Last month, I lost both my beloved animal companions within weeks from each other. It was not easy, yet I chose not to take a single day off. Perhaps it was because I just wanted to distract myself, to move forward, but the last few days my sorrow has been catching up on me. I felt tired physically and emotionally. I thought that I just wanted this suffering to be over. I wanted to be done with it. I wanted to be through with the difficulty of these loses. I picked up this book called The Dance of Wounded Souls, and there the writer suggested that instead of thinking of this life as a series of punishments, we think of this life as the experience of a soul taking on a human form. And that reminded me of the mantra from Yajur Veda and the Isha Upanishad: Om purnam adah purnam idam purnat purnam udachyate purnasya purnam adaya purnam evavashidhyate The word purnam means whole. And I started to think of how my perspective would change if I see events in my life as part of a whole instead of isolated and fragmented components. If this life were whole, then in its wholeness it has space for both love and loss, life and death, joy and sorrow, despair and hope, effort and grace, beginnings and endings. If this experience were whole, then the pain of my losses would just be a part of the big picture, the big picture being the opportunity to love and connect and share, the moments of warmth and laughter and tenderness. It is easy to forget the transient nature of this human experience, how life flows like a river, how things are impermanent not despite this life being whole but because this life is whole. If we want to offer a little lightness to this existence, a little softness around our hardships, a little kindness to our ailing hearts, then we must remember "purnam", this wholeness that allows us to be here as we are, whether this moment is light or dark, whether we are filled with love or plagued with loss, whether the chapter in this story is unfolding in its beginning, middle, or ending.
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My teachers Sharon-ji and David-ji live at a place they call Jivamukti Wild Woodstock Ashram, where the land is largely untouched and where the wild is left to remain as it is so that animals could thrive in their natural environment. David-ji told us that one time, a father and son were in their private property in matching camouflage outfits, carrying guns, and were there to hunt. In the way he told us this story, he did not express anger. It was almost comical, like a sketch, that this father and son tandem would dress up and play pretend games. The focus of the month is forgetting and remembering. We have forgotten our true nature, and like the father and son in matching outfits, we take on roles. If we remember that this is all a game of false identity, perhaps it will be easier to hold others and ourselves in the light of compassion. When others do hurtful things, it is because they are still wearing their costumes, pretending to be hunters on the prowl. When we make mistakes or are lost or are struggling, it is because we are still attached to our costumes. And who could blame us? We are just having fun playing this game of pretend. There'a a certain amusement and entertainment to it. What game of pretend do we play? What armor do we put up? What identity do we attach ourselves to? Can we see that this game and this armor and this identity are limiting, that they are most certainly not a complete picture of who we are? Can we forget about being victims of our hurts and pains and remember that who we truly are can emerge from this imperfect human experience? Can this life be a practice of donning our costumes, because we would realize sooner or later that who we are is far more interesting than any costume we could wear? My friend Andrew told me that I seem to take on an avatar state (in reference to Avatar: The Last Airbender) the moment I sit in front of a yoga class to teach. We laughed about it because I knew what he meant. He sees me as a friend first before he sees me in my role as a yoga teacher. He has known me for years and so he knows my former self and all that I still am with my angry, judgmental, and impatient tendencies. And yet, that so-called avatar state or the state of enlightenment is our natural state. It is who we are that we have forgotten. We say we are putting our best foot forward when we are kind and patient and forgiving and compassionate, but is that not who we really are? Is that not who we aspire to be? Think of it this way. When we are angry, our heart races; when we are afraid, we feel butterflies in our stomach; when we are impatient, our chest tightens. And when we are forgiving and courageous and patient, we feel calm and relaxed and at ease with ourselves. Which feels like a natural state? We are hesitant to take on the "role" of the enlightened one, because we think it is a "role" to fill. It is not. It is our illusion of our smallness and insecurity that is the role. We have it all backwards. So what if we make mistakes or fall short of all that we could be? We have merely forgotten. That is all. The path towards remembering who we are has room to explore who we are not. It is trial and error, the same way that we may go through the alphabet in our mind when trying to remember a forgotten name. You are the avatar. You are the