a gentle invitation to a meditative experience with flutes, mantra, and sacred dance, in a candle lit converted church with massive stained glass windows and the walls embedded with intention and prayer.
friday, july 8th
under the dome at the art of living center
948 w adams blvd, los angeles, ca 90007
this is a substance-free event
bring your own cushion & reusable water bottle, relaxed clothing recommended
6pm arrival for a 6:30pm start (door closes at 7pm), 9pm end
please allow time for parking, available in the lot behind the building and on the street
sharing circle with light vegan food & fruits served following the meditation
enter your name, email & send your donation ($50 suggested) to RSVP
you are welcomed to donate after the event
Nākaloka is an experiment with Vedic technologies, sound, movement, and a greater invitation to drink of the amrut of divination in community. We begin with the knowing that the choice to experience heaven is ever-present, available to us at all times…and yet made in the image of Great Mother/Great spirit, the Lord loves sovereignty, we will always be participating in this beautiful dance of will, understanding the divine irony that we are both to be surrendered, and yet fully participatory in this precious and limited time we exist in this cycle.
In Vedanta, there are 9 gates in Yoga that the practitioner of oneness/YOG must be mindful of. Two eyes, two ears, the mouth, the nostrils, the anus and genitals. These too are receivers and purveyors of the heavenly experience. With Nakaloka, we invite our copassengers on a journey of stepping into divination. Beginning with a sound journey guided by the flutes, breath/ether…one of five elements in yoga, is the first to be explored. Referred to as 'akasha' in Sanskrit, ether is the element that comes first in yogic and Ayurvedic thinking. Ether is without the firmness of earth, the coolness of water, the heat of fire or even the movement of wind. It is therefore the very essence of 'emptiness'. It is the premise of all possibility. One must empty first, to become…everything. The second element, Vayu, air, will be explored through the intertwining of vocalizations and flutes, the way that matter flows into the emptiness, to begin the dance of creative life.
Shakti builds in the body, as the technology of Sanskrit mantra is chanted into the environment and the bodies of the participants. This 3000 year old language where the vibration of the word matches the vibration of the thing it describes, will reformat the energy pathways of the physical body, beckoning in the third element, Agni, or fire, through the rippling baselines and sacred movement led portion of Nakaloka by way of a specially curated set…as we disrupt the veil between the temporal and the real, becoming Gods in motion, like the planets of the cosmos in constant rotation and dance. Here we intentionally build the fire in the body, burning what surfaces, in the fires of revelation. Even the God’s are fierce.
All of creative life asks for one to integrate the ever present forces of creation and destruction. If what we worship we shall become, by becoming aware of each 9 gates, both physical and spiritual conception…as we know all of faith is to be first described and then completely destroyed, as a vehicle for understanding is useful one moment and then a barrier the next…we enter into creative contract with existence and with one another, to step into higher and higher states of dharma.
Nākaloka, heavens gates, an act of cocreative embodiment and experience in community, ancient symbolic practice, and united faith. If we live life in patterns, here we practice patterning at our most intricate, beautiful, and harmonic.
Closing this ceremony by way of inviting Apas, Water, and Prithvi Earth, as the gateway of heaven is earthed and rooted into the being through grounding foods in a sacred sharing circle of noble listening and heart open share. We close here, to remember we are always invited to choose to live as guardians of an ever available heaven, here on earth, right there, within you.