This is a sample chapter from Chocoholic Yogis in Cyberspace, a compilation of the best discussions from the Moving Into Stillness discussion group.

I am seeking a publisher for this book and have a full book proposal and an additional sample chapter for anyone interested in assisting with the publishing process. Please contact me if you would like to publish the book or can assist in any way with getting the book published.

Thank you,
Suzanne LaForest

Introduction

“I maintain that the truth is a pathless land and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.”

With this statement on August 2, 1929, J. Krishnamurti disbanded the 3000 member Order of the Star. The Order was founded eighteen years prior when the Theosophist mystical order proclaimed sixteen year-old Krishmanurti to be their long-awaited World Teacher. Once he completed his studies, Krishnamurti was to lead the Order’s members to enlightenment.

That was the plan. Instead, at his first appearance, he gave an incendiary speech renouncing his position as World Teacher. He refused to become a guru. He went on to become one of the twentieth century’s most important spiritual teachers. He lectured and wrote books. Believing education was the key to raising people with the ability to self-reference, he founded schools throughout the world.

From 1974 to 1979, Erich Schiffmann taught yoga at Krishnamurti’s London school. In 1996 Mr. Schiffmann’s bestselling book Yoga, the Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness was published. His book was like the survival guide to the pathless land, the yoga equivalent of how to make your own compass and forage for the tastiest berries. It was one of the few yoga books that did not so much instruct readers in how to practice yoga as inspire them to search within for their own unique practices.

Two readers inspired by the book were Bob Cox and SuZette Estell. In 1998, they developed a website honoring Erich Schiffmann’s teachings. The website included a discussion board to which Mr. Schiffmann himself was invited to participate. He did. For the past five years this yoga master has daily assumed the lotus position in front of his computer and logged into the Moving Into Stillness community. The Moving Into Stillness Community has flourished into one of the largest yoga discussion boards in the world.

In Erich Schiffmann’s virtual ashram, a tribe of wanderers has formed. As the nomads travel through their own pathless lands, they shout encouragement to each other across the void of cyberspace. The adventurers share the pitfalls and successes they have encountered on their own journeys. They prevent each other from following well-worn paths, and help each other persevere on the trails which they must constantly fashion anew. The pathless land still has no paths, but it is less lonely, and the trip goes faster when friends help navigate the way.

I started my own journey through the pathless land of truth from a unique vantage point: I surveyed the entire terrain from the second story balcony of my college dorm. In my Sophomore year of college, I had an awakening experience, and that experience has always informed my beliefs about yoga.

Before my awakening experience, I was a regular college student at Tulane University. I attended classes and went out with friends to bars. I did not meditate. I did not play with crystals. I did not pray. I did not particularly believe in God.
The most spiritual I got was getting my tarot cards read one time. I did not know what an awakening experience was and I was not seeking one.

Even though I did not seek it out, it happened. One day, I woke up earlier than normal, three hours before my first class. I felt wide-awake, like when I was a little kid and I would jump right out of bed, ready to start the day. I had no need to hit the snooze button.

Not only did I feel particularly energetic, especially for so darn early in the morning, a new voice spoke within me. In addition to my usual critical mind voice, I heard a new, a more confident voice speaking from my heart. The exchange within me went something like this:

Heart: This day is going to change you life.

Mind: Yeah, right. There you go again. You are so full of yourself!

Heart: This is for real.

Mind. How is it going to change my life?

Heart: It will.

Mind: Why is this happening to me?

Heart: Why ask why?

Mind: You’re kidding right? That’s a beer commercial.

Heart: Why ask why?

I guess that commercial was deeper than I thought.

For about an hour my mind kept trying to convince me that I was on a monumental ego trip. However, my heart voice was so softly confident, eventually my always self-conscious mind surrendered the fight. For the rest of the day, my heart voice was in the driver’s seat.

While this surreal conversation was taking place, I showered, dressed, and applied my makeup. Those everyday activities were different from usual. I was engrossed in every tiny action. When I showered, I reveled in the feeling of water on my skin. When I dressed, instead of throwing on my usual collegiate uniform of cut-offs and a t-shirt, I selected a silky pair of pants and a flattering red shirt. When I fixed my hair, I styled it so it fell prettily on my shoulders. When I applied my makeup, I did so with care, even love.

