Adhikara - the right to have

 

"Yoga Elsa told me it would be okay if I quit training, that no one would think less of me.

"But I thought you said it's normal for it to be this hard and for everyone to get injured and for us all to feel like we're dying right now!" I wailed.

"It is. But you have to think it's worth it. There has to be something worth it in this for you. If you are just miserable the whole way through, it's okay to stop."

Yoga Elsa is pretty badass.

I am not sure why this training seems to be so much harder for me than for the others in my class. I'm sure part of it is the failure to rise above my job situation. I think part of it is also that most of the others have someone supporting them -- a partner, or a spouse, or even a studio. I'm climbing Mount Everest on my own here and hoping my oxygen holds out."

I wrote that weeks ago now when I was afraid I would quit. It hadn't even occurred to me to quit until Yoga Elsa said that I could, and then the OCD part of my brain became TERRIFIED that I would quit by accident. (It's hard to explain OCD.) I was obsessed with the idea that my lack of impulse control would lead me to quit in a blaze of glory while I was at the height of misery and then I would regret it.

Training was just so fkking hard. There wasn't even any specific thing I could point to and say, 'Yes, this right here is enormously taxing!" It was the combination of the 12 hours a weekend, the 4 books to read, the physical aches, the emotional flaying, the COVID setbacks, the dozens of scripts to write out, the sheer un-endingness of it all.

When I think of hard work, I think of Sisyphus pushing that damn rock up a hill. I know he didn't have a choice, he was doomed. But how did he manage, with no end in sight?

Without a doubt, my favorite yogic concept is that of adhikara. It doesn't really have a direct English translation, but it's a term that basically means "the right to" or the pre-requisite for. A student who has only been playing the piano for 3 years does not have the adhikara to play Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor. He hasn't put in the work and the years of practice; therefore, he has not earned the right to flawlessly perform such a complex piece, one that was difficult for me even after 12 years of practice. 

(It starts out simply enough, but don't be fooled.)

Adhikara says you must do the work if you want to experience the fruits of labor. Adhikara tells us that when we are ready, the rewards will come. But not before. 

This concept was completely enraging to me when I first learned it a few months ago. I wanted to say the following things:

* I have spent 5 years in therapy

* I have filled up 29 journals with self-reflection and work

* I have read hundreds of books and articles to educate myself on the things I did not know

* I have been faithfully practicing yoga to integrate all the parts of myself

* I have set and maintained boundaries

* I have let go of unhealthy relationships

* I have been applying for high school English jobs for 15 fucking years. Do not sit here and tell me that I have not done the work.

Adhikara tells us:

You do the work

and

You do the work

and

You do the work

and

You

Keep

Doing

The

Fucking 

Work.

You go on the 18th interview of the season.

And then one day it happens because you have earned the right to have.

I got a job. I’m going to teach Creative Writing.

It's a one-year-only job, but it's at a high school. My boss thinks I'm nuts to give up a tenured teaching position to take a one-year-only job that may leave me without employment come next May. But this is the opportunity the universe has offered me, and I have done the work. I'm taking it.

Life offers no guarantees. I've been thinking about that a lot.

In The Comfort Crisis, author Michael Easter deals with Americans' obsession with being comfortable and contrasts it with our overall lack of happiness and satisfaction.

The author travels to Bhutan and interviews a monk to ask why the Bhutanese -- consistently ranked amongst the world's happiest people -- are always thinking about Death.

The monk basically replies that Death is like a 500 foot cliff ahead of all humans, and we are all walking toward it. We will all eventually reach the cliff and fall off of it. Westerners avoid thinking about the cliff, concentrating instead on their checklist of things to have and accomplish. The Bhutanese, on the other hand, make it a practice to think about the cliff and its ramifications. In this way, they can make different choices: should I slow down? should I take a different route? should I notice things more on the walk? with whom should I take this walk?

You can't do that when you avoid thinking about the cliff.

I dated someone I really cared for who lived simultaneously in the past (talking and thinking constantly about what he lost) and the future (talking and thinking constantly about what he wanted). And it left little time to be present in the moment. As it turns out, it was hard to tell how compatible we were or were not because we were rarely in the present for very long. 

It's really hard to live like that.

I choose to take this job offer because I want to be present in the moment, in all my moments. Not just when meditating or practicing asana. I want to be present for the opportunities Life presents, knowing that I have put in the work. And I will be able to survive the discomfort of not knowing where something is going, whether jobs or relationships, because I have put in the work for that, too.

Ishvara Pranidhana - Surrender

We are nearing the end of yoga teacher training -- done in August! I don't yet feel like I can teach or sequence, but I did have COVID and then a killer migraine when we were doing that part of things. Or maybe yoga is one of those things like teaching English where you don't actually feel like a teacher until you've been at it for 5 years... 

The last niyama of yoga is ishvara pranidhana - surrender.

