Despite it being one of the most uplifting, deep, and synchronistic experiences of my life, I’ve held off writing anything about Resonance up until this lazy, breezy afternoon in my yurt.  The festival left me speechless, floored to be honest. It’s been multiple weeks, and I still feel like I am in its afterglow. The whole weekend felt dream-like, illusory-- all while being wildly visceral and all-encompassing.  It’s so hard to write about something so intangible, ya know? How can one e...

I first met Noah Hoffeld in Taos NM, at the Hanuman Temple Grand Opening and Guru Purnima celebration. My wife, and I were rocking out some parking-lot Seva. We were standing at the entrance on the road in official looking traffic-vests, and basically just jiao-ing a bunch of beautiful bhaktas from trying to enter the full parking lot near the Ashram— redirecting them towards the overflow parking nearer in towards town. As the sun began to set and our duties started to wind down, I saw a...

This Maui Ram Dass Retreat was the first real time I traveled alone.  My wife and I met at 14, so almost everything I’ve done, has been with her, seemingly attached at the hip.  To come to this new place, and to be guided by only my intuition, I kept likening myself to an outdoor cat. One minute I would be talking to people in riveting conversation, then the next moment I would have an intuitive pull to take a stroll, only to bump into the perfect person to share with.  Just like an out...

I come back from the Ram Dass’ 5th annual Spring on Maui retreat feeling as if I just got done with a week long ecstasy binge.  I have a 100+ degree fever, I am sunburnt, it’s tough to move, everytime my throat tickles it snowballs into a coughing fit, I feel like I can barely keep my eyes open, I have chills so I have to swaddle myself in a blanket at all times-- and you know what?  I love it all. I love it all. I have to go back to my dreaded place of employment tomorrow, and I love th...

You are so foreign to me

It’s intoxicating

Watching your intoxication

With the nature that so buzzes around

You have a favorite bird call
It’s amazing
The way you look at flowers

We pass by on the trail

Giving every mushroom the love
And the presence of the Dalai Lama
You are so foreign to me
It’s intoxicating
Watching your movements
How you roar
Sometimes so softly
From the cloudy ripples of your blankets
Seeing you melt once again
As a cat walks on you for the twelfth time today
As time slip...

The day was ending at Madhuban Ashram, as the sun’s last golden rays shined out as it nestled its way down between the peaks of the Himalayan valley.  Just miles from Kainchi and Nainital, Madhuban, the Himalayan branch of the Shri Aurobindo ashrams, posed a logistical launching point and picturesque backdrop for the longest section of Saraswati’s Himalayan Yoga Yatra.  This well-run and seva-soaked ashram sat overlooking one of the most gorgeous valleys of the Himalayan foothills, holdi...

A perfectly balanced tightrope walk through the brimming forest canopy, Land of the Lush is intentfully tight and driven, yet dripping with a loose playfulness that will entice and enthrall fans of varied genres.  The sonic equivalent of an illuminating stroll through an electronic jungle; exploratory while still remaining distinctly and authentically "Polish Ambassador," Land of the Lush emanates a welcoming groove that invites us all inside to freely play and discover.

Seein...

A swirling chrysanthemum of auditory delicacies offered up on a shiny silver platter, Lotus’ surprise new album, Frames Per Second, clocking in at nineteen songs, is a proverbial feast for fans of the five-petaled jamtronica outfit.  After branching out into a new direction for their fun, poppy, and lyric heavy 2016 album Eat The Light, it seems Lotus has returned affectionately to their planted roots, creating an album drenched in deep, dark psychedelic jams, bright golden-light guitar...

Maharaj-ji was slippery.  His devotees were always trying to track him down, to keep him in one place, to hold on to his form.  When he left his body in September of 1973, he left no books, no written teachings, no real instructions. Recently, at a hotel in Chitrakoot, our friend Mahesh Das showed Raghu Markus an old photograph of the American satsang when they gathered to commemorate Neem Karoli Baba’s passing.  On the surface level of the photograph, everyone seemed fine, but Raghu, be...

On one of the final days of our Himalayan Yoga Yatra: Following in the Footsteps of Ram Dass with Saraswati Markus, Pavan Das and Friends, we were all sitting in a circle in a candlelit room, sharing our collective tentativeness about the reintegration process back into our normal routines.  After such profound and heart-opening experiences, how could we possibly go back to our normal, samsaric cycles of daily life? Also, atop from that, how would we possibly communicate this kind of exp...

As we continue on our journey, bathing ourselves in the deep bhav of the land of Deva Bhumi, we will inevitably come to one of the most auspicious holy sites in India, known as Kakrighat, Almora.  This enchantingly lucious and craggy area that is now home to the Kakrighat Temple and Ashram, has posed a meditative backdrop and spiritual merging point for great saints, such as Swami Vivekananda, Sombari Baba Maharaj and Neem Karoli Baba.  While these great holy beings never physically cros...

Sadhana, our journey on the spiritual path, is a series of unfoldings, an undying chain of transformations in which we shine the light of love and awareness onto the spaces within ourselves that need work.  Just as we are within the universe, the entire universe is within us, and that means all of it, including the darkness.  There are areas within ourselves which we fear to venture into.  These murky, shadowy depths cause many trepidations and anxieties to swath over us subconsciously,...

Darshan is to bask in the presence of a saint or holy being; to be so fully swathed in their presence, that their innate radiance shines even within you.  While topically the experience may seem like people hanging out in an interpersonal exchange, there is something much deeper going on.  It’s an opening of sorts, to the intrinsic, connected oneness that underlies what we generally experience as a dualistic reality.  To experience true darshan just once on this physical plane is to be i...

    Kainchi Ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas

Welcome to Deva Bhumi

“This is a very special place, filled with the vibrations of great beings who lived in the area and did their practices here.  I have just had a very special experience, unlike any other before.”
-Swami Vivekananda on Deva Bhumi

Certain areas on this planet are, simply put, energetically charged.  While we may not always have an explanation as to why that can fully fit into words, there is a certain innate f...

Upon returning from Rootwire, I was fired up.  Festivals always fill me with lots of raw power, pulsating energy, and a whole boatload of idealism, but those are generally accompanied by a great pit of frustration at “normal life” in the working world.  This time upon touching back down on home soil, I felt a passionate pull to direct my life towards something more in line with spirituality, to offer true service to the world. Already frustrated at the repetitive cyclical mundanity of fi...