“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded”. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dammit, it’s tough out there. When you decide to open your eyes and to help, you realize the world is different from when a simply dressed person could live in the woods and followers would flock to that place for the power of presence alone. One cannot simply sit in peace and speak the truth, it will be to no effect. Right?
We all think too big, and at the same time too small. We’re wired to turn our hobbies into gigs, make our gigs go viral, and ride the viral high as long as possible – and because this is so big, we think we can’t do any of it. Yes, the world is scary. Yes, many of us sit with the dread of living in a world where a single medical event can break you financially. And yes, many of us have at one time fantasized about using our passion on a global scale to reach so many people and subsequently make enough money to outweigh any scare. It’s a challenging time to seek to be a true Buddha. And in fact, in a time of the proliferation of quotes, tidbits, sound bites, and blogs, you’d still be hard pressed to find a spiritual teacher who is doing their personal work with the same ardor as building the platform to talk about that work.
It’s easy to get lost in it all. It is seemingly impossible not to. And yet, we approach our teachers with less compassion and discernment than ever before, expecting perfect messages in perfect grammar delivered via short punchy videos with soundtracks. Teachers are being publicly blasted for their grammatical errors as well as for the student’s failure to have read the larger works which provide the context for these sound bites. In all of this, who would choose to teach or facilitate healing in anyone right now?
And yet… the joy that arises from just one person sitting quietly, taking in the words, and recognizing that words are but signposts meant to be deciphered with discernment rather than analysis – that one person leaving your presence lighter than when they arrived – if we chose simply to revel in this space, to consider ourselves having made the world a better place and everything else just a bonus, what a pleasure it all would be.
And so, as a teacher, this is what I seek – to connect on a personal level, to enjoy the small things, and to completely skirt the capitalistic values that are counter to good mental health. I do not seek to be punchy or witty except that which occurs naturally and doesn’t require me to be “on.” I do not wish to engage in conversations which do not feed me directly or indirectly by feeding another. And I have no intention of watering down the spiritual time-honored practice that is yoga – the art of cultivating harmony between mind, body, and spirit.
We are less than two weeks away from the start of my online class offerings. To truly teach is to step aside and allow the lesson to come forth, and I am so glad I allowed space between the teachings I have absorbed and my interpretation of what was intended for the practice. The authenticity this allows also means there is no need to be “on,” mistakes are ok, and the message is inside of me. The result is just love in action. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you.
Heather Ralston 