enlightened one. You are the liberated soul. You are the jivan mukta waiting to awaken from this dream of maya. Years ago, I had this job where I was on call. If the product we launched encountered problems, I'd get calls even when it's midnight or I'm on vacation. I left that job because I felt that given I wasn't saving lives, it did not feel like what I was supposed to do, slaving away for the mere purpose of making rich people even richer. As yogis, we are very privileged. To be able to practice yoga at this time means we have the time and money and the space to search for ourselves. It means we have the luxury of pondering these questions: What am I here for? Am I here just to work and pay rent and buy new gadgets? Or could there be something more? This exercise that we will try today is inspired by a friend who asked me the same questions. Imagine that your being born was your choice, that you had looked at the world as it is and chose to be human again because there is something you needed to do. You had a purpose. You came here for a specific reason. You are a warrior with a mission. What then is that purpose, that reason, that mission? What speaks to you? What thugs at your heart? What is it about the world that fascinates you or captures you or breaks you or frustrates you? Your emotional response could be remnants of those memories of your purpose. You had a purpose. But then, when you were born, that purpose was forgotten. And then you grew up and you got distracted by the shiny things called money and wealth and material comforts. Is that all life has to offer? Is that enough? The work now then is to remember. Remember why you are here. Remember what it is that you need to heal in the world. Remember that you are the one who claimed you can do something about it. Then do something about it. We practice yoga to build awareness of everything that is around us, so that we could be fully conscious and alert. Practice taking it all in. Practice seeing everything as they are. Practice not running away. If you find discomfort in a pose, do not give up. Giving up may give you temporary relief, but takes away from you that chance to grow. In the same way, if you see someone suffering, do not turn away. Turning away does not change the suffering of that being, and robs you of that opportunity to connect with the deepest part of yourself you may have forgotten. If we want to find our purpose, then it is necessary that we confront all of life, even the difficulties, especially perhaps the difficulties, because therein may lie the reasons as to why we chose to be here. If you believe you are a soul, is it not logical that your purpose is in some way to alleviate the difficulty of others, to bring joy, to make life worth living, to bring freedom to all? How that folds out and what you do to make it happen become secondary when you remember your purpose. It has always been there-- this reason why you are here. All you need to do is remember. The last time I was at an international airport, I had a funny little encounter during the immigration checks. The officer looked at my passport, then looked at me, and back at my passport, and said "You look at least ten years younger than your age." I smiled, maybe a little too smugly, and said "Well, that's because I'm vegan and I'm a yogi". We had a short chat about it and it felt good that I had the opportunity to talk about the things that are important in my life. The focus of the month for April is Forgetting and Remembering. The gist of this focus is that who we are is pure consciousness, though we had forgotten that and as yogis, we seek to remember it. It is, shall we say, not a usual topic for what we may consider everyday conversation. Imagine, for example, that I brought up this concept of forgetting and remembering during the airport conversation. Alternative Scenario 1 Immigration officer: You look at least ten years younger than your age. Me: Well, I am not my age. I am not my hair. I am not my body. I am not this vehicle we call a body. This identity is fake. I'm a pretender, a fraud, an illusion. If I had said this, they probably would have detained me because of my confession that I am using a "fake identity". Alternative Scenario 2 Immigration officer: You look at least ten years younger than your age. Me: Am I really ten years younger? What does that mean anyway? Who am I? Who is supposed to tell me who I am? If I had said this, they might have put me in a mental facility for my confused state and my "amnesia". Alternative Scenario 3 Immigration officer: You look at least ten years younger than your age. Me: Yes, that is because who I really am is eternal and boundless and timeless. I am the divine, the consciousness, the connection to all. If I had said this, they might suspect me of drug use and try to search me for drug trafficking. So, this idea of forgetting and remembering is not part of most people's everyday conversation, because most people are stuck in the forgetting part of the equation. We look at our passports and our driver's licenses and our company IDs and we think we are what these documents say who we are. From the time we are born, we are categorized. This is your name, this is your gender, this is how much you weigh, you are the child of so and so, and on and on it goes with the labeling, the mislabeling, the categorization, the limiting