The Viper Guru

 

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Introduction

The solid wall of heavy white surf broke loudly along the rocky western shores of Washington State. Kirsten sat on one of the hard flat black rocks that the ancient geological violence had pushed up to the surface of the earth so long ago  and tried to meditate. But her active and highly creative 23 year old mind somersaulted from on thought to the next: 

"Am I doing it right? My legs hurt. Was that the Blue Jewel or just my imagination? Did Swamiji look at me this morning? Your hopeless Kirsten, just hopeless!"

Twenty minutes passed as the tide went out and Kirsten started to smell the afternoon decay of low tide. The morning haze had burned off and it looked like it was going to be another beautiful warm day again. She opened her eyes feeling a little defeated and slowly allowed the Mantra she'd been trying to drown out her persistent thoughts with  fade back into the jumble of distractions in her head. She stretched her long legs out along the rock and enjoyed the warmth of the sun shining down. Her soft mocha colored skin glowed in the sunlight.

Three months had passed since she had first arrived at Serpent Goddess Rising Ashram or SGRA as everyone that stayed there called it. The stormy spring weather was still battering the coast line when she plunked down her backpack on the front steps of the main hall. Mother Deva had met her at the front door with a big smile and a hug. 

"Come in child. Come in outta that nasty old rain and let the Goddess embrace you."

Something had broke right then and there in Kirsten that first night as she stood in the dimly lighted entryway of the  ashram deep in Mother Deva's tender warm yet fierce hug. Kirsten's cascade of tears and sobs had mixed with the the flood of rain water running off her clothes and with Mother Deva's soft cooing, "There, there honey. You're safe now, you're safe now." 

She was escorted into the large hall. They were just about to serve dinner, always vegetarian Kirsten later learned, and that night it was a type of lentils, a chili sauce wrapped in a flour tortilla. Twenty five SGRA Perms (full time ashram residents) and another 10 visitors all stood around an extremely long light colored wooden table that occupied half the room. Seven of the Perms wore cherry blossom colored hemp robes and sported shaved heads. Staring up at the high peaked vaulted ceiling Kirsten was amazed at it's rustic comforting sturdiness. Large weathered beams ran the length the room and in the at the very top of the ceiling a pyramid shaped pinwheel of solid logs jutted out over everything supporting this part of the building. The west end of the room was one massive wall of bay windows that overlooked the clifftop forest and offered up a stunning view of the sun as it dropped into pink, purple, red and blue hues of a sunset into the Pacific Ocean. Just in  front of the widows Kirsten noticed a solid red square platform raised a few feet above the end of the table. And in the back of the room to the east towering over everything stood a massive statue that to Kirsten resembled the Virgin Marry, but it had light blue skin, six arms, and an array of weapons in each hand. 

Before she could begin to try and take this all in a loud chime was struck and one of the robed Perms, a near carbon copy of a young Sinead O'Connor stepped up on the raised platform and began a high pitched melodic chant. In unison everyone at the table turned towards the massive statue at the back of the room. Kirsten, dazzled and confused tried to fumble her way through the ritual. A deep warm male voice whispered in her ear, "Here, it's easy. Let me show you. First, pivot to the east, step out from the table and bow deep to the Mother Goddess, next , stand again, pivot west, kneel, and bow all the way to the floor to Guru Swami Shivaserpentanada." 

As Kirsten stood up and faced the raised platform there standing before her was a tall middle aged man in a long flowing white robe, with long black flowing hair, a gray streaked full beard, a strong hawkish nose and eyes that almost violently pierced straight through her and she knew there was no hiding from this being, there would be no secrets; crying in Mother Deva's arms had just been  a cleanse so she could face the radiant purity of Swamiji. 

"A new one has arrived," Swamiji's voice boomed over the chanting as he gestured towards Kirsten. 

The chant stopped immediately and everyone stared at Kirsten, but she didn't notice. She was fixated on the Guru's eyes. Her mind raced as his stare bore down on her. His voice was commanding but reassuring, enthusiastic but calming, powerful but gentle.  

"Are those the eyes of Jesus? The voice of the Buddha? Or Joseph Stalin?" she thought. 

