Resistance is an Ally

Raw food nutrionist David Wolfe was in town last week and got to spend some good time with him. I've just started working on my new book, Flame & Shadow: Yoga and the Search for Identity in America, and I interviewed him for one of the chapters. One of the concepts he discussed, resistance, was made into an essay...

RESISTANCE IS AN ALLY
By Derek Beres

Resistance
1. To strive to fend off or offset the actions, effects, or force of.
2. To remain firm against the actions, effects, or force of; withstand: a bacterium that resisted the antibiotic.

David Wolfe is an interesting character. After receiving a vision in his mother’s house in 1994, he realized his life path was to share the benefits of raw food. The very fact that you’ve heard the term “raw food” is most likely due to David, one of the many wings of his multiform influence. “Going raw” is no easy task – there are many stringent rules that few, literally, can stomach. Food cannot be heated above 115 degrees in order to preserve as many enzymes as possible. It is an organic and vegan cuisine. Raw, or living, food is usually prepared with a Vita-Mix blender, powerful juicer or by “uncooking” it in a dehydrator (which allows perfect temperature control). In a nutshell: this is no easy path.

Since 1995 David has delivered over 1,000 lectures internationally on the benefits of this lifestyle, most notably his Naked Chocolate sermons. Nature’s First Law, the company he helps operate, was the first to distribute raw cacao internationally, making the very seed of what we call chocolate widely available. His accompanying book proclaims cacao the world’s finest food, and he is relentless in his passion. The other night while nibbling on creamy cauliflower samosas in a banana tamarind sauce and a kiwi lime tart with a macadamia almond pink peppercorn crust at Pure Food & Wine, I asked him if he has ever faced resistance in his 11 years of lecturing on this topic.

“Never, not once,” he replied. “Resistance is self-imposed. As long as I do not resist anything, nothing can resist me.”

The previous Saturday David was giving a Naked Chocolate lecture at Lila Wellness on Bowery. He was posing various questions to warm the crowd when he asked, “Who here realizes that everyone’s beliefs are right and we’ve moved past judging one another?” A few hands raised, though not nearly the number as when he asked something regarding the wonderful qualities of chocolate. It was a powerful moment for many reasons.

To read full essay click here.

The Wizard in the Park

The oddest things occur in Union Square. The park situated between 14th & 17th St at the northern end of Manhattan's East Village is a rather ironic spot. Numerous yoga studios, including a new fusion of Tai Chi and Yoga, Tao Yoga, have recently opened; same for spas, organic restaurants and, of course, Whole Foods. Most major political and social rallies in NYC are either centrally located or pass through this area. Every night hundreds of NYU students, after workers and random passerby stop for a moment or hour to sit on the grass, watch hackey sackers and capoeiristas or eat a meal. And yet, even in the midst of this dymanic community, the NYPD house a holding cell underneath in the subway system. Beneath all festivities a prision lives.

Yesterday was one of those nearly summer days filled with sunshine and serenity. I had a break between classes and was sipping on chai, watching four guys play hackey sack over a handail - a NYC version of the California game "Net," which is basically a hackey sack volleyball (based on the Thai Buka Ball). Out of the corner of my eye I spotted someone dressed in some, well, unusual attire. While I was surrounded on all sides, I felt his eyes find me. He began talking, seemingly random, though I knew it was directed at me. I kept watching the makeshift game, certain a conversation was inevitable.
"The greatest way to find adventure is not to look for adventure." I knew he was building toward something, and I turned when he said this. In front of me was a medium-sized black man wearing a wizard's cape, long white beard-on-a-string, skirt and wielding a cane. I love New York.

He sits down next to me and immediately, as if language was something savored and not merely blurted out, says "So you are drinking tea from Avalon." I had purchased my daily dose of the incredible Chai Seduction from Tavalon, a killer tea spot that recently opened on 14th St. As I looked at the cup my right index finger, unbeknownst to me, was covering the "T." Fitting.

We chatted for a bit, mostly about the Dialogue Project, which had made a home in the square, as well as the upcoming Mermaid Siren Festival in Coney Island. He feared it was going to be the last one since large corporations were trying to "mall-ize" the boardwalk. He mentioned the blog he runs (wizards have to keep up with the times), though in all honesty I forget what it is. That opening comment, however, remains with me.

Not that it's anything new; he was merely pointing out Malroy's old maxim in Le Morte de Arthur. Ironically, however, all the knights did indeed go out questing, most often choosing the darkest patch of forest to enter. The chivalrous route was never known to take a path easily laid before them. To find the holy grail, which was an analogy for finding the true Self in this world of fragmented selves, the knights had to take the road less traveled. And it was certainly a conscious decision that Galahad took, even though he was the only one to attain the prize.

Yet I knew well what my new wizard friend was speaking about. Sometimes strangers clue you in to things you need to hear, even if they don't realize it. If the grail, Self-knowledge, is attainable by all of us, then there's something deeper than casual meetings among random folk; it is an unconscious force driving us together. On occasion we get a glimpse into the path of another and lend a hand, a quick reminder that in order to attain your goal, you have to give up the desire to attain it. Only then do you pursue it from a place of purity. If the knights of old knew one thing about the quest, it was that they had to be purified by the process. Those that weren't inevitably failed.

