Rachel's Great Song List

These are some of the songs that I wish everyone could take to heart. Not that it's a bad thing if you're just not into music like this, however. It's just that...well, songs like these speak to me like nothing else, and I feel sometimes as though the lyrics and chords of a few of them have even helped me to live my life in a more positive fashion, and do the things I do best, such as writing and painting. This list of songs inspire me.

1.) "Heart of Gold", by Neil Young
2.) "Broken", by Seether featuring Amy Lee
3.) "Freak on a Leash", by Korn featuring Amy Lee
4.) "Crystal", by Stevie Nicks
5.) "Sunny Came Home", by Shawn Colvin
6.) "Building a Mystery", by Sarah McLachlan
7.) "Kylä Vuotti Uutta Kuuta", by Värttinä
8.) "Glycerine", by Bush
9.) "A Long December", by Counting Crows
10.) "Prison Trilogy", by Joan Baez
11.) "Diamonds and Rust", by Joan Baez
12.) "California Dreamin'", by The Mamas and the Papas
13.) "O Christ, King of Glory", by the Tallari Ensemble
14.) "Hunting the Devil's Ell", by Heikki Laitinen
15.) "Samson", by Regina Spektor
16.) "Apres Moi", by Regina Spektor
17.) "Lady", by Regina Spektor
18.) "Half Acre", by Hem
19.) "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", by His Infernal Majesty (HIM)
20.) "Fade to Black", by Metallica
21.) "Ghost of Corporate Future", by Regina Spektor
22.) "On the Radio", by Regina Spektor
23.) "Poor Little Rich Boy", by Regina Spektor
24.) "Us", by Regina Spektor
25.) "My Immortal", by Amy Lee
26.) "Angels", by Within Temptation
27.) "Nemo", by Nightwish
28.) "Coffee Song", by the Tallari Emsemble
29.) "The Forsaken Young", by the Tallari Ensemble
30.) "I Need Some Sleep", by Eels
31.) "Girlfriend", by Avril Lavigne
32.) "Bitch", by Meredith Brooks
33.) "I Need", by Meredith Brooks
34.) "Ironic", by Alanis Morissette
35.) "Standing Still", by Jewel
36.) "Umbrella", by Rhianna
37.) "Almost Lover", by A Fine Frenzy
38.) "Chop Suey", by System of a Down
39.) "Susan's House", by Eels
40.) "The Times, They Are A-changin'", by A Whisper in the Noise

More songs to be added soon!

Amazingly Good Instrumental Pieces:

1.) The soundtrack for M. Night Shyamalan's The Village
2.) The soundtrack for M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water
3.) The instrumental "Fade to Black", by Apocolyptica
4.) The soundtrack for Terry Gilliam's Tideland

Rachel's Movie List

Here is a list of different flims that I absolutely adore. A few synopsises may come a bit later, when I have the time to actually write synopsises that really do some of these movies justice.

1.) The Dark Crystal, directed by Jim Henson and Frank Oz
2.) Labyrinth, directed by Jim Henson
3.) The Crow, directed by Alex Proyas and Brandon Lee
4.) The Village, directed by M. Night Shyamalan
5.) Lady in the Water, directed by M. Night Shyamalan
6.) The Cuckoo, directed by Aleksandr Rogozhkin
7.) Jerusalem, directed by Billie August
8.) I Am Dina, directed by Ole Bornedal
9.) The Secret of Roan Inish, directed by John Sayles
10.) Silent Hill, directed by Christophe Gans
11.) The Education of Little Tree, directed by Richard Friedenberg
12.) Dreamkeeper, directed by Steve Barron
13.) Hero, directed by Zhang Yimou
14.) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, directed by Ang Lee
15.) Apocalypto, directed by Mel Gibson
16.) Brush With Fate, directed by Brent Shields
17.) 28 Days Later, directed by Danny Boyle
18.) Princess Mononoke, directed by Hayao Miyazaki
19.) Spirited Away, directed by Hayao Miyazaki
20.) Kiki's Delivery Service, directed by Hayao Miyazaki
21.) Shrek 2, directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon
22.) Gone With the Wind, directed by Victor Fleming
23.) Practical Magic, directed by Griffin Dunne
24.) Tideland, directed by Terry Gilliam
25.) Mortal Kombat, directed by Paul Anderson
26.) Ever After, directed by Andy Tennant
27.) A Knight's Tale, directed by Brian Helgeland
28.) Dragonheart, directed by Rob Cohen
29.) Little Shop of Horrors, directed by Frank Oz
30.) The Rocky Horror Picture Show, directed by Jim Sharman
31.) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, directed by Stanley Donen
32.) One Million Years B.C., directed by don Chaffey
33.) O Brother, Where Art Thou?, directed by Joel Cohen

