The Hagia Sophia

Istanbul #2 of 4

We are speeding towards the Hagia Sophia, and I do mean speeding, while Sandy and the cab driver talk to each other using the audio on Google Translator and their iPhones. The cabbie had started the ball rolling as he spoke Turkish, a skill neither of us possessed. Clearly there were no laws around such activities, and the driver didn’t seem too concerned if he was driving in between the lines, handheld translating in process or not.

Our driver dropped us off in front of a rug store and I was immediately accosted by the handsome store owner who assured me he was “not that guy.” Of course in my head I’m thinking “thou doth protesteth too much.” Sandy sidled up in that way men do when they are conveying “back off buddy,” and the store owner turned to him and said “Sir, you are a very lucky man!” Now I wasn’t born yesterday and my female vanity was in curious suspense, waiting to hear what attributes he decided to hold on high. “I approached her because she has a very friendly face! You are a very lucky man!” Oh shit, I’ve finally hit that age where men see me for my character.

While eating lentil soup and drinking pomegranate juice, the Call to Prayer begins, coming from the Blue Mosque. It is beautiful and stirring. I have always wanted to hear this, it’s a total bucket list item fulfilled for me, and low and behold I went all existential eating legumes.

I remembered being challenged by a naturopath when I was going to school in Eugene, Oregon, 30 years ago. I was taking vitamins and she asked me how they made me feel, to which I said I hadn’t notice anything in particular. “I’d question that” she said. So I did, and instead of continuing to blindly take them, that was the end of my vitamins days.

That lesson stuck with me and carried into other aspects of my life. I like to experience things directly and don’t like being told that xyz will produce a pat response in me, especially when it comes to asana (yoga poses.) Serious eye rolls roll through my eyes when some “expert” decides to assign an emotional or spiritual response to a particular pose. I figure what triggers our experiences are specific to the individual, and the idea that a pose “opens the heart” has always seemed too synthetic to me, kinda like those vitamins.

Prayer, pranayama, meditation are often granted an elevated spiritual status in the yoga planet and in religious circles. “Elevated”, “spiritual” and “status” have no business being in the same sentence, but we as humans tend to rank the subtle as superior to the gross. However, the concrete expression of those activities, i.e., actions, are of interest to me because I believe actions reveal one’s spirituality.

Recently a friend asked me if I taught the full spiritual offerings of yoga, to which I answered yes, although I don’t use much of the yoga terminology and am probably viewed mostly as a bio-mechanical gear head. I don’t have a problem with that because the gross aspects, meaning our bodies, is not of lesser value in my mind than the more subtle aspects of our being. Besides, teaching an asana class is where the rubber meets the road. It’s where your practice and beliefs are exhibited via what you teach, how you teach, and why you teach. It’s where your spirituality is revealed in experiential form.

Back to vitamin lessons. Just because you participate in a spiritual practice, that doesn’t guarantee a specific result, and I know people who have gone downright crazy from subtle practices. Meditation psychosis is a thing.

Damn. That was a lot from consuming lentils while listening to the Call to Prayer.

See photos of the Hagia Sophia and The Basilica Cistern with captions below.