I'm not having the best life right now. After spending a few years as a karma yogi, and Kundalini Yoga teacher about a year ago, I hit a wall. It was as if all of a sudden, instead of striving upon transcendence, I felt confined by my definitions of what it means to be a spiritual person. Don't get me wrong. It was awesome. If you ever want loads of free stuff and have people deferring to you, walk around in a turban and/or wearing white and/or exuding a relationship with the Divine that anyone can understand. It was a good time. Until, it wasn't. Suddenly, life started posing all these situations I didn't have answers for. Suddenly, my hard won answers didn't apply even to my own life anymore. Suddenly, the very beliefs that sustained me couldn't hold water in the face of a much deeper, yet terrifying truth. So, I did the only thing I could do in the face of such heartbreaking disillusionment. I gained a lot of weight.
Fat has always been my go to scapegoat. Yet, after a lifestyle of hardcore spiritual seeking, truth facing, yoga doing, and sleep deprivation from getting up every single day at 4 am, left me well aware that the fat not only isn't a problem. It isn't even a thing. It's role as my tormentor was designed by me to spoon feed myself as much hell as I needed to grow. So, yay. That's the Satsang portion of this blog.
Now, I do love my body. I like how it looks. I like how I am able to do some pretty cool stuff. Still, when I find myself, say, unemployed or living in my friend's spare room because I'm down to my last $40 bucks, I drift back into a mindset of obsessing over my weight. See, happy as I am with myself, I am far from society's ideal weight. Even as a hard core yogini, I still tipped the scales at 200lbs. Oh the pain of realizing that I most likely would never be thin. How I mourned what that meant.
Because for me, being thin, meant the end of all my problems. I know that's utter bullshit, but for someone who's always been heavy, it seemed like the only barrier between me and normalcy, let alone happiness was the poundage around my middle. Now, most days, I do just fine. Staying sane. Bi
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
For a spiritual person, I have a pretty short fuse. It's true. For years, I subscribed to the fallacy that as a teacher I was obliged to always radiate beatific holy--what? Seriously? What was I thinking? Even today. As I do lesson 11 from A Course in Miracles, I found myself highly irritated and agitated over payment negotiations with some guy who I'm sure means well, but doesn't communicate well in English (hence his need for Native Speaking Writers), yet, I find myself constantly looking for how I can seek to get him if he tries to cheat me. I fully expect him to cheat me. And if he does, I'll take great satisfaction in turning him in. What I wonder is what is more important to me? For the work I'm doing, I'm being paid well under my worth. And that makes me angry. It also irritates me that I feel like I've had to threaten him about my payment every step of the way. So when I am perfectly honest, I don't at all know if I'd rather receive $7.50 for 10 articles or just get nothing and feel vindicated getting him in trouble. Right now, I don't know. It's an interesting feeling. Sure, the $7.50 comes in handy. It would pay for the $5, I'm being charged to work for the nut. So, the real question is, do I desperately need $2.50 enough? No. The real question is do I want to advance or do I crave revenge? Okay. I got paid. Yet, that means just $20.50 to go. I can do this in under three days. That's not terrible. I've worked for less. As a Karma yogi, I've worked for free. My inner compassion voice kicked in when I got especially angry at him. He's in Kenya. He studied sometime science like. Sure, I don't understand why he pawns off the work of American writers as his own, but broke though I may be, I'm not in Kenya. I have options. They may not be the options I want, but I have them. This being awake stuff is a hoot!
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