I sit on a sheepskin - a short essay

[Guest guest]

I am on an extraordinary path, and I know it. My parents, bless their

hearts, survived one of the most brutal dictatorships of the last century, but

it was not

their good karma to be able to overthrow it.

In my generation, rising up as young people in the 1960s, we stood out and

opposed the great war of that time, the racism and the economic injustice of our

time. Some of us were bent on stopping the relentless machine of inhumanity and

greed by, if necessary, putting our bodies onto the gears of that machine. Many

were jailed for trying.

For most of us, our revulsion to the prevailing values of our time was

visceral. It was instinctual and not governed by dogmas or slogans or rant †"

though there were plenty of those as well. Something was deep, under our skin,

wanting to come out and play.

Many of us dropped out of the prevailing value system and started our own,

looking to older models †" Celtic and Hopi and Indian. People called ours a

“counter cultureâ€. Conformity was definitely not on the agenda.

When I was fourteen years old, I realized that most people don't grow old very

well and that most people everywhere are basically sheep to the prevailing

values of their time. They dress and look according to the “norm†- however

perverted it might be. They think and act to blend in with what everyone else

is doing. They even submit themselves to shearing, although in this case no

useful product results. It is not wool, after all. It is hair. And the

croppings just end up in the garbage.

I resolved I was going to follow the path of the longhaired nonconformists †"

Socrates and Plato and Jesus. I was no longer going to be just another

compliant sheep.

Time passed. I learned meditation and yoga from teachers longhaired like

myself. I joined an Ashram community with other longhairs. We participated in

a lifestyle of integral nonconformity.

Yogi Bhajan celebrated our long hair. He didn't mind short hair. He didn't

mind anything, but he encouraged his students to keep their hair long and coil

it up at the top of their head in what he called a “rishi knotâ€. The Yogi

said it our hair were great conductors of vital energy, and that they would help

to raise our kundalinis if we wore them unshorn at the crown of our head.

Yogi Bhajan made us lions and princesses †" Singhs and Kaurs. He invited us

to a culture of nobility, courage and ultimate grace. He called us a Spiritual

Nation. Yogi Bhajan took pride in us. Where our previous culture, the one we

had turned our backs on, had punished us for our defiance, the Yogi encouraged

us to live and manifest our dream, an Aquarian dream as it turned out.

By the grace of God, through the House of Guru Ram Das, and with the blessing

of a great Yogi, I have slaughtered my sheep. And today, like a Yogi King, I

sit and survey the world from atop my sheep skin.

Love to all! Peace to all! Life to all!