Well hot damn, they saved the easiest one for the end! J/K. This one's hard af. 

After you've done all the non-stealing and non-excess, after all the self-discipline and self-study, what does it mean to completely surrender?

In The Yamas & Niyamas, Deborah Adele writes, "We can be so busy feeling cheated or victimized when life doesn't go the way we want it to that we often miss a new opportunity life is offering us in the moment" (165).

Well, that's a gut punch.

I was talking with someone recently about online dating. We went on some great dates, but then it turned out he wanted five million children and I did not. He was trying to come to grips with the fact that there are not a ton of women online who want to just now start having a huge family at this stage of their life. I don't know what it's like for men, but for women in their 30's and 40's, you don't have the same energy level you did a decade ago. You're not eager to begin having a ton of kids. There are only so many options, then, for a man wanting a big family: focus on dating younger, more fertile, and enthusiastic women; keep combing through profiles looking for The One and hope you don't regret it later; consider other ways to be a family; take stock of your non-negotiables. 

I felt a lot of compassion, which is unusual for me because I was also mad that I am old and tired and not particularly motherly except for with the squirrelly youths. But I remember trying to come to terms with the fact that my life has not gone the way I thought it should, either. There is such a grieving process to go through. And then right when you finally make your peace with how life looks, you've got to start over surrendering to and grieving some other thing. It's like Life is this constant process of wanting, losing, grieving, and surrendering.

I went through a really long grieving process as my friends all got married. I think I eventually decided I didn't want that because it was just easier to not want it than to want it and accept the fact that it probably wasn't going to happen for me... maybe I bypassed surrender by refusing to want something anymore. 

Or maybe that's what surrender is: maybe it's less waving the white flag and more a readjustment of expectations. 

In yoga class, I asked the group how I could surrender something (for example, finding a high school teaching position) when I'm still striving for it (going on my 18th interview tomorrow). Does surrendering mean I just give up and accept my fate as a middle school teacher? Does it mean I quit trying or quit wanting it?

Or for my friend, does it mean that he gives up on his dream of having a family? That he settles for a woman who is likely never going to have kids because she's still a wonderful person and they get along great? That seems incredibly depressing.

Yoga Elsa says it does not mean you quit trying, but rather that you put forth the effort while detaching from the outcome. One of her favorite sayings is "and that is the work of a lifetime," which always makes me feel better because I am an emotional person and have a hard time detaching from outcomes. "You prep for the interview, and you go to it, and you give it your very best shot, knowing maybe you will get it and maybe you won't. But you give it everything either way."

But then she also said that maybe surrender looks like getting to the point where I choose to quit trying rather than continuously putting myself in this place of being rejected.

I thought about that. Those seem like opposites. Keep putting myself out there but detach from the outcomes? Decide to take my hat out of the ring because it's too painful and it's just giving away my power? Which thing is really surrender?

I did set aside looking for high school jobs for a year or two. But then I come back to it and once again put myself in a place of vulnerability. I think I would rather risk the continued rejection than wonder if I'd just gone on one more interview, if that one would have made the difference.

I think of dating the same way. I hate the inevitable feelings of sadness and disappointment that come when things don't work out. And things most often do not work out. You can only have one Person, after all. But worse than the feelings of sadness or disappointment is the fear that if I'd just tried one more time, it might have been the one time that mattered.

So it seems to me that there are two methods of ishvara pranidhana: readjusting our expectations (I want it, but I will be all right without it); or, if we are unable to detach adequately from that expectation, deciding to stop trying and just surrender to what the universe does have for us. That means taking back the power, even though it feels kind of defeatist.

Life has not given me the partner, family, or job that I wanted. But I still see beauty, and I will still choose to focus on that, surrendering to what life has given me. I have a bomb-ass book club (even if Heather judges me for moving too quickly in dating :) I have Clementine The Great One. I have good siblings. I have a 105-year-old house. I have one needy cat and one cantankerous one.

I have no idea where to go from here. But I'm going to try to surrender to the process.

Svadyaya - Self-study

 

Here is a riddle:

Without putting too much thought into it, write down 5 words to describe the world.

Go on, I'll wait.

Do it quickly before you forget.

Now, pause and look at the words. Each is more a projection of yourself than a true indicator of the what the world is like.

Alarming, isn't it?

I spoiled this exercise for some of the women in my yoga course by telling them all about it a week before they were supposed to read the chapter on svadyaya. It turns out that a downside of reading a million books is that you can't remember what you read where, so you excitedly tell everyone half of everything in an effort to make connections.

Even so, here are my words: broken, beautiful, tainted, complex, natural

Freud would have a field day.

I got to the chapter on self-study and thought, "If there is one thing I do not need help with, it is self-analysis." The 29 journals piled up on my bookshelf can attest to the fact that I am very familiar with myself. This is also why I laugh when men try to psycho-analyze me and tell me my real motives for doing things. Trust me. Every and any real motive for anything has been adequately parsed and evaluated: I am telling the truth when I describe how I think and what I feel - I know myself, and I have no reason to lie. No one is more intimately acquainted with my faults and failings than I am.

