Post AJNA WORKING ADVENTURES in TURKEY

 

The July full moon was wonderfully healing.
After the Ajna Chakra Working in Bulgaria the participants there swung to the other extreme for a few days -after our spiritual and semi-ascetic 5-day working we indulged in much rich food and drink. It seemed a good thing, to ground ourselves, adjust back to 'normal reality' and to just relax together.

 

 

However after the other three left, Tristram and I continued to be quite hedonistic for a while, eating out a lot (it was after all a relatively cheap country) and not doing any yoga or such to follow up on our intensive. After a few more days in the beautiful old town of Plovdiv we caught a train down to Istanbul. This ancient and modern city has a wonderfully rich and diverse culture, but it is also big, fast and polluted.

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After 3 Ottomanic days in Istanbul/Constantinople/Byzantine, It seemed obvious the Turks were the original kings of bling. I was bedazzled at bazaars and palaces since arrival, surveying a vast array of everything shiny and scintillating from the exquisitely beautiful to the garishly tacky, both ancient and modern. The land of these masters of intricate ornamentation seems a perfect place to be and be bedazzled in the wake of the Ajna Working…

And it is the land of magical eyes, blue and glassy, which glint from every shop and laneway.

My time in Turkey was limited to a week, so we rushed around a lot, trying to take in all the major sites in Istanbul without staying there too long and missing the ancient Greek ruins at Ephesus further south. Combined with the natural speed and busyness of a seething metropolis, this was a bit of a pressure-cooker, though a fun and lively one. Needless to say, not much yoga (no room in our cramped hostel attic) or meditation was done, and lots of turkish coffee, delicious cakes and delight-ful sweets were consumed.

There were no trains to our next destination -Bergama/ancient Pergammon- so we endured an all-night bus ride sitting up, jerking awake periodically with head falling to one side or the other, then a painfully confusing changeover in the big city of Izmir's sprawling concrete bus station. Eventually reaching Pergammon we were tired but glad to be in a small town again, and decided to make the most of the day rather than getting any proper horizontal sleep.

As we trekked off to the Asklepion in the blazing midday midsummer heat, I winced at the cramp in my neck, the bus trip having exacerbated the usual left-shoulder and neck problems I have from an accident 15 years or so ago.
Asklepius was the ancient Greek God of Healing and Medicine, and I'd had amazing journeys at His Asklepion in Epidaurus, Greece years ago, so was glad to be back in one of his ancient healing centres, or at least the ruins thereof.

On the way in there were some locals selling thick pine honey with pine nuts in it from the mountains -seemed appropriate after all our recent work with Dionysus (wielder of the pinecone-tipped Thyrsus staff) and the pine-al gland, so I got some and also some bee-pollen. Both tasted and felt delicious and nutritious.

We wandered around the site for a while. Not particularly spectacular visually, being primarily stone foundations and mostly-lopped-off pillars. But we went down into the relatively intact stone tunnel that was used as a passage into the healing temple, and the energy deepened. Away from the fierce sun, there was a sense of relief and a cool calm trance came over us as we walked slowly along it, breathing deep, the relaxing sound of the sacred spring trickling along the edge of the tunnel. At the round temple we did a few stretching asanas and found a place in one of the small incubation chambers to sit enshaded, do pranayama and meditate. The energy was deep and peaceful, I began to feel again the gnosis gained from the Ajna Working and a connection to the land. We returned to the spring and dowsed ourselves thoroughly, took some plastic and other rubbish out of various parts of the site including a pond with turtles, then proceeded with a small ritual. The pine honey and bee pollen were offered to Asclepius and Hygeia with various prayers for personal and planetary healing. Asclepius operates often through the healing dream -very Ajna-related. I also offered some to Dionysos in the amphitheatre next door after performing some appropriately-theatrical invocations.

We returned to the spring and dowsed ourselves thoroughly, took some plastic and other rubbish out of various parts of the site including a pond with turtles, then proceeded with a small ritual. The pine honey and bee pollen were offered to Asclepius and Hygeia with various prayers for personal and planetary healing. Asclepius operates often through the healing dream -very Ajna-related. I also offered some to Dionysos in the amphitheatre next door after performing some appropriately-theatrical invocations.

 

All this was wondrous but I still had a pain in the neck -and shoulder.
Asclepius worked His magic very quickly however -returning to the newer part of town we discovered there was a Hammam there. We had thought about going to one of these traditional Turkish Baths a few times in Istanbul but it hadn't timed right. This one was open late and was a very old bath-house. In this sauna -a place I often enjoy chanting anyway- the acoustics of the old domed structure were incredible. Tristram and I sang harmonic cascades while sweating out the toxins of Istanbul. Then I continued to chant as he received his treatment on a stone bench in the room alongside, a combination massage and deep scrub. I was lost in wave upon wave of overlapping harmonics which echoed phenomenally through the stone chamber, often forgetting I was in a sauna, standing on the seats to get the fullest heat, sweat running in rivulets from my body. I did realise when the room began to swim and I drank lots more cold water, also dowsing myself in it periodically. I began purging snot from my sinuses and coughing up gunk from my lungs.

When it was my turn for the massage and scrub, the big Turk giving it insisted- mostly through gesture as his English was minimal- that I keep chanting, even when I was gargling soapbubbles. The treatment was considerably longer than we'd been told on arrival -perhaps because of his obvious enjoyment of the soundscape- and more intense than expected. His strength was applied expertly to twist tweak and pummel my muscles and bones in the right way, while deep scrubbing with soap (quite an unfamiliar substance to me) and a textured mitt removed all the muck of Istanbul and loosened layers of dead skin. My feet- which have only worn shoes about 3 or 4 times a year (mostly at airports) for the last 16 years- particularly benefited.
The whole experience was deeply cleansing and healing, and afterwards I felt completely recharged as we walked back to our guesthouse under the brilliant full moon. The timing of it was perfect -earlier that day at the Asklepion I had felt a renewed resolve to get back into daily practices and maintain the gnosis and inspiration gained from the Ajna Working before it began to fade as just a temporal (though amazing) experience. Now the way has been cleared for this new start, and on the full moon following the new moon with which our Working began.

 

With thanks to Dionysus, Hygeia and Asklepius.

 

 

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