And with each shift in her thoughts she could feel energy in her body jumping around as well. Something was happening and she didn't know if she was ready for it or not. She could feel her long tight dreadlocks begin to sway as her head started to make slow involuntary rotations. Small tremors shook through her legs and arms. And at the base of her spine there was an intense heating starting to build. Through this tiny storm that was erupting in her she vaguely heard the room break into a chant again, but this one was different than the high soprano from earlier. This was a deep bass tone, almost guttural, Kirsten thought. And there was a very slow rhythmic clapping just under the chant. 

"Come to Swamiji my child. Yes, let go and come to him," Kirsten heard Swami Shivaserpentanada saying to her. Though she couldn't tell whether his voice was  inside or outside of her head. But for a fluttering second her own English major voice broke in and said, "Why is he referring to himself in the third person. 

But then she was up on the platform standing before him. And he was all there was. From behind his back he brought out what looked to Kirsten like a feather duster made of peacock feathers. He swiped across her head and then along the length of her body rapidly. The mild tremors in her body had now become an ice bath shake-fest. Her head was rotating faster and faster and the speed of the chant was increasing as well. She sensed to people moving up behind her and placing their hands gently on her shoulders. Somehow she knew it was Mother Deva and the Sinead O'Connor clone. Then the Guru placed his left hand firmly on top of her head. She could feel the pressure of his strong fingers digging through her thick beautiful coils and seizing her scalp. Then his head began to rotate in time with hers, his eyes closed, he threw his head back, and Kirsten saw a rainbow halo above him just before her eyes slammed shut. His hand withdrew from the top of her head and a rainbow of tracers followed his fingers. "How am I seeing this?" Kirsten thought, "My eyes are closed aren't they?" 

The strange sensation of falling backwards into the arms of Mother Deva and Sinead and at the same time rushing out of her body through the top of her head jangled Kirsten to her core and her brain screamed, "Wait! What's happening? Yes, no, I can't, but I want to. Will I come back?" A bright white form was rising out of her body now following the rainbow tracers left by Swami Shivaserpentanada's fingers. But in her solar plexuses a small black knot sat as heavy as a dead star and this anchored her in fear and hesitation. Then she heard his voice from somewhere inside and outside of her, from a place of no time and all time. Again, it was powerful and yet gentle, but just underneath, just on the edge of her auditory range she could her a continuous background hissing. The voice and the serpent's his said simply, "Let go." And she did.

 

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The Viper Guru: Chapter 2

Kirsten stood up from the rock she'd been siting on and walked down to the pebbled beach. She found a small patch of soft gray sand between the mounds of green and brown  musky eel grass and various colored tide smoothed stones. The cool sand felt wonderful between her toes. She began the series of  twelve asana she'd been taught. She was slowly gaining more pride and confidence in her body again. 

Before she'd arrived at the ashram she'd been living in a small dark apartment in Northern California with a roommate who's multiply drug addictions were quickly spiraling out of control. Kirsten had enrolled herself in Medina Arts Community College across the street from her apartment and had gotten a part time job at a family restaurant within walking distance. This was the third time she had tried to attend college full time since she'd graduated from high school four years earlier. Each time for various reasons she kept dropping out after two or three semesters. 

The first time she'd dropped out was after her then current boyfriend Tilton, a beautiful bad boy she'd been with for seven months, who finally hit the big time when he stole a '72 Corvette and wrapped it around a telephone pole after a high speed chase involving seven police cars and a highway patrol helicopter. He survived the crash, but was serving a twelve year sentence in a wheelchair. Kirsten had fought with him hours before he'd gone on his grand theft auto bender and effectively ended any chance they had of a normal life together. But Kirsten still felt a deep guilt and sense of responsibility. And bulimia soon followed the dark moods and uncertainty. For a while she thought maybe she could vomit the feelings away. Maybe if she just got it all out she could get Tilton out of her heart once and for all. It wasn't like she didn't know what was happening. The rational side of her mind could see all the symptoms clearly and coldly. Her mother was a psychologist at a large mental health institute near Portland and her father had been a social worker before the divorce and he'd returned to his native Jamaica to find his  Rastafarian roots.