How to acquire something you do not desire? If only these things were easy to explain! However, the Katha Upanishad offers a great summation: "When the wise realize the Self/Formless in the midst of forms/Changeless in the midst of change/Omnipresent and supreme/They go beyond sorrow." The riddle to our wizard's answer: meditation. Upon the realization that everything is complete stillness within movement, you realize that the quest is for nothing external, not continual states of pleasure and excitement (though this proves the greatest temptation!), but for a calmness of mind.

The most difficult posture a yogi will perform in class is meditation. Every day I watch countless people on treadmills, watching overhead TVs, reading magazines and listening to iPods - at the same time. What, exactly, is being "worked out?" With such habits, is it any surprise we develop no control over our emotions, reactions to surroundings, the constant sense of heaviness the world presents to us? How is it, then, that we develop ekagrata, that single focus yogis tout as the way to Self-realization? By finding the stillness in every movement, noticing the silence embedded into every sound, such a goal does not seem daunting. It feels quite natural.

Take a few moments to notice the way rain becomes consumed by a lake. Or the reflection of sunlight on a glass building. Or the way a kitten moves into your outstretched hand. There is much strength in gentleness, just as there is tender softness in a firm mind. Through meditation, noticing the subtle gestures of life, the heaviness lifts. Soon all the resistance becomes something strong inside of you. You use tension as leverage as a bridge hovers over an abyss, not as the sinking feeling that everything is rallying against you. By trying to stop getting everywhere all at once, you allow the world to come to you. When this occurs, the quest is never without you again.

Lagos No Shaking

TONY ALLEN
Lagos No Shaking (Astralwerks)

The reinvention of this former Afrika 70 musical director has taken numerous directions. Tony Allen remains one of the most trusted and respected names in drumming, with roots in American jazz in 1964, African highlife a few years later and, eventually, the music of James Brown and Max Roach while touring with Fela Kuti in the ‘70s. He stayed with the Black President until 1979, yet even during that time he was cutting his own records, like ‘75’s Progress. So while his name is synonymous with Afrobeat, experimenting was always in the cards.

Thus his work with Manu Dibango in the ‘80s, on to electronica a decade later, and culminating with 2002’s Home Cooking. That last record was a culmination of his love for R&B and hip-hop, and while it had its moments, lacked his trustworthy bite. His side work was prevalent, playing on Susheela Raman’s excellent Love Trap while seeing many of his first recordings re-released with the emergence of Fela’s legacy. Perhaps it was all the old recordings circulating inspiring Lagos No Shaking. Whatever turned him back toward his heyday, it was a blessing.

While every artist reserves the right to reinvent their creations, returning to fundamentals can prove evolutionary in itself. The 11 tracks on Lagos are brilliant throwbacks to the Fela era, albeit written in the more accustomed five-minute format. Yet you wish they would extend to those 20-minute explorations – the grooves are deep enough to hold such weight. Allen is a true master of rhythm, finding a pocket few of our time can maintain. Everything is simply right on this album: the production meshing congas with Allen’s sturdy kit, the revolving vocalists, horn lines and seductive bass tones. Nothing is out of place.

Allen has not forgotten his mission by any means; he merely lays a new foundation for the music he loves. Guests include the 76 year-old palm wine singer and thumb pianist Fatai Rolling Dollar and Yoruba singer Yinka Davies, as well as pulling old school horn sections into the mix. Inside these classics younger vocalists such as Omololu Ogunleye and Muritala Adisa bring youthful vibrancy. He keeps the joyous aspects of song alive, as on the upbeat “One Tree,” and fuels his penchant for R&B with the sensual “Losun.” The closing drum/flute jam, “Gdebu,” reminds the listener Allen has in no way confused where African music’s original infrastructure: indigenous ritual music. The entire Lagos No Shaking is a tribal record for modern warriors, with Allen still leading the charge.

Enter the Fire

Enter the Fire: An Ancient Ritual in the Bronx

Ride the green line long enough and you’ll see life unfold before your eyes. Not the everyday expectable sort of life either – all forms and colors emerge along the east side of Manhattan. When the Brooklyn to Bronx connection slides through you never know what to expect.

Take yesterday, for example. Far down the corridor we heard the usual rumblings of someone asking for something – a teen selling candy not for his basketball team but to “have some money in my pocket,” the Texan who lost his life and soul warning that the same could happen to you as he prostrates the ground, or the blind woman that brings tears to your heart singing Louis Armstrong songs. As the voice grew closer, it turned out to be a rather humorous beggar letting us know that his “stomach is international, like the United Nations. It accepts Indian, Russian, Jewish, American food, whatever you have.”

As he passed by our crew, stopping to open his bag, his speech was broken by the sudden punctuation of an accordion. From the other side passed another east side subway fixture: an old blind man wearing a wheel attached to a pole that drags behind him while he walks. The two passed right in front of us – the UN rep sidestepping to make room – and continued on their journeys. So did we.

Our ride ended at the Brook Ave stop at the southern tip of the Bronx. Eleven of us climbed the stairs to emerge in the midst of bodegas, churches and homegrown record shops. This hardly seems the setting for a Native American purification ritual, yet that’s the paradox of urban dwellings. The day would prove to offer one of the most unique experiences I’ve experienced in New York City.

To read complete story click here.