Step #1: Wait.
That’s it. That’s the guide. Just the one step.
Makes for an efficient, although not very enlightening blogpost, so let me expand on that idea.
I had a most delicious synchronicity this past week. In the awesomeness that is facebook, (I know some people pooh pooh the ol’ FB but man I love it. I’m just a facebook chippy, precisely for things like this,) in its awesomeness, surfaced the first guy I dated in college via a thread of a mutual friend’s newborn baby pictures.
We dated for a month. A couple of months? I have a picture of him from Easter at our house in Chicago where I am wearing a hot pink linen Ann Taylor blazer that I still (although absolutely unsuitable for New York) own. That summer we whisked away to Vegas for an epic three days of concerts with Dave Matthews opening for the Grateful Dead; my best girlfriend and her own fraternity boy leading the way. If I recall correctly, I was a freshman, he was a senior and it had an expiration date stamped on it from the get go; we, not having too much in common other than chemistry. And I don’t mean a science class.
Doing the FB “hm, I wonder what he’s been doing for the last 15 years” drive-by, I see we like the same books. Some of them woo. His posts are meaningful, smart. Was he this smart then? I didn’t remember that. I’m happy to see he is married and thriving elsewhere. My belly gets all toasty to see people well.
A week after we friend each other, he posts a quiz to his friends on FB. Its answer being, the sanskrit mantra that I call mine. These are the words that I say more often than possibly anything else, and there he is on FB, all, asking people if they know what it means.
Out of all the mantras in the world.
The one I use, from my peeps, my guru, if you will, which was injected into me by some divine physician, similar to a little kid who gets a shot in the ass when his mom is distracting him to look the other way in the doctor’s office at the kitty poster. Haven’t seen this guy, or perhaps even thought of him in a decade in a half, a week after we “friend,” he posts that? Odds please? I mean, c’mon people.
And although that synchronicity was indeed lovely, that’s not the point of this story. The point is the mantra. The way that mantra, that guru, snuck into my little life and implanted itself forever in there, was so surreptitious, so patient, so in-for-the-long-haul and confidant of its own organic process, that I didn’t even know it happened.
Guru means someone who spreads the light. So, anyone can be your guru or teacher. In fact, ironically enough, the more advanced we get, the more we see everything and everyone as a guru until that moment when it all merges and we have no need… but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Traditionally, a guru is the mac daddy of all teachers. The master. Usually an enlightened person, because the thing about an enlightened person or master is, you can’t ever get ahead of them. They are an unending resource of wisdom and grace, so although we can go through dozen of other teachers along the way, to find a mac daddy (or mac mommy I suppose) is a one shot deal. The umbrella teacher: you don’t have to go elsewhere, so in a way, to find this person is like the most efficient thing that can happen when desiring a focus for a spiritual path. You found someone you vibe with? Good, now listen to ‘im.
It helps if they are alive, because then there’s a flow, an influx of information. I had/have nothing against the Virgin Mary, for instance, I just find that, for me, she didn’t make a very good conversationalist. But if you can go in your heart and talk to Mary today as your personal savior, well, God bless you sistah, all the power to you.
But really, you don’t have a choice. You don’t find the teacher. He/she finds you. The zen saying is: “when the student is ready the teacher appears.” Think “Karate Kid.” Think “Dirty Dancing.”
Mine totally snuck up on me. I think He knew that I wouldn’t be receptive to guru-dom and any kind of devotion that would entail. (A then Type A controlling New Yorker? I was ripe, but not willing.)
First, he introduced himself to me via a total Brazilian hottie. I mean, I don’t care who or what you are into, a Brazilian hottie is just, across the board, damn good marketing on the part of the divine.
After the initial intro, for years there was this mantra in my life and I was following this weird instinctual pull to organize, participate, but it wasn’t until I was in Australia and someone asked the Brazilian hottie at a yogi party how we know each other, and I heard her answer: “We have the same guru…,” that it hit me. I have a guru? Huh, I guess I do. And that Guy brought she and I together. I hadn’t seen that. She had.