 Her parents were a great introduction into the ways the soft revolving cushion otherwise known as mental health clinics worked. So she'd spent a few months in a Fluoxetine finger painting like coma until a hunger arose again and she ripped herself out of the smiling pithy whirlpool of therapists, group sessions, nurses, and cheap Monet lithographs on every wall. Sunny Visions, the name of the clinic, soon became more like Luna Hallucinations for her and she started to question why she was there. She continued to focus on Tilton thinking he was the cause of her emptiness, but the closer she looked at it, when she could focus past the meds and be truly objective, she found that the emptiness had been there a lot longer than any of the three to eight month relationships she'd been jumping in and out of since she was thirteen. The emptiness had been there much much longer. 

Just before she entered Sunny Visions her aunt had given her a book titled "Filling the Emptiness with the Creative Goddess". It had sat on her tiny nightstand collecting dust on it's bone white cover for most of her stay there at Sunny Visions. But on a day when she felt like she just couldn't squeak out the energy or enthusiasm to gel into the supine med-induced cheeriness of  Sun Vision's rigid daily schedule she decided to stay in bed. More out of boredom than interest in the book she leafed through a few pages.  The myriad cliches and empty platitudes discouraged her at first. "This is just a literary version of the antidepressants," she thought to herself. 

A nurse came in to her room, all rooms were door less at Sunny Visions. A thin ironically non-intrusive shaded curtain stood in for a door. The nurse, Janie, Kirsten thought her name was,  tried to coax her to group.

"Can I get you anything sweetie? Do you want to come out and maybe listen at least today?"

"No, I'm vegetating just fine right here. Thanks." 

"A negative attitude isn't going to help you recover dear. Rest if you need to, but keep that in mind."
 

" Vegetables are positive. They do a body good. All the vitamins, I think."

"Well, when you are feeling less sassy please come join us."

Kirsten rolled away from the nurse's words and went back to the book. She heard the curtain swish back into place. The book was taking her no where, so she fell back on a childish trick she had learned in Middle School. She closed her eyes and asked the Universe to provide her with guidance. She flipped the book open to a random page and without looking placed her index finger firmly on the page. Amazingly, her finger had landed directly on the start of a new paragraph about half way down the page. Usually when she humored herself and tried this trick she ended up in the middle of a sentence somewhere and she had to either jump forward or start at the beginning to get it to make any sense. But this time a haunted shiver ran up her spine as she slowly read and re-read the words on the page. 

"Nature abhors a vacuum. But that sliver of the vacuum in you is a necessity. Without it you would never move beyond the unmanifest superposition that we all occupy as pure potentiality before the creative urge of the Goddess draws the serpent energies back down into the Earth plane of existence. By ignoring this creative urge in your life you dishonor the Goddess. You must grasp this creativity with all of your will power and focus it laser-like on reuniting with the Goddess. Get up and move even if it feels like it will break you. The Goddess hates inertia." 

-Swami Shivaserpentantanada

An hour later Kirsten had checked herself out of Sunny Visions. Since her bulimia wasn't life threatening they couldn't hold her, though they tried. She caught a bus north to Portland to her mother's house. Her mother lived in the Sunset Corridor in Northwest Portland. Kirsten had grown up in the modest single story sky blue 3 bedroom rambler. The suburban neighborhood with a slight Hippy overlay, the forested mountains to the east, and as it names suggested, the spectacular sunsets all still felt like home to Kirsten. But the house itself after her parents divorced and her father left for Jamaica  felt like an emotional fortress under siege.

When she arrived at home her mother was gone. It was the middle of the afternoon. The four hour bus ride had cleared her head somewhat. The passage from "Filling the Emptiness with the Creative Goddess" had replayed in her mind over and over similar to what she would later learn was called jappa in Hinduism. She went to her room and stared at the walls plastered with a prepubescent explosion of various pop idol idolatry that had occupied some much of her teen years. "Get up and move even if it feels like it will break you" spun though her head again almost knocking her off her feet with it's power. With a sudden impulsive surge she began ripping all the posters, pages from teen mags, and glitter coated bouncy hormone propaganda off her walls. When she finished she sat on the floor in a pile of pop star wreckage. The soothing Shiva blue bare walls of her room faced her now and she finally felt like she had purpose and direction in her life. That purpose and direction still wasn't defined, but in her heart she felt that it was somehow deeply connected to Swamiserpentanada's quote.   

