Part SIX
Between January 2016 and April 2016 I became more intensely devoted than ever to my own personal practice, making time to practice 5+ hours a day. I knew that if I was to deliver something of value not only to my current students, but soon to people who were going to go on and become teachers of yoga in the world, I had to do the work myself. I was simply committed to bringing the best version of myself and it fueled and motivated me in the same way I'd found in previous lives. As I've mentioned, it became one drug replaced with another - I'd swapped steel chains for golden ones, yet I was still bound by some desire to 'prove' something. It appeared that I was committed to find something that was apparently lost. This feeling of absence certainly contributed to my discipline in seeking, and my willingness to search. I was filled with an intense longing to discover - replacing my incessant childlike curiosity and wonder towards the world with a now 'matured' but imbalanced quest for purpose in life. Teaching was going great, and my journey back to Costa Rica was approaching; it seemed like everything was going right, yet I was still having moments of feeling more lost than ever....
Part SEVEN
By the end of April 2016, I made it through my first round of teaching teachers. I still had only been in the position as a yoga teacher for less than a year, and despite my preparations and practice, I felt inadequate. The silly thing is I knew I had given it my best, but I couldn't shake the feeling of unease. Why was I feeling this way? Was I being inauthentic? Was yoga really my 'thing'? I was being torn in half because it seemed like I had left everything behind on more than one occasion to pursue what I felt was true for me, and was still experiencing this dissonance. I appeared happy externally, but underneath the surface a lot was going on. My practice did so much to allow me the introspection to really look under the hood and question my motives and behaviors but it was hardly helpful at answering the deepest questions. My search for God as if He was missing from my ordinary life was perhaps the key factor in all this strife. Due to this, I was creating separation from myself and others while paradoxically knowing my fundamental purpose was to give, love, and serve. I hadn't fully realized it at the time, but looking back, my condition was obvious. I just had to let go of the idea I needed to find something that was absent....
Part EIGHT
In May 2016 I made my third trip to Costa Rica; it was my second round of sharing on the topic of anatomy to yoga teachers in training at @thesanctuaryattworivers . I felt major inner alchemy and changes happening within myself from each trip out to the jungle and back to the States, as if the purity and seclusion of being in the perfection of a natural environment did something to wash away any misperceptions I'd fabricated inside. I decided I was going to take advantage of this internal scrub down, and have my own mini retreat. I planned to spend an extra two weeks away from any teaching responsibilities and arranged to be gone for three weeks this time. The first week I'd spend at the Sanctuary to teach, but then two additional weeks I would find some quiet beach on the Caribbean coast, practice lots of yoga, and focus on stepping outside of my mind for a bit to truly see myself as I was. The week of teaching went well, very well - much better than last time - which I attribute to removing the pretense that I was there to prove anything and allowing a more ordinary relationship to develop between myself and the students. I felt a big shift had occurred and was occurring. Afterwards, I set out to backpack the coast and although I felt really good about everything that was happening, there was an underlying sense of unease I couldn't shake. I think I started to finally have an objective lens about this thing called yoga and my role in it as student and teacher. I saw that the same dichotomy and polarity that was created in social institutions was being played out by myself. Although I sought to avoid and liberate myself from the separation caused by our social conditioning, I was contributing to the mess. I felt that I was just as responsible for creating separation in the spiritual realm with yoga, as religion had been for ages in our cultures. Again, the search for God or 'liberation' or 'enlightenment' as if it was missing from mine or others lives was contributing to a power struggle wherein I was a perpetrator. The ideas that I had to achieve some sort of 'mastery' in yoga or that others needed to follow in my footsteps to find something that was apparently was lost, was bullshit. It seemed that something that was once so true for me was rapidly disappearing into an illusion that left me scared and confused. I was on the road in Central America with just a backpack on my back and more lost than ever when decided I wasn't returning home...
Part NINE
I had made it to Panama and was scheduled to be on a shuttle back to Costa Rica so I could fly home by June 2016 when I canceled my return flight and ditched the shuttle. I was laying on a beach in a speedo when the decision was made for me. Call it divine ordinance, a cosmic download, or just some
cry heard from the depths of my being; I heard in my heart a voice say "I'm not going home." Right then and there I knew it was true, but as soon as the thinking mind began his favorite job of interpreting and distorting the truth to suit his selfish motives, I started to question myself. But - I had teaching jobs back home! But - my students! But - my friends and family! But - my house payment, car insurance, bills... Blah blah, the mind went on to list all the reasons why I couldn't do what the heart had already chosen. With help from an angel, I managed to squash all this psychological noise and free myself of the drama I was creating. It was incredibly liberating, and the expansiveness I felt began dissolving the unease I was feeling. Of course at this point, making the decision to remove myself from any social responsibilities that I had accrued in my life brought with it a terrible fear that I was quitting on life AGAIN (it seemed to be a recurring pattern), but I knew I was on the right track. With no idea where I was going and what appeared to be a long journey ahead of me, I set sail on a seemingly endless voyage into an ocean of mystery with one overwhelming desire, filling my sails with its eternal wind...
Part TEN
I sent messages to everyone back home letting them know I'd be gone. For how long? I didn't know, so I left out details... Just a simple message to my loved ones and studio owners back home that I'd be away for awhile. Of course I started with the mental mapping of what I was actually going to do; the mind is amazing at creating a detailed story about our future. Usually we end up acting out this story, whether or not it's what we truly want to do. The tough thing is realizing that it's not often that this part of our mind is taking into account the greater good of everything, as it is driven by motives of self preservation. How else have we survived over millions of years? Sometimes we tap into the gaps between our thoughts, where true inspiration lies. The kind of inspiration that motivates us to create a more beautiful world for ourselves, and others. Not the conditioning of our psyche, which would have us repeating the same behaviors for the sake of familiarity, but something undefined and outside the ordinary box we create for ourselves. I feel incredibly fortunate for the God given opportunity to have cast myself outside of this box in a far away environment where there was no choice but to see things differently . Even though I was starting to develop a sliver of clarity about what I was doing, it would have been easy to return to my old ways and come back into the space of dissonance I was experiencing before leaving for Costa Rica. I didn't want that. Not for myself, not for others. I had become incredibly selfish in my pursuit of one thing and paradoxically had to take that selfishness to the extreme to find out what I was actually after, after all....