Children's Movies:

1.) The Sandlot, directed by David Mickey Evans
2.) So Dear to my Heart, directed by Harold Schuster
3.) The Halloween Tree, directed by Mario Piluso
4.) Pete's Dragon, directed by Don Chaffey
5.) The Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick
6.) The Corpse Bride, directed by Tim Burton and Mike Johnson
7.) The Three Lives of Thomasina, directed by Don Chaffey
8.) The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise
9.) Mary Poppins, directed by Robert Stevenson
10.) The Princess and the Goblin, directed by Jozsef Gemes
11.) The Prince of Egypt, directed by Brenda Chapman, Stave Hickner and Simon Wells
12.) Oliver!, directed by Carol Reed
13.) Fairy Tale: A True Story, directed by Charles Sturridge
14.) Hocus Pocus, directed by Kenny Ortega
15.) The Secret Garden, directed by Agnieszka Holland
16.) Pinocchio, directed by Steve Barron
17.) An American Tale: Feivel Goes West, directed by Steven Spielberg
18.) The Wizard of Oz, directed by Victor Fleming
19.) 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, directed by George Pal
20.) A Little Princess, directed by Alfonso Cuaron

Mm-hm, and there are several additional movies, children's movies, and television series that I could also put to the list, though I for some reason can't seem to think of any more of them right now. Wow, I really did list a lot of filming projects, up there! That means that I need to think of a few more books to add to my book list, since I really do read a lot more than I watch television.

Rachel's Book List

Hm! I just realized that I've never actually made a real list of the kind of books I usually read, many of which I would definitely recommend to anyone else who loves good literature. I need to make such a list right now, I think, even though it's 11:39 at night, and I'm very tired from jogging two miles with my mom on the Oakley Elementary race track a bit earlier this evening. The books in this list of mine are marked in no particular order. I recommend every single one of these stories for great reads, and I really don't think that any one of them is any better or worse than the last.

1.) The Red Tent, by Anita Diamant
2.) The House With the Blind Glass Windows, by Herbjorg Wassmo
3.) Dina's Book, by Herbjorg Wassmo
4.) The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
5.) The Kin, by Peter Dickinson and Ian Andrew
6.) The Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel
7.) The Kalevala: Or Poems of the Kaleva District, by Elias Lonnrot and Jr. Francis Peabody Magoun
8.) Faeries, by Brian Froud and Alan Lee
9.) Spirit Fox, by Mickey Zucker Reichert and Jennifer Wingert
10.) Gathering Blue, by Lois Lowry
11.) The Giver, by Lois Lowry
12.) The Moorchild, by Eloise McGraw
13.) This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn, by Aidan Chambers
14.) Fudoki, by Kij Johnson
15.) The Alchemist, by Paul Coelho
16.) White Oleander, by Janet Fitch
17.) Tideland, by Mitch Cullin
18.) Bones of the Moon, by Jonathan Carroll
19.) A Northern Light, by Jennifer Donnelly
20.) Shiva's Fire, by Suzanne Fisher Staples
21.) The Rice Mother, by Rani Manicka
22.) Born Confused, by Tanuja Desai Hidier
23.) Homeless Bird, by Gloria Whelan
24.) The His Dark Materials Trilogy, by Philip Pullman
25.) Witch Child, by Celia Rees
26.) Guardian of the Balance, by Irene Radford
27.) Matilda Bone, by Karen Cushman
28.) Widdershins, by Charles de Lint
29.) Waifs and Strays, by Charles de Lint
30.) Moonlight and Vines, by Charles de Lint
31.) Spirits in the Wires, by Charles de Lint
32.) The Blue Girl, by Charles de Lint
33.) Greenmantle, by Charles de Lint
34.) Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection, by Charles de Lint
35.) The Onion Girl, by Charles de Lint
36.) A Taxonomy of Barnacles, by Galt Niederhoffer
37.) Jerusalem, by Selma Ottilia Lovisa Lagerlof
38.) The Thin Place, by Kathryn Davis
39.) The Midwife's Apprentice, by Karen Cushman
40.) Troll: A Love Story, by Johanna Sinisalo
41.) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
42.) Mister God, This is Anna, by "Fynn", Rowan Williams and "Papas"
43.) The Frozen Waterfall, by Gaye Hicyilmaz
44.) The Song of Hiawatha, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
45.) The Wind on Fire Trilogy, by William Nicholson
46.) Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