of our identity, and the attachment to that identity. Like David Life said in his essay, we are like children wearing Halloween costumes. Some of us pretend to be superheroes and others villains, some princesses and others monsters. We make believe until we fool ourselves into thinking that this is all that we are. But because we are in a safe place amongst yogis who ask the same questions, because we are in this satsang (a gathering of like-minded people), we could dare put the question forth of who we are. We can create space in our lives to ask this question: Can I remember who I am before everyone else told me who I am supposed to be? Be brave. Choose to let go of the social conditioning of forgetting and begin that search of remembering. Be bold. Choose to do the unexpected of awakening to the vastness of your true identity. Be your Self. Choose to strip away your charade of what you show to the world to remember that you are the one wearing that costume and you are not that costume. Let us remember. Let us walk down memory lane. Let us embrace who we are. There are actions out in the world that may look and feel like compassion but are not really compassion but codependence. How can we then tell if an action is compassionate or codependent? Here is a simple rule of thumb: If something frees us and expands our world and teaches us the vastness of love, then it is compassion. If something keeps us tied up in knots and limits our world and creates a lot of drama in our lives-- that we feel we are constantly on an emotional roller coaster-- then it is codependence. When we say we are being kind to others, we are offering support and guidance in some way, we have to be honest and assess whether we are truly helping another person or just making a desperate attempt to catch someone's attention and hold on to this person by feeling needed. Codependence is not compassion. Codependence is just another knot we tie that keeps us bound. Codependence comes from a deep-seated false belief that we are not good enough and therefore we have to prove how kind and helpful we are to win over someone's affection. Codependence comes from our need to be validated, and at its root it is more about us fearing abandonment and less about truly being concerned with the welfare of another person. Codependent people want to feel like heroes or martyrs, and they expect a payback, a return of some sorts for the suffering and hardships they put up with. Codependent people do not necessarily understand that they are volunteering to be victims, to be pushed around and taken advantage of, because they do not realize it is an act of self-respect to walk away. Codependent people end up enabling the destructive habits and patterns of another person, catching them when they fall, never giving the other person the chance to learn how to grow. Compassionate people act from the sincerest of intentions, even if it means the action is no action, even if it means that no action would result in the person suffering the negative consequences of his or her own doing. Codependence is not compassion. Enabling is not compassion. Staying in an emotionally draining situation is not compassion. How do we then move from codependence to compassion? If we do not know how to take care of ourselves, our attempts to take care of others will be futile, because we will be needy and desperate and seeking the approval that will never be available because we seek it from those incapable of giving it to us. If we do not love ourselves, we would spend our time and energy trying to win the love of another and neglecting our needs in the process. To move away from codependence, we have to first love ourselves and take care of ourselves. We have to believe that we are enough, and that how others treat us is not a reflection of our worth but a reflection of where they are at in their own lives. We have to leave situations that make us feel that we are "less than". We have to allow our self-love to be bigger than our fear of being alone in the world or the fear of what others may think or the fear of being abandoned by that person we feel we so desperately need in our lives. We have to see that our happiness is not dependent on someone else; it lies deep within us. Other people can not make us happy. But we can make ourselves happy. We can move away from codependence and into compassion by treating ourselves in the same way that we would treat someone we love-- with care, with nurturing, with protection, with kindness, and with forgiveness. Until we are free from the knot of codependence, we will be caught up in the cycle of choosing unavailable people, staying in high-strung situations, beating ourselves up for being not good enough. When we are free from our codependent tendencies, we will start to feel that our well-being is more important than any perceived excitement that is temporary. Begging for breadcrumbs of affection will start to lose its appeal. Our healing will become a priority. Our peace of mind will take precedence over anything else. Only when we are healed and whole can we then be truly compassionate, because it is only those who know love that can give love. Note: If you think you may be codependent, please read the Patterns and Characteristics of Codependence and go to a support group meeting near you. |
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