smile on her face

and spontaneous laughter

about where she has been

and where she is now.

Behind her is the sticker

Which says;

‘She Who Laughs, Lasts’

Somehow ~ there was ‘no way’

that this did not remind me of

‘you’

A Dream Revealation from Gurumayi to Me

My 2,700 square foot penthouse loft in Boston’s Financial District was formerly occupied by the legendary photographer, Ralph King. My landlord, Jim Jason and neighbor Ted Jensen said that he partied high with models and raised a lot of hell there during the 1970’s. They also told me that he got out of town and went to the Big A ~ New York City where perhaps he might be less noticed by the authorities. While I did not tell my LL that my parents had named me Ralph ( and that I had changed my name to Ray in July of 1980 ), I did assure him that my hell-raising days were over and he had nothing to worry about. That was before I invited the beautiful creative genius Ramszy, who taught authentic Arabic dance to live with me when she lost her little apartment in East Boston. ( Her 2 adorable cats, Douba and Chiki also came along ~ they certainly eliminated any visits by mice and other rodentia from the 6th and 7th floors of 103 Broad Street ! ) It was also before Jo Ann Rose lived with me when her 40-something roommate of several years got involved with an insanely jealous and insecure teenager from Pakistan who just wanted to ‘totally eliminate’ JRF if you know what I mean.

Well ~ here it was, now 1997 and I was still living and teaching yoga there. I had survived these chapters of ‘co-inhabiting’ the space with Ramszy followed by JoAnn Rose. They had also survived as well; and each of my relationships with these two women had progressively evolved.

I often slept in the front ( Broad Street ) end of the loft in a room that was sheetrock on 3 sides while the front wall was rough hewn stone ~ ( obviously from a time when this building was on the harbor front adjacent to East India Row~ which still exists today and is the site of the two residential hi-rises known as Harbor Towers who’s construction back in the 1970’s kept the Harbor area from falling into total dereliction and I believe, actually sparked the Renaissance of the mid-1990’s gentrification of the entire area ~ including the ‘Big Dig’ and it’s replacement by the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

As I drifted off to sleep and awoke in the dawn I was greeted by the sentinel clock face of the Custom’s Tower ~ very surreal like a Dali or a Di Chirico painting ~ peering in from the diagonal ceiling mounted skylight window ~ in its pre-Marriot time- share conversion state, somewhat languishing from disuse.

One cold grey November day I awoke and sat up on the edge of my bed. I realized that my body was still in bed sleeping and that it was my ‘dreaming body’ that was awake. At the time I had a subscription to the magazine ‘American Photography’ ~ a copy of which was on the floor near the bed. I was drawn to pick it up having scanned it last night just before going to bed. Leafing through it in my lucid ‘waking’ dream , I exclaimed; “Oh, I didn’t notice, How about that? Here’s a picture of Gurumayi in black and white presiding over a satsang with a room full of devotees”. My eyes gazed upon Gurumayi’s profile serenely relating to these people for several breaths. Then ~ her face and body, seated in her chair ~ turned towards me.

It was like a camera zooming in and / or her face became close –up. It was Now in full living colour as well ( ! ) and she held my gaze with her eyes, steady and cool. I perceived that behind her laser-like expression was also a delightful joy that translated to me as ‘compassion’. She must have waited for me to get ’ that’ and without further hesitation she spoke to me directly : “ Ray, I am going to kill you ( the person who you are ) so that you can become the person that you can be”. She withdrew a pistol from her robe, aimed it @ me and this incident ended with an expansive flash of white light. I awoke about a half hour later and recalled this profound exchange for ‘some time’.

Soon, her prophetic statement would begin to come true. In 1998 I began to negotiate with and arranged to bring the 1^stHolographic Repatterning® practitioner to the Boston area, the charismatic and creative Susana. She initiated me into HR and we collaborated on exposing this wonderful and effective healing modality to many persons throughout greater Boston. During the course of these events~ it made total sense to me that I should be learning how to do this myself to enhance my own self -improvement and also to help empower others with this gentle but powerful form of ‘quantum healing‘. Please see my website for more information about my journey of becoming a certified practitioner of ( formerly ) Holographic ~ now referred to as ‘Resonance Repatterning ™ ’. http://www.rayiasiello.com/aboutHR.html ALSO : http://www.rayiasiello.com/HRprac.html

I hosted Susana 4 times in 1999. Through our enthusiastic efforts she gained numerous clients in her new career as a practitioner of HR. I became the organizer of a series of seminars working with Michelle, a certified teacher of the process on how to become a practitioner of HR. We all knew each other through our involvement in Siddha Yoga Meditation centered in South Fallsburg, New York in the Catskill mountains. Susana helped direct the Hatha Yoga Department there and had been a resident of the ashram for some time. ( From 1994 to 2004, my focus in Siddha Yoga was to offer my seva ( service) in the Hatha Yoga Department). I visited the Shree Muktananda Ashram 2 to 3 times a year for days to weeks @ a time, learning about the Siddha Yoga approach to Hatha Yoga and performing spiritual practices as made accessible by participating in the ashrams daily schedule.

In 1997 I visited the temple of ‘Bade Baba’ ~ Bhagawan Nityananda who had been Baba Muktananda’s guru. It was before dawn. In the temple meditating in the presence of Bhagwan Nityananda’s ‘murti’ ~ his larger than life statue in which his ‘spirit’ resided, I had a vision: Baba Muktnanda entered the temple quietly and he indicated to me to notice Susana who was also in the temple meditating. Baba conveyed to me that I was to take Susana by the hand and help lead her out of the ashram to another place so that the rest of her life could unfold as it was supposed to.