Just as she placed the last stack of glossies in the garbage can in her mother's L shaped Island kitchen with all it's natural woods and integrated appliances she heard the front door unlock. Kirsten remembered it had been on of the main points her parents had fought over just before the split up. Her father had been well on his way into Rastafarian veganism and felt there was no need to spend $14K on the kitchen upgrade her mother had envisioned from the moment she got promoted at the hospital.  Not wanting to frighten her mother, Kirsten met her in the living room.
 

"Wait, mom, just calm down. Let me explain before you freak on me," Kirsten said trying to get the first volley off against what she knew was coming.

"You're off your meds again. I knew it. I can't have this Kirsten. Your going back right now. I've got some pull with Dr. Evans. I'll get you back..."

"Can we slow down mom? Just sit here on the couch with me and let me explain. This isn't what you think it is. I know what I'm do..."

"No, you think you know what you are doing, but you don't. You have a serious psychological and physical problem and you need to take some responsibility for it. And you won't then I have to do it for you."

Kirsten remained silent. She was angry, but the anger was cold. And her new mantra was on repeat again. Her mother removed her glasses and pulled her frosted brown hair out of it's bun. She'd gone completely Palin with her looks soon after Kirsten's father had moved out. Kirsten decided to try and wait out the stand off. Her mother also stood stock in her living room shrine to white monochromaticism, a not so subtle homage to the sterility of the hospital room, Kirsten always thought.  Kirsten was already planning her escape. She had $6000 in the bank she'd saved over the past eight years. That would get her away from her mother and back into community college, she thought. 

"Somewhere south of Portland with less rain," she thought to herself. "The Goddess hates inertia, The Goddess hates inertia," she repeated silently. 

"It's too late now, but you are going back in the morning. I'll make the call tonight before Sunny Vision closes. Don't fight me on this Kirsten. I just want the best for you. Let's get you well my dearest," her mother said stroking Kirsten's face and putting on her best "Everything will be fine," pandering therapist's smile. 

Kirsten didn't retreat or fight or draw up the hysterics. She smiled back and nodded her head gently. A "good daughter" smile sealed it and her mother moved off to unpack the rest of her day's stresses. She continued her ruse sitting down to eat the chicken fettuccine alfredo her mother made for dinner. She stayed in the living room and watched a few sit-coms mainly to show her mother that she wasn't planning on sneaking off and vomiting her meal back up. Once her mother had gone to bed Kirsten quickly stuffed the bare minimums into her backpack and left the house. It was well after midnight when she left. Out on the street at the end of the driveway under a beige cover sat  her father's pride and joy, a 1966 MG Midget convertible. After her parent's last drag out screaming brawl he'd left their house in the middle of the night and never returned. The MG had remained parked there ever since. The keys to it had also stayed on the same rusty key hanger in the garage. She didn't know for sure if it would even start. Her dad had kept it in near mint  condition, but he'd been gone for almost two years and neither Kirsten or her mother had some much as taken the car cover off to wash it. 

As she made her way down the driveway she could feel the damp late spring air on her face. She'd thrown on a lime green hoodie and a pair of black pair of shorts. It was uncomfortably cool. The car cover was covered in equally cool condensation and her fingers stung a little as she pulled the cover off. She could smell the Pacific Northwest mildew roll off the car as well as she freed it from it's long confinement under the car cover.  The weak yellow streetlight shone down on the dark hunter green sleek lines of the tiny car. Her father was 6'4 and always had a tough time jamming his big frame into the small cockpit like interior, but Kirsten had inherited her 5'5, 116 pound petite frame from her mother, though her light mocha colored skin and hazel eyes were all her father's genetic gifts. And her dreadlocks were a defiant connection to him. 

Her father had taught her how to drive on the beach when she was fourteen. He wanted her to be able to handle a four speed before she got her driver's license. She'd spent many hours going through the gears up and down the local beaches that allowed cars on them. She sat down in the driver's seat and felt the cool black leather against her legs. Saying a small prayer to no one in particular, she inserted the key, turned over the ignition, and let out a soft "Yes!" as the long dormant engine started up. The light in her mother's window came on and Kirsten knew she didn't have much time. Revving the engine to warm it up quicker she slammed the shifter into reverse and pulled a quick three point turn. And then she was gone, heading south away from the familial inertia.  

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The Viper Guru: Chapter 3

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The Viper Guru: Chapter 4

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The Viper Guru: Chapter 5

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The Viper Guru: Chapter 6

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