On Gurus, holy moments, and independence

conversations in my world

I just got an email from a student who is celebrating Guru Purnima.

Guru Punima is a time of honoring, reflecting upon, visiting or paying tribute to one’s teachers and the meta concept of “I can change” which is sometimes referred to as the Universal Guru. Maybe not “I can change”, but something along the lines of “this is it, this is my chance, there is a path.” We usually feel hopelessly lost and or resolutely trapped, so the discovery of a path tends to hit us like salvation.

Guru is growth and healing, absolute potentiality, the idea that life holds promise despite the obvious troubles. Insert neuroplasticity or the idea that the brain changes itself, here. Or human spirit. Or goodness, sweetness, beauty to the complicated world. Insert hope.

Except that when it happens, it tends more toward the goddamnit revelation of “I have to change” rather than toward any trumpets or light. Enlightenment tends to be humbling and terribly mundane. It’s the stuff of bank accounts, time management, and apologies. Transcendent moments, by comparison, tend to be fleeting and utterly confusing. I’m not saying they don’t happen. I believe they do. I think they happen all the time. But my teachers and goddamnit revelations have helped me understand: holy moments are ordinary and not the same thing as Enlightenment, which has to do with what you do after the holy moment passes.

My student sweetly and generously reflected back on her time with me, which I think is a wonderful way to observe the occasion. Go ahead: when was the last time you said thank you to an important mentor? There are worse things you could do with your strawberry glutted, late nighted, socially booked summer. The days are long. You have the time.

Her reflection gave her the opportunity to remember who she used to be and what was happening when she came to me. She talked of what has happened in our studies, what has changed, and what she’s learned. The funny thing is, to both her and myself, how very little I actually ‘do’. And how very little she’s ‘learned’. It’s hard to point at or quantify these things except to look around your life and realize that there is no part of it that hasn’t changed. Everything looks a little different than it used to.

She talked of the strangeness of spending a year studying a small thing. Her non-yoga friends are aghast that she would spend so much time (and money) doing just one thing.

I laughed.

I once had a student say she was touched and surprised to hear me talking about my still on-going studies and teachers; in twenty years of practicing yoga she’d never heard a yoga teacher talk that way.

I didn’t know what to say, other than that her experience reveals so much about the shallowness of contemporary yoga scenes. I could not personally feel any integrity in what I say and do unless I was also, to this day, several times a week, processing what I am doing and learning from a teacher who knows more than I do. It would be so lonely. It sounds so frail.

It sounds so presumptuous.

I am meeting with one of my teachers later today. We meet for 2 and half hours. Twice a week, with an additional Saturday thrown in once a month. We have done this for two and a half years now and will continue through December. Prior to that, I spent two years waking at 4 am every Thursday to study a different thing. And the two years prior were in preparation for that 4 am chant study. I simply can’t conceive of going to a short (often self guided, online, with no interaction) ‘training’ course and feeling ready. I can’t imagine holding space for my community without also having the resource of someone who holds space for me.

You know those brochures that come from local community ed programs? I got one from Hennepin County Technical College awhile back that offered a weekend certificate course in mindfulness. I laughed and rubbed my head. Scalps are so itchy. The funny thing is not that we’d spend a weekend exploring mindfulness, but that folks then turn around and consider themselves professionals, coaches, mindfully hustle savvy.

I’m not looking forward to my meeting with my teacher today. I resent it a bit. I feel unprepared and tired. But I will show up. I know that my resentment has nothing at all to do with my teacher. It’s coming from summer busy and the fact that I haven’t done my homework. I feel a little mawkish and self conscious. I know I’ll actually kind of enjoy the conversation, and that afterward I’ll feel just a little more prepared for life. I’ll feel on the ball and a little less like I’ve been fucking everything up day after day after day. After day. Always.