When You Think of Yoga

When you think of Yoga,
think of Jorge Ramirez Valenzuela.

They say as a boy,
He would hear voices that no one else could hear.

When He turned 18, the voices told Him, he was to go to India.

But He was a poor young man from Guatemala,
without a cent to his name.

The voices told Him to buy a lottery ticket,
so He did and He won.

When He got India, he was greeted by
a bearded man familiar to him only
in His dreams.

He trained in India as a mystic,
until He returned to Guatemala in the 50's.

He came to offer his knowledge
to poor of Guatemala.

He taught them Yoga
He taught them the Dharma
He taught them how to ease their suffering-

and suffering, along with coffee beans,
was one of the few things
Guatemala had an abundance of.

My mother told me, that when she met first Him,
she was skeptical the way teenagers are,
and dared him to prove his mystic powers.

That night an entity made of light woke my
mother and aunt up while they slept.

They screamed in fear, but
she never doubted Him again.

He once told his followers of the Templo Yoga
to protest the corruption of its country's leaders.

In Guatemala that's something you don't do.
The government took him.

Some say, letter writing and Amnesty International
got Him out, but a political prisoner getting out prison alive,
in Guatemala in the 60's, is nothing short of proof of a higher power at work.

And through Him
the ascended master teachers would speak

Karishnanda
Krishanda

They would speak the words
so desperately needed in this world,
but heard by so few.

Practiced by even fewer.

And when He died
the temple moved to a smaller
location.

His followers dispersed.

And the practice of Yoga
in Guatemala went into decline.

When He died,
there was a little more suffering in the world.

They say at night,
there is light that still emanates from his grave.

When you think of Yoga, think of 

Jorge Ramirez Valenzuela.