A note from Erin
I love hearing truthtelling. It’s so invigorating.
I didn’t used to.
I used to enjoy the ideal images of perfection (along with suggested ways to achieve them) even more than the real.
It’s part of what I loved in yoga, meditation, spiritual teachings, health regimens, glossy magazines….
Being taught to breathe, meditate, move, eat, and be so that I could match the “ideal” way to breathe, meditate, move, eat and live. I used to walk that path. I learned helpful things, for sure, but somehow, matching “ideals” has never been my karma. And now I find that a tired treadmill I’m happy to step off. 
As soon as I get a new sweater, dress, scarf…. my cat snags it. Every single time. Unless I spill a tiny bit of olive oil on it first. Then my cat might not snag it. My favorite teacup? Just chipped. Whenever these little reminders of impermanence happen (and they happen a lot in my neck of the woods) I thank my protectors, my guardian angels, for reminding me that happiness is never going to be found in perfecting these outer ideals. It’s just not. The little hole in the skirt I’m wearing is reminding me of that right now. Oh, and the stain on the carpet, the cough at the end of my cold, and sipping out of my chipped teacup.
A neighbor recently commented when hearing that the Dalai Lama canceled his visit to Salt Lake because he wasn’t feeling well, “What kind of a spiritual teacher is he?! He should be modeling for people that you don’t ever have to get sick!” I was shocked. Seriously?!! Carl said simply, “I guess we have a different idea of what it means to be a spiritual teacher.” It does not mean being perfect.
My old teachers rarely shared their struggles. I frequently wondered: Did they have any? They presented a polished image. Kept their own shit under the rug, or out of the room.
(In retrospect, that shit that was kept out of the room wasn’t out of the room at all – it was having its way with the whole process as shadow stuff tends to do. )
As a teacher myself I used to think, years ago, that I should emulate them and keep my challenges and my messes out of the room when teaching my own students these wonderful ideal practices and ways to be.
Now I think nothing could be less helpful and more harmful.
Ideal images, not grounded in real human life can cause so much suffering.
(Do you ever torture yourself with ideal images?)
Though I do confess, the illusion can be so magnetic.
The Martha Stewart or Pottery Barn version of home. (Damn. It just never works for me.) The way meditation is sold by an image of a lean 20-year-old in sexy yoga clothes looking blissed out. The ideals of a perfect photoshopped body. The teachings on how you should just think positive, be grateful, and green-juice your way out of your messy, real life. I mean come on, people, what’s your problem? That’s not working for you? Maybe you should buy a new rug at Pottery Barn.
These days? I don’t buy it. I don’t even have the slightest desire to.
I loved hearing authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Brene Brown sharing their fears of disappointing their readers while doing book tours, their tired diet of endless chicken caesar salads in one airport after another, their underwear drying draped unglamorously over a lampshade in a hotel room. It grounds the glossy “author photo” in an endearing way that the shiny image alone could never do. It’s real. I love when Pema Chodron asks, “When your loved one is dying of cancer, how much is that rug from Pottery Barn going to help you?”
It might help you a lot. Who knows. Not me. My cat would snag it or I’d stain it anyway. I’d rather invest in my well-being in other ways. For me, meditation works wonders.
I shared an image in our class on Tuesday night while we were working with meditation practice. Some in the class are new to it, some long time meditators.
While meditation is often sold as being sexy, relaxing, and “people won’t help but fall in love with you seeing that compassionate glint in your eyes” – in the beginning meditation is far less like sipping a cool beer on a hot day and more like being locked in a closet with a maniac on a megaphone. (Our own minds, seen up close and personal are not often pretty.) But, as pain-in-the-ass (and the back and the knees) as meditation can be, it is so damn worthwhile.
Finding, only through sitting with our inner maniacs on megaphones – without going to war with them and without believing them – and sitting through the aches and pains…. over time, we are bound to discover that there’s more going on. It’s extremely unglamorous. And yet, there’s a spacious presence that is more truly us than the maniacal voices, than the passing pains. It’s worth the pain in the ass to get to know this in our own bones. But let’s not pretend it should be all love and light and organic hemp yoga pants on a nice beach in Thailand. Can we stop pretending that?
Here’s a brief excerpt of something I wrote for a class I’m taking. It made me feel a thousand times lighter after I wrote it.
“Praise my bedroom floor, with the suitcase still full of clothes and sand from the last trip spilling everywhere. Praise the dishes in the sink and the piles of paper on my desk. Praise the many jars of homemade pickles, jammed in the fridge. Praise the porch boards that need to be painted, now stained by green food coloring and kids’ joyful play. Praise the weeds and the fallen leaves. Praise the real.”
Yes.
Praise the real.
I want to give myself an AMEN.
Praise the real.
That means us, in all our beautiful messy wholeness.
Fall colds and good green tea in chipped cups and kind friends and broken dishwashers and luminous fall grasses and dying loved ones and unwanted chin hairs and hand written letters and cellulite and late payments and expressions of generosity and forgotten birthdays and wrinkles and wonderful steaming hot showers and heart-cracking poetry and saggy aging bodies and crimson leaves and opportunity after opportunity after generous opportunity to offer forgiveness.
Thanks, friends, for keepin’ it real.
As ever, I’m so glad we’re in this together.
Love,
Erin
p.s. We’re working this week on some big schedule updates. We’re cooking up details for Women Embodied 2016, our Costa Rica Retreat (March 25-April 1), a retreat in Santa Fe next fall, a free online class over the holidays, and much more. Coming soon! |