Children's Books:

1.) Witch Watch, by Gillian McLure
2.) One Wintry Night, by Ruth Bell Graham
3.) The Rag Coat, by Lauren A. Mills
4.) The Surprise in the Wardrobe, by Val Willis and John Shelley
5.) Pumpkin Moonshine, by Tasha Tudor
6.) Astrid Lindgren Books
7.) Elsa Beskow Books
8.) The Story of the Root-Children, by Sibylle von Olfers
9.) Zen Shorts, by Jon J. Muth
10.) C.S. Lewis Books
11.) Under the Snowball Tree, by Ellie Kirby
12.) Seven Wild Sisters, by Charles de Lint and Charles Vess
13.) A Circle of Cats, by Charles de Lint and Charles Vess
14.) Madeleine L'Engle Books
15.) Zen ABC, by Amy Zerner and Jessie Spicer Zerner
16.) Clockwork, by Philip Pullman
17.) Green Angel, by Alice Hoffman

Interesting Religous Texts, Not in Italics:

1.) The Bhagavad Gita
2.) The Torah ("Genesis" - "Minor Prophets")
3.) The New Testament ("Matthew" - "Revelation")
4.) Book of Mormon
5.) The Vedas ("Rig Veda", "Sama Veda", "Yajur Veda" and "Atharva Veda")
6.) The Upavedas: The Post-Vedic Texts ("Aryurveda" - "Sthapatyaveda")
7.) Bardo Thodol: The Tibetan Book of the Dead
8.) The Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Main Scripture of the Bahá'í Faith)
9.) The Gnostic Gospels

That's all the books, for children and adults alike, that I can possibly think of right now! I plan to keep on adding books to this list as I come to think of them. But for now I'm going to make a list of my favorite movies and their directors.

"Weikko Wirtanen"

I'm sitting at the computer right now...Of course I'm sitting at the computer. If I happened to be sitting anywhere else but the computer, how would I ever manage to be compiling this new post? Ahhh...Anyway, to begin with, I just wanted to say that I've checked my e-mail a total of sixteen times so far today alone, and as always, my Inbox was deviod of anything other than spam. And the spam wasn't even that interesting kind of spam, which I occassionally recieve. There was a short offer from Hanna Andersson, talking about some kind of sale on last season's clothing, and one of those "Do Not Reply" messages that was sent to let me know that the reasonably cheap ash-gray hoodie I ordered from www.fat-pie.com, portraying a rather ghastly portrait of the cartoon character called Salad Fingers, was well on its way to my place in Asheville. I was happy to hear that.

I just finished inking in a few little pieces of the sixth Weikko Wirtanen comic Janne and I have made together. We're going to try to get the series published, I guess. I certainly hope that they do get published, anyway. That would be just ever so awesome. The Weikko Wirtanen comics have been our very first collaboration, and Janne and I are quite proud of them. I really think that they look pretty nice. They've been done entirely in black and white, since black and white comic stips are generally easier to sell, and we've used a lot more of the black ink, especially, in our aim to inbue each animated panel with stark, three-dimentional effects done to the very best of our ability. Janne and I have decided to portray our dear Weikko Wirtanen predominately as an extremely shy, withdrawn and reed-thin person with thick, unbecoming spectacles and a large floppy winter hat. Weikko Wirtanen's facial features are an andrologenous mix of boy-girl looks, and indeed, we created him intending for him to be seen as a fourteen-year-old homosexual boy, though throughout this first series of comics in which Weikko is the main character, Janne and I have made it a point for Weikko to never go out and actually say this about himself. We've planned the various monochrome comic strips featuring Weikko Wirtanen in such a way that the true sexuality (or true sex, for that matter) of the main character is never known for sure, and at the most, only lightly explored. Weikko Wirtanen, as a comic strip character, is modeled more or less after a funny alternate personality of the opposite sex I purposely delved into back sometime around Juhannus, when I was very drunk and running my mouth to a girl who was partly the inspiration for Eva-Lisa, another one of Janne's most beloved animated characters. The kind of conversation I wound up having with the girl at Juhannus consequently became the basis for the first six-panelled comic strip that ever featured drawings of Weikko Wirtanen and Eva-Lisa sitting together in a dreary, unidentified coffeehouse possibly located somewhere in the Helsinki-Vantaa area.