But what's most marvelous was that just around that time, He started to show up. I would get pockets of information in an instantaneous download. Like, a whole slew of knowledge, that I didn’t have one moment, would suddenly be there the next, as though it just uploaded in the computer of my mind. I didn’t have to learn it, I didn’t have to go figure it out or research it, it was just there, this knowing. And I immediately equated it with him; I intrinsically knew that’s where it came from.
It wasn’t a conversation the way we'd think of one. It was literally an instantaneous knowledge. I wondered if that’s what people meant when they said “Jesus spoke to me.” This was not an intuition, a gut feeling, a leaning. This was: this is DONE. I was surer of that info than anything else in my life. I didn’t choose to be sure, that’s how it presented itself: as fact.
And although this was pretty f**ing miraculous, I didn’t get all “saved” and start going nutso over this guy. I played hard to get. I wanted to keep my options open. What, you want a lifelong commitment from a couple spectacular experiences? Dude, you’re going to have to work a little harder than that.
To make things more complicated, there was another guru that led me to this guru. I feel like they tag teamed me. Getting me to India. Getting me onto a yoga mat. Introducing me to the Brazillian hottie.
When I was practicing yoga abroad, I was so very way out of my league, next to some of the most advanced teachers and practitioners in the world, dedicated but absolutely lower-than-remedial compared to the people around me. I had a deep respect and admiration for, but didn’t feel any specific personal connection to the yoga guruji. It was only when he passed away three years later that I realized how much he lived in my heart.
When I heard of his passing, the most profound grief I have ever experienced seized me. Its intensity shocked me. Nothing had ever come close to this loss, this deep a pain and sorrow. It only took hold of me for a day, but it was inconsolable and at the same time, outrageously gorgeous in its depth of feeling. (I have the capacity to feel this? Oh my, marvelous.) In that day, I saw lineage, tradition, why people held such devotion and respect for their teachers in the world of woo. I watched my own teacher grieve his master, his father. Such love for someone who has shown you how to live a life worth having.
I’m not really sure if everyone has a guru. I’d assume they do. I mean it wouldn’t really be fair otherwise, right? “Oh Margaret- well she was good four lives ago, so yes, give her a guru, but Hank? Oh Hank’s been a total ass for eons. Let’s let him suffer though some karma payback. He’s just shit outta luck this go around.” Mm, no. That doesn’t seem fair.
But on the other hand, things are accelerating so quickly these days, in a very short while, if not already, the mystical middleman may no longer be necessary.
In the Indian tradition the antaryamin, the indweller or inner witness is the consciousness inside you. And there are all different levels of what a guru can be, so they don't have to be a small Indian person or a divine inside you, it can be sports, your children, your art.
Our gurus are each other; eventually they are ourselves. I must caution though, that most of us can’t just jump straight to ourselves. Until we get to a place where we’ve sussed it all out, let it all go, “wood-shed” and shined a light on the structures of our mind, healed our hurts or identified our conditioning and attachments, anything we think may be intuition guiding us might actually be the ego. So it's not just "wait." It's work while you wait.
The self-as-guru is not a one-stop shop. I don't think yet, anyway. In a way it’s childish to think that we can do it all ourselves. It’s impossible because the ultimate realization is the connectedness of all that is. We need peeps on the way. Then we get to ourselves. The step by step process is in fact: 1) guru 2)yourself 3)you're one.
And going back to the FB friend who posted that mantra? What’s the connection there? Why now? Maybe a little joke from my guru saying, “Hey babes, let me blow your mind even more. I’ve been with you all along. I’ve had my eye on you. Didja know that? You’ve been safe. And we’re still gonna hang ‘cause we’re all tight like that, but you’re getting to the point where you’re not gonna need me anymore. You’re gonna swallow me up so whole inside of you that there won’t be anyplace that I end and you begin. I’m not going anywhere, but you’re good to go. So go, lady. Go.”
No comments:
Post a Comment