Om - The End & the Beginning

 

In the Vedic texts, the Upanishads, and in religions from Buddhism to Hinduism to Jainism to Sikhism, there is the symbol known in the west as "Om." In the East, it is AUM. It is said to be the primordial sound of the world. If God spoke the world into existence, I think he hummed it this way. All three parts of "Om" represent something:

AU (ah-uh or "oh") - Atman or the Self within

M - Brahaman, or the divine reality

___ - the sound of silence, the space at the end.

This is the ending and the beginning

OM/AUM also represents the 3 aspects of God: Brahma (beginning), Vishnu (living), and Shiva (death)

As I ended yoga teacher training and my years of middle school teaching, I also approached the end of my 41st year on earth. Since at least my 20's, I have believed the year 42 will be the most significant year of my life. I have absolutely no basis for this, it is just the year my brain seized upon 2 decades ago.

In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy an enormous supercomputer named Deep Thought is asked for the meaning of Life. After spending 7.5 million years tabulating, Deep Thought responds, "42 is the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and the Meaning of Everything."

42.

Well, that's a relief.

    All levity aside, I do think there is something to the stories we tell ourselves. I told myself I was going to leave Hazelwood in 2016, and I did. I told myself that I was going to buy a tiny cottage, and I did that, too. I told myself I was going to be done teaching middle school, and I did that. And now I am telling myself other things. It is time. 

    I did not get out of yoga teacher training what I thought I would. I was not the only one. But in the last few years of my life, I have realized the concept of aparigraha or non-attachment. I have realized that in un-attaching from the expected outcomes, I can still find good things.

    When I went speed-dating all those years ago, I met many men I never saw again. But I also met my friend Sasha, who has been a bell-weather in many storms. She was standing in line next to me. I thought I was there to meet a guy, but the Universe had other things in store.

    When I worked in Hazelwood, I thought I was there to redeem myself, to support myself and earn a living. But in reality, I was there to meet the teachers who would set me on a different path and change my life.

    When I spent a grueling 6 months enrolled in YTT, I thought I was there to learn to teach yoga. I let go of that expectation because I had to. I recognized that maybe the reasons I had were different from those the Universe had. I am finding instead, in the silence after the Om, that the purpose was to think differently about the nature of teaching:

- What makes a good teacher?

- How do I measure whether I've been effective or not?

- If a few students succeed, is that enough? Or would they have succeeded, regardless?

- How do I want my students to feel?

- What would it look like to be transparent and vulnerable with all my students?

- Am I the same person with those I honor as I am with those who can do nothing for me?

    Again, none of these reasons have anything to do with why I sought training. But my biggest takeaway, the biggest thing I have learned now that I've stepped into the silence at the end of one thing and before the beginning of another is -- how do I want to be as a teacher?