The best thing about a good teacher is that they live in us forever. We grow and take parts of everyone with us, and despite physical distance, we realize that there was never any separation to begin with. We notice this when we tap into our heart and have an inner dialogue, where we are asking questions to the people in our lives we've loved, admired, and trusted. Everyone whom we have a relationship with becomes a teacher in this sense - we can sit inside our skin with our eyes closed, and converse with the person as if they are sitting right there across from us. We can hear their tone of voice, we can imagine what they would say, and we can continue to be guided by their wisdom for as long as we hold them in our heart.
I suggest opening more to this phenomenon. That we remember the importance of honoring each and every individual for the gifts they've so readily provided each of us on our journey in life. I am so filled with gratitude when I consider all of the wonderful people I have met who have all offered me something - some unique piece of wisdom that only their own individual life experience could give to me. It's like this everywhere we go. What if we can open into each situation with a mental affirmative that there is something to be learned? That if I just step aside from my self-aggrandizing notions of having figured it out, or already knowing what I need to know, that this person in front of me has something to teach me? What would life be like if we were constantly curious, open to possibility, and even our body and posture represented that we are this humble student, willing to have open eyes, open ears, and an open mind? I invite you to try.
In my own life experience, I've definitely been led to some really cool place and met some amazing people where I otherwise would not have. Some of the experiences I've been blessed with required a tremendous amount of surrender to the unknown. Many times in life, I faced quite significant crossroads, where I was asked to leave everything behind that I had thought I had known and venture into uncharted territory. In all cases, there was certainly some guiding force hidden behind the fear I had, giving me just enough of a light in the dark to carry on. And in many of them, I was met with a willing teacher, bearing the torch of their own radiant being and offering me a hand up from the dark pool of my own ignorance. I pledge my allegiance to these teachers and their teachers before them, and the teachings passed down along the ages. Thank you....
This post is part of my attempt to capture the heartfelt appreciation I feel towards the wisdom flowing forth from our Earth into its inhabitants, and all the people striving to make life better here for us all. It is clear that the longer we spend here, the more apparent the things become that we must do to pass on a better future. A better future for our own selves but also each other and our children. A better tomorrow requires the presence of today - and to make today a truly lived experience is the goal we are all after. How do we make it a truly lived experience? Good thing we have plenty of examples from our teachers!
"Trust the energy, brother," Steve would say. It was so simple and yet so profound. Steve was a yoga teacher of mine that I met whilst traveling through India. I was staying at a small ashram on the banks of the Ganges river in Rishikesh, a small holy town in the northern part of the country. Him and I shared chai tea in our ashram's dining hall, sitting on those cheap stackable, plastic chairs. I still remember that first conversation we had, and I specifically recall the feeling I had during our first talk, where I knew he was to be my teacher.
I arrived to India on a one-way from Panama and was planning a continued pilgrimage through Nepal and who-knew-where next. I had thrown myself into the world on a solo travel adventure with no end in sight after I canceled my return ticket. I had that way of going about things, and still do, but am learning to be a little less stubborn. The saying "throw your hat over the wall" was something I had found to be most effective to me for my progress forward in life, because it forced me to be all-in. It taught me the value of being totally invested in whatever it happened to be, because that was the way I could discover the most about myself. In this case, yoga had been and HAS been something that consistently reappears as the 'thing' that if I invest myself faithfully into, it returns bearing fruits from my devotion. So when I met Steve, which to me appeared as a simple British guy on his own yoga retreat in Rishikesh, doing the same thing I was doing (investing himself into his practice), something in me clicked. I was drawn to him. I was drawn to the light that he had established in his own being. A light established through consistent sadhana, that has no other choice but brighten due to the complete transformation on the human system that is experienced when these yogic technologies are learned, understood, and applied correctly, over time. Steve had it, and I felt it.
Which is why I return to one of my favorite sayings of his "Trust the energy, brother." I remember at the time of meeting, and when I went back to England to study further with him at the yoga school he'd established in Southampton, I was always asking questions. I've asked questions my whole life - I still do. It feels good to be curious and to assume that someone knows an answer that might benefit us in some way. Especially when we seek out the people who have lived through life experiences that can help guide us forward in our own. So I would ask him all sorts of questions, and I am still doing this inside when I seeking guidance. I connect with a lot of my teachers this way and can hear their voices often. Maybe I am crazy for this, but I'm pretty sure we are all doing it. You might be hearing your mom or dad's voice, or your partner's, or maybe a teacher of yours that you respect. It's no different. Connect with the ones that inspire, uplift, and empower you!
Anyways - I'm going to wrap this up with - "trust the energy." What did/does this mean? My take away is this - inherent to all of life's processes is the natural phenomenon that it is ALIVE. Everything that is here, is here on purpose. The odds of you being alive are like, 1 in one trillion. So, clearly something knew what it needed to do to get you here. Or maybe it was all random - but even if it was, there was enough of an order to randomly generate your life and the heart beating in your chest and the immune system fighting off infection and the 200,000 biochemical functions that each cell of 50 trillion in your body is making every second.
Basically, something amazing is happening every moment that we are alive and it requires a very organized and highly tuned energy to orchestrate it all. If we can just trust in this energy, and allow ourselves to get out of the way, it will natural undo any of the damage we have done to ourselves over the times that we didn't know any better. I believe that it can even help undo the damage that we do to ourselves when we DO know better, and this is critical. Because I am certain that we can all admit, there are things in life that we could be doing a little bit better. I am on a mission to align myself with the energy that is guiding me towards doing better. Whatever better means, and whatever energy means. "Trust the energy, brother."