In Which I Emo Not

I wonder: How can I be considered "kind" in any way, when I'm so filled with hatred? There are so many aspects of my existance that I love. There are perhaps twice as many aspects of my existance that I hate and can never seem to get off my mind. I've been told time and time again that I am not bipolar, and yet I experience mood swings that sometimes surprise even me. They threaten every aspect of my existance and cause me to turn fully upon myself in rage. And I...I don't think that there's any way that I can ever really put an end to it. I'm beginning to think that my moods might very well put an end to me one of these days. I think it's more than possible that the process of this has already begun to unfold, and I am so very afraid. I can't sleep, though last night I did, amazingly. I can barely eat, and whenever I do eat, I feel an overwhelming depression that I can't describe. It makes me want to be sick after each meal, and on occassion, I flirt with the prospect of actually making myself vomit, even though I know that I could never do such a thing to myself, for obvious reasons. I've never been one to inflict physical punishment upon myself; back in the day, I used to play around with putting little red nicks in my ankles and such with my pocket knife, but I never got any real relief out of it, like some people do. I guess you could probably say that wreaking emotional havoc on my own mind and turning my own mind against itself was more my style. And how utterly horrible that must sound! As you can see, I don't need to be made to lie down and waste every single penny I earn on a fucking psychiatrist. An exorcism performed on me might lend far better results.

I have a lot on my mind right now, if me saying "a lot" can even approach the true sum. At the moment I'm mostly thinking about two people who are most dear to me: Janne and his sister-in-law. I love them both so much! Only God knows how much I love them, and yet I'm no good for them. I would honestly like to spend the rest of my life living with Janne, but I feel as though that would be almost selfish of me, for try as I might, I cannot satisfy him enough to satisfy me. (Does that also sound kind of selfish, in a way?) I love that man, and I tell him so quite often. And all he says in return, usually, as if in awe, is, "You're so kind. So kind." But what he never seems to understand is that I am not trying to be kind. My love for him is not something that he's had to earn, during the year and some months in which I've been properly acquainted with him; nor is my love some kind of holy blessing that I bestow for his goodwill, though, once again, God knows that I pray daily for his goodwill. I simply love Janne because I love Janne. My love is not based on his looks, or on his career, or even on his astonishing mental capacity as far as things like religion and art and writing go. But Janne doesn't know this. That's where his dreams and imagination come to an end, because he doesn't love himself as much as I love him. (Indeed, I believe that we both might be, at least in our own minds, unworthy of one another. But as I think of Janne right now, I find that I absolutely couldn't care less.) And then there's Janne's wonderful sister-in-law, whom I've known for the last five-going-on-six years, and whom I look up to and respect immensely for reasons of my own. I realized in a computer message she wrote me today, only a few hours ago, that I have wronged her without ever meaning to do so, in a most complicated and rare way (thought maybe not so very rare, as far as I'm concerned). God has blessed this young woman and I with the unique ability to truly communicate, meaning very precisely that she and I have always been able to share our problems and secrets without embarrassment so that we find ourselves able to talk about almost anything to one another...And today perhaps one of the most inconcievable things happened between us, though when I put the matter into words, the new burden this hands me becomes seriously downplayed. The truth of the matter is, to put it rather bluntly, that I've allowed myself to seem like a total idiot in front of her, due to an unfortunate combination of relatively common words, which I flatly decline to type again here. Oh, my dear, dear friend...What a fool she must think me, now. I honestly have no idea of what I could ever do or say, at this point, to save face. I am so fucking stupid! It is exactly 1:37 in the morning where I am right now, and I can't sleep. I'd love to sleep, but I don't know if I really even deserve to sleep. However, on the other hand, I also have quite a bad headache from staring into the wall of this enormous over-bright computer monitor, and I'm more than sure that I deserve it.