I lived on the second story of my dorm. After dressing, I sat on my balcony to watch the sunrise. Today, I would say I meditated. Sitting on the concrete ledge,
I felt like I downloaded a whole belief system. It felt like my ideas were coming from outside of me, but I knew that they were coming from within me. I felt as if I had become infinite, or more precisely, that I always had been and I had just now noticed it.

The ideas that filled me were not religious or political; they were the simple expressions of a need for love that lives in every human heart. The most persistent idea, the theme that ran across the whole meditation, was that we are not separate. We are intensely connected. Like clouds scudding across the sky, we are moved by a larger system and only appear to be individuals.

After meditating, I walked to class more slowly than usual, feeling the swinging rhythm of my stride. As I made my way across campus, a friend stopped to chat with me. As we talked, I listened without at the same time rummaging around for a witty response, or glancing at my watch. I trained my attention fully on my friend. I trusted that I would know the perfect thing to say when he stopped speaking. I trusted that I would get to class at the appropriate time. And I did.

The Milton class I was taking that semester was beginning to annoy me. Many of the students didn’t bother to read the assigned book. However, on this day, I didn’t raise my hand once. Instead, I listened. Even though the other students might not have something wise to say about Paradise Lost, I heard that every person was trying to express herself. Each one of them, even the ones who normally made me cringe when they raised their hands, were a unique expression of the new infinite me. I did not have to prove I was right to feel good about myself. I did not perceive the other students as rivals for the professor’s attention. I saw them as my teachers, as a part of me. I felt humbled, not grandiose as I had feared at the start of the day.

I wish I could say that I never stopped feeling that spacious and that humble, but after a few days time, the sensation slipped entirely away. I continued to be a normal college student. I didn’t mediate or pray or get religion. In time, I learned a name for my experience, mostly through English classes where I studied Blake and Walt Whitman, but I did not seek out information. I would not have even known what subject to look up in the library.

For a long time, I rarely told anyone about my experience. In my mind, I believed having an awakening experience made me better than everyone else; in my heart, I knew I was not special. So, I did what I always do when I’m confused. I shut up. Today I talk about my awakening. I figured out how to resolve the contradiction of having a rare spiritual experience and yet not feel like I was superior others.
Now I know in my mind and heart that I am not special. If I can be awakened, anyone can.

Over the next two years, sometimes I would feel an echo of the intense feeling I felt during my awakening experience. Once in a while, I would catch myself truly listening to someone for five minutes. I had some wild, inspired experiences. One time, for example, I abruptly gave up cigarettes after feeling compelled to spend a day in Audobon park. I have no more idea of what brought on those moods than I do of what instigated my awakening.

In my Senior year at Tulane, I took yoga to satisfy a P.E. requirement. When I moved through the poses, I recognized a hint of the feeling I felt on the day I awakened. I listened more. I felt more confident. The feeling was not as intense, but for the first time, I could induce myself into that energized, more conscious state. I have taken yoga ever since, becoming more dedicated with time. Yoga is like taking elocution lessons for my heart voice.

Because of the way that I came to yoga, I have always done yoga for the spirituality. I was not one of those people who took it to get more flexible and then got hooked on the good vibe. Before joining the Moving Into Stillness discussion board, though, I had never taken a yoga class where the teacher did more than hint at the spiritual purpose behind the practice. In a class, we might do some Om chanting, or sit still for a few minutes, but rarely did the teacher specifically focus on creating a spiritual experience. Most teachers seemed afraid to scare off students by talking openly about spirituality. To me, there was an element of hubris in it, as if the teachers thought the students might not get what they got, the way I felt when I did not talk about my awakening.

As I advanced through the different levels of classes, the instruction became not more spiritual but more gymnastic. I yearned to meditate. I sought to do the poses in a way that directly expressed the quality of listening and truly hearing, the sense of doing without needing to control, that had first brought me to yoga.

I discovered the Moving Into Stillness website in the fall of 1998. Erich Schiffmann was the first person who ever wrote about yoga in the way that I wanted to do it. He placed the focus on feeling spacious, energetic, and intuitive. Spirituality was not an incidental benefit, it was the driving purpose behind his practice. I suppose Iyengar wrote about yoga’s spiritual focus in his Introduction to Light on Yoga, but Erich wrote simply, without using any confusing Sanskrit words. In his writing, he seemed to seek to genuinely convey his teachings, rather than impress readers with his scholarship. He wrote with the same humility I had once felt.