Svadyaya, though, asks us to step outside of ourselves and observe without passion or agenda.

In the West, we would doubtless call this a cognitive behavioral excercise, and it would go like this: What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What is the objective truth?

Here are some objective truths:

Jobs I applied for this spring: 29

Interviews I completed this spring: 16

Offers I received: 1

Offers that were then rescinded for "personnel" reasons: 1

Phone calls from HSD principals, asking me to consider returning to a district I already left 6 years ago: 4

Number of days I have considered returning to HSD, because it is the only district willing to give me high school experience: 3

HSD is the district I previously worked for. Here are some facts: 

* 30% of the applicants to my current building are teachers trying to leave there

* in 6 years, HSD went through 4 superintendents - one was racist; one had a sexual indescretion; one made an inappropriate comment about parents on Facebook; idk what happened to the 4th one

* a student poured kersosene in teacher's coffee mug

* they just installed metal detectors but apparently can't figure out how to use them without completely disrupting school

* the hospital staff said an HSD teacher comes to the ER every couple weeks after trying to break up a fight and getting a concussion

* a student threatened to hotline me and destroy my career -- I made him angry by taking away a piece of paper he was coloring on

* the amount of paperwork was unlike anything I have every seen -- teachers were not trusted to be professionals, so they were constantly generating paperwork proving that they were teaching and that students were learning

* the administration was constantly turning over: we had 11 administrators in my building in 6 years

* teachers were constantly being put on probation and improvement plans: it is impossible to overstate the mental toll it took to work in such a "gotcha" culture (one teacher was written up because a student brought a bong to her room, it broke, and the teacher threw it away without reporting it -- because she'd never seen a bong before; the principal refused to believe her)

Here are some other facts:

* no one wants to hire me to teach high school English. Despite 10 years of college education, 6 different certifications, and 15 years of teaching experience, no one wants me to teach high school English because I do not have any experience teaching high school English.

* HSD would let me teach high school English

* HSD would also give me a $9,000 raise to teach high school English

* I had many, many wonderful students at HSD

* I also met some of the best friends of my life while working there

* I also met some really incredible teachers while working there, people I learned a lot from

Now, here are some feelings:

* I literally wanted to die when I worked at HSD. Like, I literally ended up in a hospital because working there was so insanely stressful that I could not go on. Granted, that's when Michael Brown was shot and 43 teachers quit in one week. But still.

* One day, when the power went out, I remember all these screams reverberating throughout the building. I knew it was just middle schoolers screaming because the power was out, but at the same time I thought, "This is the Titanic. I am standing on the Titanic and it is sinking, and I am not going down with this ship."

* When I look back at journals from that time (see? retrospection pays off), here are my goals: 1) Conquer depression   2) Get out of HSD at all costs

Now, svadyaya: Can I step outsdide the morass of feeling?

* I do not know if I can teach middle school for the next 12 years until I retire. All of my irony goes over their heads. I hate team parties. I hate bathroom passes. I hate kids farting in the middle of class.

* I have interviewed for and been rejected ELEVEN times for high school positions in this district. "You don't have high scool experience."

* I am not the same person I was when I first taught at HSD. At the same time, I seem to still be someone who assumes that they ruined everything whenever something goes awry (see: job offer rescinded)

* Is going back to HSD for 2 years to get experience something that is doable or worth it? Is that my only option?

Svadyaya asks us to know ourselves, to step outside of the feelings and observe calmly. Calmly observing, I do not know if I can go back to HSD. I think I might have a panic attack. But I also don't know if I can live with myself if I teach middle school for peanuts for the next 12 years.

I have been deeply uncomfortable with instability my whole life. In fact, I'd say from the time I turned 18, my life has been a quest for stability and safety. When I was younger, I went through a series of relationships with actually really decent guys. But looking back, as soon as anything became uncertain or uncomfortable, I was so distressed by the not knowing where things were going that I engineered the end.

I haven't prematurely ended things for a long time; to be fair, I have also not had a serious relationship for a long time. But I'm struck by my inability to tolerate ambivalence, in myself or in others. And that's basically what dating is: how do we feel about each other? I'd rather just know. 

For me, uncertainty is so deeply uncomfortable, that I would do anything to avoid it. I hate being uncomfortable. But more than just hating it, I also find it absolutely intolerable.

If yoga teacher training has demanded anything of me, it is that I tolerate the intolerable, that I sit in the total and complete discomfort and just abide.

I truly hate this. I want an end date: In ____ more years or months, you will finally leave this district that gives you a scripted curriculum, refuses to acknowledge other perspectives, declines to help you grow, and necessitates a second or third job. Congratulations!!!

But that's not life. So instead, I sit in the discomfort and observe. Svadyaya.