I cannot handle this. Especially not right now, when I have so many other awful things to worry about. It's currently the ninth day of July, and I have a train ticket to get hold of, sometime soon after this upcoming Thursday, and another friend of mind to contact even before that happens, so that we can figure out the best possible time for me to go through the process of acquiring the train ticket in order to come and visit her for only two or three days at the most. I shouldn't even mention the fact that the train ticket I purchase will be very expensive, most likely something of about forty euros, because I don't have the student card necessary for getting the great discount. But aside from that, I also can't stop worrying about what's going on with my dad who lives over in America, and my dog. We have five dogs, and only a few weeks ago, one of them was shot by one of our neurotic asshole neighbors, who claimed that Thunder was growling at his little girl when he was out walking with her to the mailbox. And it doesn't surprise me whatsoever that this particular neighbor of ours made several attempts to lie about shooting the poor dog in the first place. (His slack-faced teenage son shot another one of our dogs about two years ago, "just to see what would happen", and Steve tried to lie about that happening as well.) The dogs survived, thank goodness, though at great medical expense, but now my dad seems to be terrifyingly intent on getting rid of the youngest of our dogs, which is mine, simply because she likes to bark. If Dad tries to hurt Golda, or if he tries to get rid of her, right out from under me...I don't know what I'll do to him. There's really nothing I can do, or at least nothing I can think of. I think that his threatening to get rid of Golda might be Dad's childish way of getting revenge on me for leaving him again this summer to go to Finland, rather than have to stay home, work my ass off, make his meals and clean his house and clean up after him when he gets shitfaced with his friends every night. As far as I'm concerned, Dad can do all that for himself, and go to hell afterwards. But he'd better not attempt to get rid of Golda. My dogs are just about the only good thing I've got waiting for me when I have to go back to America at the beginning of August, and all five of them had better be at the house, where they're supposed to be. Dad mentioned something about giving Golda to Mom, but I learned that it was safer to distrust and disregard Mom when it comes to taking care of anything a very long time ago, when my youngest brother was born.

Jäässä

"Olen jäässä," is a phrase I seem to catch myself uttering more and more often these days. Those two words are exceedingly strange words, ones you can't translate into English very easily, except for maybe the olen part, which simply means, "I'm". (Minä olen is how you say "I am".) Jäässä is definitely one of the most difficult Finnish words I've ever encountered, as far as means of translation into English go, and even here in Finland, there are only a handful of people who ever actually use the word in their everyday speech. While the word obviously comes directly from the Finnish jää, meaning "ice", as in jäätelö, or "ice cream", the true meanings of jäässä are almost myriad. To make things as uncomplicated as possible, you might just say that jäässä is a state of mind in which the mind for whatever reason has become frozen solid like ice, and therefore is quite incapable of forming even the simplest of words and basic sentences, no matter how strong the will to speak and socialize may be.

I can proudly say that I have been deeply trapped in the jäässä state of mind at least twice today. The first time I experienced the true glory of jäässä was when I woke up very early this morning with a rather bad hangover. A friend of mine, whom I consider to be a colleague in both art and film happened to be sleeping beside me, and he was snoring noisily. This pissed me off, although it shouldn't have, and so I snapped my fingers right in front of his face several times in an attempt to force him awake without freaking him out too badly. But when I realized that Janne was very deeply asleep, and that he had no way of knowing that his snoring wasn't helping my hangover one little bit, my mind became frozen to escape the harshness of reality. I was like a child's robot that was running out of batteries, or a prickly black-faced hedgehog that had been mauled in the wee hours before dawn by a neighborhood cat and was perhaps about to die; I became a very quiet and depressed individual, and in doing so, I became the very essence of the meaning of the word jäässä.

That probably makes absolutely no sense. I promise to write more on jäässä later when my mind finally thaws and I am more able to fully articulate my thoughts.