When I read the conversations taking place on the discussion board that was part of his website, it was like getting a CB radio link to my fellow travelers in the pathless land. For the first time I met other people who were talking directly about spirituality and how to bring more of it into their yoga practices. They talked about it in concrete ways; they talked about it in philosophical ways. I was totally hooked.

By logging into our discussion board daily, I have learned tips for doing yoga poses, meditating, doing breath practices, and a million other particulars. However, what has most drawn me to our discussion board is not the advice, but the support. Listening to my heart voice, and having the courage to trust it, is the reason I do yoga. Having friends that support that belief and challenge me to live by it has motivated me to return to the discussion board daily.

A lot of other members are logging into the discussion board for the fellowship as well. Some of us have been speaking to each other for over five years. Many of us have met in person, and it seems like more and more of us meet every day. I think the camaraderie of our discussion board reflects that we practice yoga in order to generate more love.

There is one special friend that I particularly look forward to talking to in our community. I think it is remarkable that Erich participates in our discussion board. I did not know when I first joined that he was a famous yogi, that his book and videos were bestsellers, but I instantly recognized that he was an outstanding teacher. I lived in Maryland at the time I joined the community, but through the Internet I was able to speak to him directly and read his conversations with others.

Despite our now living on the two points that define a line drawn straight across the middle of the United States – he in L.A. and me in Wilmington, NC – Erich is a regular presence in my life. Our online relationship has given me the opportunity to apprentice with him, and form a friendship that I’d doubt I’d have even if I lived in L.A. Over the years, I’ve studied with him in person many times, and every experience has only reaffirmed my initial impression of him as an exceptional teacher.

I know a lot of other discussion board members, many of whom have now become trained by Erich as teachers, feel that they, too, have found a mentor in Erich through our community. As webmaster, I feel proud to play a part in helping people connect to Erich’s teachings and to others who share his vision.

I became webmaster in 2001 when the original webmaster, Bob Cox, asked me to take over the website management duties. I think he asked me because I was the only longstanding member of the board who knew how to update a website.
Bob knew I was a technical writer, but he probably didn’t know about my life long love of graphic design. I already had a lot of ideas for making the discussion board and website easier to use, and I was excited to take the reins of the Moving Into Stillness website.

At the time I took over the webmastering duties, our beloved first host, Webb.net, had gone black during the dot-com bust. Bob cobbled together a temporary solution, but after the easy-to-use Webb.net software, using the tightly threaded links and ugly font of the interim software felt like being kicked from a castle to the servant’s quarters.

Therefore, my first order of business as webmaster was to find a new home for our discussion board. On our new host, EzBoard, the phoenix rose from the ashes. EzBoard has even more features than Webb.net. It is the Versailles of community hosts and in this luxurious home our community has flourished.

In fact, we’ve flourished so much, that we may be victims of our own success. The online discussions fill over 10,000 pages of text when printed. Much of the conversations are exciting riffs about yoga philosophy, teaching methods, postures, meditation, and trusting one’s inner wisdom. A lot of it is chitchat about the weather, silly jokes, and waving to people who happen to be online at the same time.

I enjoy logging in every day to both the intellectual discourse and the friendship. However, I’m also aware as host of the forum that the volume of material is daunting for a new member to read.

As the posts proliferated, Erich and I sketched out a plan to compile the conversations into a book. With his support, I spent months reviewing old posts.

You will find the best of the Moving Into Stillness community in this book. In six years time, I have seen a lot of the same questions come up repeatedly, and I have included popular discussions as well as interesting, unusual, and just plain fun conversations that have come up over the years.

Online, we post up quick rough drafts, with many punctuation, spelling, and grammar errors. For readability, I’ve edited the obvious errors out. I have tightened up the writing. I have omitted lots, but hopefully left the most interesting bits.

Because we are a website, we often include links within our posts. Rather than interrupt the flow of the text with web addresses, you will find all the links indicated by underlining and referenced in sidebars. You will also find books, videos, and audio recordings our members recommend. This unique treasure trove of resources is, I think, one of the most valuable aspects of this book.

Because we no longer have access to the original material on Webb.net or the other software, this book includes only discussions from our latest version of the community, hosted on EzBoard. Fortunately, Bob Cox edited much of the Webb.net discussions before we lost them, and those archives are on the website for anyone who wishes to read those posts.

I hope after reading this book, you will feel inspired to join us. Welcome, new member.

Copyright 2005 Suzanne LaForest. All Rights Reserved.