{"id":2078,"date":"2014-08-22T18:45:26","date_gmt":"2014-08-22T23:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/?p=2078"},"modified":"2014-08-30T17:17:20","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T22:17:20","slug":"scorpio-rising-excerpt-3-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/?p=2078","title":{"rendered":"SCORPIO RISING: book excerpt 3.12"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In this third excerpt, taken from Chapter 12 of\u00c2\u00a0SCORPIO RISING<\/em>, we continue to follow the steps of astrologer Axel Crowe who, after 14 years of strict tutelage under his fierce Tantrik guru, is cast off to swim on his own.<\/span><\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~<\/span><\/p>\n

Axel Crowe rode the streetcar from Queen Street West across the city to The Beach, almost an hour between his place and Guruji\u00e2\u0080\u0099s. Occasionally he drove his car but often used public transit. Aside from minimizing his eco-footprint, the trip gave him time to observe and think. Tonight he had a lot to think about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Guruji had cut him loose.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crowe had seen it coming from a distance. Traditional wisdom held that when Jupiter and Rahu, the ascending node in the Moon\u00e2\u0080\u0099s orbit, occupied the same sign, rifts developed between teacher and student. The phenomenon was called Guru-Chandala Yoga<\/em>. Guru <\/em>was the teacher, while Chandala<\/em> were people who hunted animals or traded in skin and bones. Although not taken literally, it implied a difference in values that ran the gamut from dietary to intellectual, moral, sexual and spiritual.<\/span><\/p>\n

Metaphysics aside, there was a mundane element. Crowe had studied with Guruji for fourteen years. For thirteen years he\u00e2\u0080\u0099d rented apartments in the Parkdale neighborhood where a former mental institution had been closed due to budget cuts and many of its inmates set free on the streets. Now it was more of an artist\u00e2\u0080\u0099s community, although sometimes it was hard to tell them apart. He\u00e2\u0080\u0099d lived there because Guruji lived there, a matter of convenience since they\u00e2\u0080\u0099d spent so much time together.<\/span><\/p>\n

During those years, he\u00e2\u0080\u0099d learned many things from Guruji \u00e2\u0080\u0093 astrology, palmistry, ayurveda<\/em>, numerology, philosophy, and vaastu<\/em>, the Vedic science of spatial dynamics. He\u00e2\u0080\u0099d also sacrificed many things \u00e2\u0080\u0093 eating meat, drinking alcohol, sleep, ego. And there were things he\u00e2\u0080\u0099d been forced to confront \u00e2\u0080\u0093 his aggression, ambition and lust . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

A year ago he\u00e2\u0080\u0099d bought a house in The Beach. It was a neighborhood he loved \u00e2\u0080\u0093 the small-town ambiance of Queen Street East where the big box stores were unable to wedge themselves into the heavily-treed blocks of houses a stroll away from Lake Ontario. There was a park that ran along the shore, a bicycle path and boardwalk, the beach . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/a>Below the surface, a secret motivation had lurked. He\u00e2\u0080\u0099d needed some distance from Guruji. For the last seven years he\u00e2\u0080\u0099d been under a spiritual injunction to minimize his sexual activity. It was all part of the program, Guruji had lectured him. You cannot let your little head do your thinking. You must show him who is boss. Until you master this on your own, I am the boss. You have a choice to make. If you want to learn subtle things, you must become a subtle person. No meat, no alcohol, no drugs, no sex<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, there\u00e2\u0080\u0099d been slippage \u00e2\u0080\u0093 one step back for every three forward. Meat, drugs and alcohol were never a problem but when it came to the opposite sex, it was a struggle. Crowe liked women. He\u00e2\u0080\u0099d always had more female friends than male, been as willing to share his feelings as assert his opinions, more interested in discussing psychology than sports, as intuitive as he was logical . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

To forbid himself the pleasure of their intimacy was like denying a part of human experience. But he did so for seven long years. When he moved to The Beach, however, things changed. Parkdale had been a confinement, a starvation diet. The Beach had given him a newfound freedom, like a college student moving out of his parents\u00e2\u0080\u0099 house to take his first apartment.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he was never completely out of Guruji\u00e2\u0080\u0099s sight. He could run but he couldn\u00e2\u0080\u0099t hide. Never mind that his birth chart in Guruji\u00e2\u0080\u0099s hands rendered him an open book. Guruji\u00e2\u0080\u0099s intuition was so powerful that wherever he turned his attention a glaring spotlight revealed naked truth, warts and all. To associate with Guruji was to give up all disguise and pretense.<\/span><\/p>\n

Crowe didn\u00e2\u0080\u0099t kid himself that moving across town would allow him a secret life. Maybe it was just the remnants of his ego that risked defying a rule laid down years ago. Had lust corrupted their relationship or was it Nature\u00e2\u0080\u0099s way of saying, time to move on? His actions had in turn prompted Guruji\u00e2\u0080\u0099s response. He would have the rest of his life to digest the ramifications.<\/span><\/p>\n

The great irony was, today he had not<\/em> succumbed to desire, despite the temptation of a certain redhead. But he\u00e2\u0080\u0099d struggled with it. He\u00e2\u0080\u0099d tried to be strong and he knew that Guruji knew, yet still Guruji was on his case . . . It was an exercise in futility trying to understand his guru, whose Tantrik ways had always remained an enigma. So it was now with mixed feelings \u00e2\u0080\u0093 both remorse and relief \u00e2\u0080\u0093 that Crowe contemplated his future.<\/span><\/p>\n

~~~~~~~~~<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

If you’ve already read\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Scorpio Rising<\/em>, please consider writing a review on Goodreads or the vendor site where you bought it.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Now you can purchase #2 in the series,\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Felonious Monk<\/em>, at\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Amazon<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Apple<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Barnes&Noble<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Flipkart<\/a>,\u00c2\u00a0Kobo<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>or\u00c2\u00a0<\/span>Smashwords<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this third excerpt, taken from Chapter 12 of\u00c2\u00a0SCORPIO RISING, we continue to follow the steps of astrologer Axel Crowe who, after 14 years of strict tutelage under his fierce Tantrik guru, is cast off to swim on his own. ~~~~~~~~~ Axel Crowe rode the streetcar from Queen Street West across the city to The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,109,37],"tags":[173,170],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2078"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2129,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2078\/revisions\/2129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.navamsa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}