In 1998, approximately, Susana did leave SMA and returned to her mother’s home in Miami, Florida where she had grown up after her family had come to the USA from Castro’s Cuba. We had been in contact and I offered that she should come to Boston to teach some yoga workshops that I would organize. She mentioned offering the community here her services as an HR practitioner. When she actually got here, it was the Holographic Repatterning®that people wanted and needed from her and not the yoga. I helped arrange for her to hold some presentations @ the Finding Inner Peace Yoga and Stress Reduction Center( where I was on the faculty ) on Boston’s South Shore and she was a hit ~ someone who scores of people wanted to have individual sessions with. She took me out to dinner towards the end of her 1^st visit here @ Jae’s restaurant in Boston’s Theater District near ‘Park Plaza’ as an expression of her appreciation for my having helped her. After dinner, I told her about my vision and Baba’s guidance about telling me to help her transition to another chapter of her life after being in the ashram for so long. She stated that this was a total projection on my part and that in NO WAY did she feel that this was true and wanted me to know that she was not having any part of it.

Well ~ from that moment on our relationship became quite adversarial ~ she wanting to disassociate herself from me as much as possible except in regards to me connecting her with clients ~ and me wanting to continue to develop both a professional and personal relationship with her. I recall going through a couple of ‘dark nights of the soul’ during this painful yet creative time. Holographic Repatterning® certainly helped me deal with my pain and non-coherent patterns that were contributing to the situation. Actually ~ I realized that my focus @ that time as being in the role of ‘organizer’ was to reach out to persons who wanted to become empowered by learning how to become practitioners of HR. Susana’s focus, understandably, was about developing a broad base of clientele who she could help and who, in turn would help her to have a means of supporting herself.

There are many details and circumstances that occurred that do not need to be discussed here. She went on to get married to a colleague and long-time friend from Toronto and her career pathway continues to unfold. I went on and continued to host and hold together the budding community of Boston area students of HR; eventually becoming certified myself in 2002.

Off the record~ I have heard from a very reliable source ~ that Gurumayi stated that Repatterning was acceptable as an additional way that people could use to help heal themselves of their ‘samskaras’ ( karmic patterns often associated with pain, ignorance and limitation ) along with spiritual practice. Over time ~ now going on 11 years since then ~ I am a lot happier, a lot lighter, a lot healthier and there is so much less anger in my field of consciousness that I am a significantly different person. I truly feel much more on the way to fulfilling and manifesting the potential of who I can truly be in this lifetime.

Ray Iasiello Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher / Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner http://www.RayIasiello.com 617-852-6479

Baba Muktananda’s teaching to me about ‘Racial Consciousness’

I never met Swami Muktananda, Parmahansa ( 1908 – 1982, October ) in person when he was physically alive, but I have met him and had his darshan on several blessed occasions since my 1st involvement in Siddha Yoga Meditation in 1982, May

The following teaching occurred in Boston on a snowy Friday evening in the Winter of 1996 @ ‘the Castle’ located near the ‘Park Plaza’ and South End areas of Boston. It is one of those blessed occasions where Baba was with me and spoke to me directly:

I was attending the opening reception of an exhibition ‘Artwork by Women Artists of Color’ with my friend, JoAnn Rose. I introduced JoAnn to a woman friend who’s synasthesia paintings ( music as colour and form ) were being featured in the show. JoAnnRose, an artist herself who is very colorful and of Italian ancestry, grew up in the suburbs near Boston asked my friend ( who is Afro-American and – like myself )-of Cherokee ancestry: ” What is a woman of color?’ and ” Are there any pieces by white women artists in this show ?” My artist friend replied; ” No, only non-white women are women of color and there is no work by by white women artists in this show.”

Upon hearing this revlation from my artist friend and soul sister, I was stunned in an amusing way. Smiling politely, I went over to the table where refreshments were available, helping myself to some vegetables and a glass of sparkling water. I found myself enveloped in a sphere of consciousness separate from, but connected to the main tableau of the event unfolding. The dark shadows of ‘the Castle’ above the reception were suffused with a pink and golden light. Baba Muktananda was next to me taking a sip of sparkling water and holding a piece of celery and a small tomato in his other hand. Wearing robes of saffron and gold with socks and sandals , he was smiling, exuding his aura of joyful shakti. I could smell the distinct fragrance of sandalwood and feel the warmth of his presence as he leaned towards me and touched my shoulder, his eyes sparkling with delight and said, laughing; “Ray, your friends do not understand the higher Self, the Self of All that is beyond race, color or creed. They are interesting persons who are considered by your society to be fascinating and talented. But, they do not understand that we are All actually expressions of the One Self of All. “I smiled with appreciation upon receiving this teaching from the Guru ,who was no longer visibly present but who’s vibrance was resonating within me.

Soon JoAnn rejoined me and we left the reception , drove down to the Mass College of Art on Huntington Avenue and saw a performance of Korean jazz followed by dinner of risotto and wine @ ‘ Trattoria Il Panino ‘ ( now ‘Umbria’ ) on Franklin Street just around the corner from Broad Street, where my penthouse loft was located in Boston’s Financial District.

Gurumayi ( Swami Chidvilasananda ) has quoted Baba Muktananda on this same subject: ” We can live together in harmony when we understand that there is only One and that one is everyone.”

Ray Iasiello Certified Hatha Yoga Teacher

Certified Resonance Repatterning™ Practitioner

http://www.RayIasiello.com

617-852-6479