Just having returned from teaching my first ever Guided Meditation, I'm once again humbled by how much power we can hold over the ones who trust us. Whether you are a doctor, banker, teacher, lawyer, mother, brother, friend, lover....the responsibility we ought to feel towards taking care of those connected to us can be so overwhelming that I so often see (and personally am guilty of) shirking of these duties. One may pose the argument that it's out of an attempt at self-preservation but im learning every day just how far from the truth that mentality is.
What are You Afraid of? Commitment for loss of 'self'
What do You Love? Connectedness
These were my answers to an exercise we did one of our first days on this journey. I was upset at first by how seemingly irreconcible my responses were: If I am to always be afraid that being with someone will ultimately lead to destruction of the idea of 'myself' as I have cultivated it, then are my only options to remain in at best ephemeral relationships or to be alone forever? And neither option comes close to satisfy that which I really love....
My qualms were quelled by a simple revelation by our Sanskrit teacher here. While breaking down mantras from the Upanishads, we digressed into a discussion about the physical body during mediation. There are no coincidences, there's a reason the classic meditation pose involves the hand with thumb and forefinger joined in a circle and the other 3 fingers splayed outwards, fanning away from the body. The accusatory forefinger is Dharginia, representation of Ego, of identifying the separation of You and I (makes sense right? That's why pan-culturally it's so rude to point!) The thumb represents God/Ishwara/Some spirit that is so much greater than anything that you or I can comprehend. The joining together of these fingers into Chin Mudra as it's called is essentially the ultimate recognition that this divine essence resides in every living being and therefore since I am in you (and you and you and you....) and You are in Me, there is no separation, no duality, no opposing forces; we are One, just different expressions of the same, greater and Whole concept. The three fingers represent a falling away of mortal attachments so you're left with a pure representation of the only thing that matters - the divine in me recognizes the divine in you.
Isn't it curious if you take this into the context of the real world how the concept still resonates? Most primitively, the act of sex when done sacredly is the ultimate manifestation of the recognition of divinity in one another. For some, drugs or alcohol elicit the same acknowledgment of the higher powers in others. Why are we so drawn to people who are so attuned to their prowess in academia or in a spiritual realm? Or to people who are 'good' at yoga? Initially it's perhaps because we too crave to emulate their expressions (I wish I could lecture like that, wish I could be as spiritually sound, wish my body could look like that) but ultimately, it's because we see something in 'them' that we also somehow know is in 'us.' But the irony is that It's already in all of us, we just maybe needed someone to remind us to tap into It!
And therefore, so long as the one I'm meant to continue this quest with (and so, all of us) has attained the same level of understanding and enlightenment, I (and all of us) really can have it all! There can be freedom and love in harmonious coexistence because in their truest expression and cultivation, freedom ultimately leads to love and true love, to freedom.
As I work my way out through the cobwebs, finally gaining a deeper understanding of concepts I had a only been able to create a rudimentary construct of on my own, im happy to be comfortable knowing that my whole and equal is somewhere out there doing the same, because we are all the same. It Is What It Is...But feel free to hurry up finding me :)
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