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Offers that were then rescinded for "personnel" reasons: 1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