If negativity means refusing to believe in utter crap, then yeah, I'm negative.

I've been criticized lately for being negative - I just want to say, as a human being I am the luckiest person I know and give thanks so many times a day for this incredible life that I could never count them. I also say I love you more times a day than I can count, often just in my head as I walk around and mingle in the world. I help people every chance I get. Being intelligent and unafraid to face the cruelty and ignorance in the world do not a negative person make. Usually, it's the people who feel blessed and loved who take the time to point out inequality, stupidity and awfulness so that others may enjoy, at the very least, respect for their plight.

I was brought up in a house of leftist egalitarians, who never paused before saying what they thought and who truly believed that our society was capable of educating people sufficiently that they would see the ultimate common sense and goodwill in creating a more equal society. Neither of my parents came from underprivileged backgrounds - they were both the black sheep of their families. They had friends from all over the world, and my mother's business employed a mini U.N. Never did she think or say these folks were lucky to have a job, never did she think or say that undocumented (a word that did not exist at the time) employees were somehow less and should be treated differently or paid less than any 'legal' person. My mother raised us modeling the business practice of paying people as much as you could afford to, not as little as they'd accept. I was told, explicitly (likely after having made a child's joke about someone's English) that if a person spoke English with an accent that meant they spoke at least one more language than I did and that I should feel the appropriate respect for that knowledge. Our household was pretty open about facts such as American Express not granting my mother (a business owner) a credit card in her own name (it would've had to be in my father's name) - hence, she did not accept American Express at her business. This seemed then, and continues to seem, a totally logical response to the situation. I cannot imagine having thought of my mother as being an angry, negative person for refusing to do business with a company that had misogynist policies.

My parents never took us to doctors. Doctors were drugging up the suburbs like there was no tomorrow in the 1970's, and my parents had grown up without a lot of the drugs that were all of a sudden deemed "necessary" - like antibiotics for every little cold, or worse, for the flu, which doesn't respond to antibiotics. One of my mother's friends was (in the 70's and still is today) a foot reflexologist, yoga teacher and health nut who spent 25 years curing her son of extreme schizophrenia through only natural means. I cannot imagine calling my mother's astute criticism of medical profession's addiction to prescriptions negative. She was right.

I was brought up on the motto "If you've got it, give it." My parents were human, like everyone, but their faults were very much balanced by their amazing humanity and desire for all people to enjoy freedom and liberty and equality. Gloria Steinem was a celebrity in our house (until the book about Marylin). I cannot imagine saying my mother was negative for being a Feminist and actively fighting for a better world for women. She was outspoken, and lots of times it was inconvenient, but believe you me, I was never told, when I was dealing with becoming a woman and all of the disrespect that involves - that I'd see things differently once I was married. In fact my mother never ever in my whole life has asked me if I wanted to get married. Or if I wanted to buy some make up. Or if I wanted a nice dress to look pretty for the boys at school. I cannot imagine calling my mother negative for pointing out to her daughters how prepared they needed to be for the shit coming their way as women.

I was also raised to believe that religion truly is the opium of the people, and thank God, because never were truer words spoken. My parents were moved by art, nature, people overcoming obstacles, by good people helping each other. I'm not saying I was raised by the poster children for righteousness. But they were smart, and more than anything, they never hesitated to point out inequality, sexism, classism, racism, hate, or harmful ignorance. They abhorred oversimplification of complex problems and they abhorred abuse of power. I cannot call that negative.

When I was 21, I learned meditation from monks who slept on concrete slabs with wooden pillows and begged for their food and worked at whatever job was needed in their local community. They took care of their monastery, wrote books, meditated, studied, taught, and also swept floors, helped in the fields, etc. I looked up to them a lot. I looked up to them even more when our teacher addressed sexism in the Buddhist community and denounced it thoroughly, taking time to teach us the difference between the Buddha's teachings and 'cultural Buddhism' that incorporated all sorts of prejudices that had no place in the practice of Buddhism. That monk is still teaching - his name is Santikaro. We were taught to be very astute and to constantly be on the lookout for practices that aggrandized the self and made one feel better than anyone else. We were encouraged to sit, and sit, and then sit some more, until we caught a tiny glimpse of enlightenment. We were taught it may never come, but that one second of clarity would be enough to keep us going for a lifetime of searching, because it was that rare and valuable. Some of us in that retreat did get our one second preview, and it was, in fact, enough to change my whole life. We were lectured every evening on the risks of resting on our laurels and to come back every day to the practice completely free of expectation and demands.

We had a yoga teacher on that retreat, who was from Esalen in CA and who did nothing but complain about the monks, about the retreat, and who told me, among other things, that I wasn't a lesbian because my face is too open and soft - lesbians had hard, closed faces. I should've taken the hint then, that I'd always be more at ease in an environment where spiritual practice was just that - a practice, an inquiry, a never-ending journey without a compass or a map. Free of dogma. The California/USA version of spirituality was and is very similar to, well, a big mess. You could put anything you want in there, and then once you'd been practicing for a year you could call yourself wise and the bearer of love and light, and charge for sharing your 'love' and 'light'. Sorry, the monks, with all their faults, are right. Reality is not for sale, and enlightenment is not 'given' (read: bought) but experienced first hand.

20 years later I have been teaching yoga for ten years and have just been blasted by some of my local yoga community for criticizing Yoga Journal's Talent Contest/cover model contest. I do not see this as a negative thing - it's called awareness. Anger at harmful ignorance is not without value - it's what drives every oppressed people to overcome oppression and to right wrongs. It has been said before, and I hope it will be said millions of times again - without women's anger at being treated as possessions, we would still be possessions! I hate the word 'duh' but really. Really. Feminism being seen as negative is a very sad commentary on whoever says it. Really.

Real optimism and love do not launch huge advertising campaigns and talent contests that make fools of the people buying your product. Optimism and love will not be two of the contestants, either. Real optimism and love do not say, "I just can't take in any more! I'm going to pretend that everything is as it should be, even though I know it's not, and I'm going to call it Tantra and have myself a glass of wine!" There is nothing wrong with taking a break from bad news, or protecting one's heart so that it doesn't get decimated by the never ending greed and cruelty of humankind. But don't call it wisdom - don't call it Tantra - call it "dinner and a glass of wine" for Christ's sake. And real optimism and love just is...no need for sappy quotes that are mainly out of context and therefore stripped of the meaning they originally had.

I am optimistic that yoga teachers will read whole books, not just the quotes, and optimistic that even though we insist on reinventing the wheel (so that it sells as 'new') that some people will see through all of that and come to life willing to see what is there, not what we need to be there to soothe our bourgeois self image. But the people I've known who truly do that are bussers, waiters, restaurant managers, house painters, cooks, gardeners - not yoga teachers. Which is why my teachers are not yoga teachers, and why, as a yoga teacher, I've never thought I had any business advising people. I'm there to share the few things that I know well with people who want to know them, too. It's what the monks taught, and I've never heard anything truer. My job, as I see it, is to give people whatever knowledge I've gleaned about movement - not to be an ass who acts like they understand things way beyond human comprehension. Acting like we know what is going on in the universe is not positive, admitting we don't is not negative. It's what is. I cannot and will not buy into this mentality that anger is only destructive - it's also one of the most constructive forces in life. So if you're not using yours, I'll gladly take it and use it to sign more petitions, write more letters to my fascist Congress people, call the White House more, and write more letters to idiotic magazines posing as community resources.