Introduction to Yoga Philosophy (Pt. 8)

So, I want to make one thing quite clear before I truly begin today's lesson concerning samadhi: Sanskrit, like Finnish, is one of those languages in which there are hardly any of those awful words that are spelt and pronounced in similar ways, only with entirely different meanings, such as the English words "hear" and "here". The type of samadhi that is spoken of in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras is an ancient Sanskrit term meaning "to establish" or "make firm". This definition of samadhi is to be in no way confused with the samadhi which is the Sanskrit word for the kind of structures that are errected for the sole purpose of commemorating the dead after cremation, similar to those old crypts and mausoleums you find in places like New Orleans, which may or may not contain the body of the deceased. Samadhis like this are often built to honor certain individuals regarded as saints and gurus. Pantanjali's definition of samadhi is widely recognized as a Hindu and Buddhist term that describes a totally non-dualistic state of conciousness, in which the very conciousness itself becomes one with the object that is being meditated on. True samadhi is an extremely complex and many-layered part of yoga philosophy, and I don't even know of I have the right to even make an attempt towards teaching it. I am no one's guru; I'm just an unusually thoughtful girl. I suppose I could say that I'm an unusually thoughtful yogini, but, after much meditation and deliberation, I've come to the conclusion that I'm not even sure if I have the right to call myself that. I've probably mentioned several times by now, throughout this entire blog, that I want to become a certified yoga instructor. Yoga is almost my number-one priority in life. But how can I do that, when aside from being thoughtful, I'm also unusually weak, clumsy and silly? I am absolutely nothing like the real yoga teachers I've had in the past. I'm pale and twisted and half-blind. That's the reason why even though I love to read various books and manuscripts on the subject of yoga, I don't even have anything like yoga magazines delivered to my house, even some of those are actually quite cheap and easy to get hold of, nowadays.

Maybe this kind of mentality just proves that I don't really have "yoga", in a sense of the inner power and balance that I've always thought I had before. Because, didn't Pantanjali himself say something important about having confidence in your own yoga once or twice in the Yoga Sutras? It could very well be that I truly am bipolar, and that this unhealthy disconfidence I feel entirely trapped in right now is only a momentary thing, and that an hour from now I'll have my yoga mat laid out on the floor of my mom's bedroom, enjoying my daily ritual of surya namaskara and feeling really great about it and my own body's ability to be even doing such a good and holy thing. For, even though I am an exceedingly thoughtful girl, I'm also an exceedingly troubled girl, and yoga brings me elation and bliss. Really, I swear it does. In the past I always felt as if doing yoga was like being in church, and that I shouldn't be smiling or thinking of anything silly while I go through vinyasa. But then they invented something called Laughing Yoga, and it became clear to me that there was absolutely no harm in smirking, grinning, or even laughing during a yoga session, at least provided that I wasn't disturbing anyone else in doing so. If anything, the act of me grinning happily during the flow of asanas was a nice and healthy addition to my daily yoga practice, both on and off the mat. Laughing is said to partially detoxify your body, anyway. (And detoxification seems to be exactly what I need more of, seeing as I actually had to quite my Master Cleanse a damn seven days early, after all the citric acid from the organic lemons made me sick as a dog.)

I think I definitely have yoga, at least in my own sense then. I'm going to be ninteen years old this year, and I feel that more than ever, I know exactly where I stand in the world. I feel and understand my place in the cosmos, and with this comes a secondary feeling of higher individuality. Despite my troubled mindset, which seems to have high and low tides like the ocean, I feel that I've actually got quite a lot going well for me. I am going to be a yoga instructor, if I can only find the teacher-training program that works best for me. I don't expect this to happen for the next few years, and maybe not even in the next ten years, however. It needs to happen after I'm able to totally complete my clinical certification thing at the North Carolina School of Holistic Herbalism, and I haven't even begun the first part of that yet, which is called Fundamentals. (I did actually get accepted into NCSHH, by the way, thank goodness.) The Fundamentals program at NCSHH begins March of 2008, which is still a long way of yet. After I complete the Fundamentals course, which lasts several months and several hundred hours, I'll have to wait a few months more and then move onto the next level of clinical herbalism. And after that, I'll have to wait even longer before I begin the real thing, which will allow me to legally practice herbalism in the United States.

Ah, but whatever! I began this essay on yoga philosophy thinking that I was going to only lecture on the definition of samadhi, and look what I've done. This essay has gone absolutely everywhere, from yoga philosophy, to be doing and teaching yoga, and possibly being bipolar, to my ramblings that involve my future studies at NCSHH. All this can mean only one thing: I do have yoga, as we all do at one awesome level or another, but that my attainment of basic samadhi is going to be something I will obviously have time to deal with in the years to come. Or maybe it won't really be attained at all in this lifetime, or even the next. Only God in the cosmos knows!