Will it float? – North Carolina Haikus

Posted by einajs in Writing, Yoga on 05 24th, 2010 | 4 responses>

It’s complicated
to ask for help when they’ve all
been there already.

Acutely realize
that part of your tantrum is
attention-seeking.

NAWTH CACKALACK

I know that a *proper* Heavy Metta Haikus travel post should be written on location and be accompanied with pics, based on my precedent of two [2] previous series, but I was in no energetic condition to embark on blogging when I attended the Certified Teachers’ Gathering last week, due to being completely recalibrated. Recalibration is not often pleasant. I’m just saying. It was a bit dicey. I also took no pictures, due to either feeling very unphotogenic/being concerned about John’s recent no-pictures policy/forgetting Carl at the hotel/not knowing very many people I could do a joyful group shot with. You will just have to imagine a huge Hindu temple hall and a whole bunch of really, really ridiculously good-looking people.

I wasn’t going to blog because there was just too much to say and some of it was political and some of it was just too intimate. Then I was having a bath and looking at my Ziploc travel bag full of all the little presents we got in our schwag-bag [which, by the way, whoever put that together rocks...there was some amazing treats in there] and feeling quite kindly about the whole adventure, instead of my previous crying jags and bleak stares into the middle distance, and I realized: Don’t fix what ain’t broke, McInnis. As Steve says, “better out than in”.

In the spirit of HM’s policy of full, sometimes unwise disclosure, I’m just going to come out with it: I really thought this would be It. I thought I’d meet my assessor and they’d be simply overwhelmed with my pure win and there’d be a ticker-tape parade and John would tell me how proud he was of me and there’d be ponies and rainbows and chocolate-chip cookies. I thought I’d meet Noah Maze and look him right in his bendy little eye and say “Hi Noah, great to meet you, can’t wait to see you in July”. I thought I’d go right on over to Sianna Sherman and she’d give me a hug in honour of my pure win and hugging her would feel like hugging a little girl and she’d remember that she spilled Cabernet Sauvignon on me in Costa Rica and we’d have a laugh over times long past. I know, this is provoking either cackles at my hubris or that “oh, honey” face you get just before you pat somebody on the shoulder. But this is how I felt before I left and even though I KNEW how silly this fantasy was, it was very compelling. Forgive me, for I know not what I do.

Yeah, it didn’t play out like that at all. Which is not to say that OTHER people weren’t extremely kind, gracious, generous and open. Particular mention should be made at this time of Mark Shveima, who rocks in all kinds of quiet and stealthy ways, and gave me some really sweet insight about Handstand that will come in handy in the future. And of course practicing beside Chris C. was magnificent. No, nobody shut me out. I shut myself out, because I knew on some reptile-brain level what was going to be revealed at this Gathering, and was, upon meeting my assessor.

With really wise people it doesn’t take long for them to get your number. I remember with my first teachers I couldn’t even be in the same room as them for long, because it’s really uncomfortable to be SEEN, sometimes. I know I proclaim with much rending of garments that I wish to be seen, for real, but the flipside of that is that when they see your beauty they also see your flailing and infancy. I met my assessor and they were nothing short of insightful, kind, generous and accurate. However, they didn’t let me get away with a. ny. thing.

And I’m not certified yet and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be without some serious heavy metta.

Many, many times
love is a hard hit to the jaw.
this is metaphor

I’ve been testing Anusara just like a toddler tests their parents. I’ve been throwing weird imagery and poor communication out there just like asking “WHY? WHY? WHY?” until you just want to punt my soft little body out into the street. I actually had this fully formed thought many times in the last weeks, wondering when the hammer was going to come down. I had fiercely girded my intellectual loins, thinking that the hammer would be my excuse to bail on the whole project. I mean, there are so many other kinds of yoga out there. Why go through it, you know? What’s the point after all. But of course the hammer is the divine weight of the guru [the guru principle, in this case] saying you know better, saying you have known better this whole time.

I’ve been jamming different concepts and techniques into my head, testing the boundaries of this ostensible “intrinsic goodness”, basically saying “Will it float? Will it float? is there light here? how about here?”. Well, no duh, OF COURSE it’s there. It’s a given. Rebelling against the light is siding with the dark dominant current, and it’s not like the world needs more doubt. Cultivate your certainty. Contemplate your reasons for doing what you do. Then tell me what they are and I’ll steal them. No, wait. That’s my project for the next…decade?

And I realized, in the tub, that this is every new student’s great dilemma…are you ready to be seen, in all your disastrous glory? Are you ready to make friends? I was as hostile and self-limiting as my first Bikram’s class. Are you ready to consider the radical prospect that they might like you anyway?

Will it float? Well, are
you ready for it to float?
Are you ready for yes?