Sunday, March 4, 2012

The Spirituality Teacher is Human Too

I was invited to meet some friends at a café one evening this week.  Not having a car, I went with my friend who was also on the invitation list.  When we all arrived I saw that someone I had briefly met before had joined us, as well.  I thought it was an odd mix, but figured, I would just go with the flow.  Unfortunately, the flow stopped shortly thereafter and I simply felt stuck.  It was as though a boulder plummeted into the river, leaving the water with nowhere to go, except to continue crashing into the oversized rock—and I was doing all the crashing.

We ordered our drinks, but after scoping out the place, there wasn’t any room left in the café to sit.  The person that invited me knew this place well and claimed that there was a secret table that wasn’t so secret hidden in the back.  We meandered towards the rear end of the room and exited the café.  The temperature had dropped substantially and I initially thought we were outside, but we were actually inside a lobby for office spaces.  We finally reached a solitary round table that held a sign claiming it was for the sole use of a particular business.  It was after hours, so we figured no one would mind if we sat down and utilized the space.
It was a strange feeling sitting out there.  It wasn’t a part of the café at all and when I saw where we would be sitting I admit I wasn’t very happy.  I could have seen the circular shape of the table as a symbol of unity.  I could have had a little fun and even viewed it as a reminder of King Arthur’s Court.  However, I chose to see this table as a metaphor for being an outcast.  Alone, away from the crowd, it seemed to me that we were pushed aside from the joviality that was streaming inside the café from the many patrons and baristas alike.
Trying to make the best of the circumstances, I attempted to put on my happy face.  Almost immediately my two friends started having an intimate conversation and I was stuck talking to the “intruder”.  I was instantly brought back to the scene in the movie When Harry Met Sally where two best friends set up their other best friends with each other on a double date and awkwardness pursued.  My attempts to get my friends’ attention worked for only brief interludes.  Inevitably they would go back to their private conversation and I was sucked back into the land of wierdness.
The conversation mobilized itself from being strange to being downright dark and gloomy.  What once was just a feeling of boredom quickly turned into a feeling of despair.   As the stranger continued delving into increasingly darker topics, I could feel the energy radiating through my hypothalamus and I began tapping that space in my body.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted to leave, but I continued to suffer.  Without a car at my disposal, I felt trapped.  The inviter of all of us began realizing what was happening and he escorted me on a walk a couple of times, but that was only a stopgap measure.  We eventually went back.  He then began sending me reiki, but again it wasn’t helping.  I was falling into my own dark space.
My ride finally said that it was nearly time for her to go, but added that we could stay for a few more minutes.  However, I interjected that I wanted to leave then.  Thankfully we finally did so.  Nevertheless, our split from the upsetting culprit did not end for me there.  I held onto the energy for a few days, repeating his words in my head over and over again until I felt drained.
As a Spirituality teacher, it is my job to teach others how to find solutions to the problems they have.  One thing I have learned in the course of my own Awakening is that everyone and everything that is presented in our reality is a mirror for us.  On this occasion, I was having a difficult time with that one.  I didn’t want to learn.  All I wanted to do was play the blame game that I so often performed when I was younger.  Now, even though I knew better, I fell back into these old patterns so easily, which was troubling me even more—because now I knew the right course of action and yet, I continued on the path of ego.
While it took me about a day, I eventually did begin to practice what I preach.  I went into meditation mode to try to find clues for my emotional upheaval.  I asked the Universe what I needed to learn from this situation and I immediately saw in my mind’s eye waves of purple, fuchsia and red, repeating the same pattern in my view and as I saw my visions my throat began to burn with pain.  Color, of course, is not just something pretty to look at.  It is a wave of energy that resonates at various levels.  The purple reverberates at the same level as my crown chakra, symbolizing the Universal Spirit.  Fuchsia means compassion and red, which is the same color as my root chakra is a metaphor for survival.  In other words, this could all be translated as the Universal Spirit guiding me to see compassion in not only the gentleman, but myself for my own response. 
The combination of the color red in relation to my sore throat showed me that as this man’s conversation delved into ever darkening crevices, I could have chosen to make a stance of survival.  My sore throat which is in charge of speaking my truth was alluding to the fact that I could have done just that and walked away.  It is not that in speaking my truth I had to be mean to this man.   I could have offered my compassion by commenting on how I am respectful of everyone’s opinions as we are all part of the Divine and are experiencing whatever is perfect for us in that moment.  However, I choose to sit in the space of my own reality.  I could have then walked away and brushed this experience to the side at that moment instead of basking in it repeatedly in my mind. 
After my meditation I felt better, but another twenty-four hours passed and I was still allowing his energy to creep into my space.  The next day, I walked up Cathedral Hill and it was there where I found round two of my healing. 
Climbing up through the winding path, I noticed my relationship with the surrounding trees.  With each step I took, I embraced my climb towards my Spiritual Truth.  My physical experience was a metaphor for my Spiritual one.  As I reached the top, I looked down upon the tops of the age old trees and felt that they were like my ancestors and my descendants and I could see them all from above.  Their roots symbolized the unity we all have as they interlink below the surface by connecting with Mother Earth and with each other while their trunks and branches reaching to the heavens, symbolized for me the drive to grow and to learn.  We each experience an upward movement, no matter where we are in life, and this upward movement leads us to our Spiritual understanding.  As I stood above the trees, I opened my arms and said aloud that I loved the trees and was grateful for their presence.
This ritual helped in my healing as the gentleman in question expressed to me how trees are filled with dark energy and we should not go near them.  As a Shamanic Practitioner, teacher of nature’s symbolism and general lover of my surroundings, this was quite hurtful to me.  However, I decided it didn’t matter what he thought.  It did matter what I thought.  Trees are beautiful and part of my experience and I adore them.
I thought with this, I was done with my healing, yet later that evening, I still felt the energetic presence from my evening at the café.   As I lain in bed, I asked the Universe to share with me the underlying root to this problem and that is when I received the answer.  As the words tumbled into my mind, I could see this story being written that would eventually find its way to paper the next morning—and here I sit tapping away on my computer making good on this vision.       
For what I now understand is that as a Spirituality teacher I choose to hold a certain presence around people.  Yes, I like to laugh and have fun.  I even share my flaws through my stories so that people can hopefully see some truth in the experience for themselves.  However, I never want people to “see” my so-called imperfections.  I did not want the inviter of the café that evening to witness the fact that I could not handle this other man.  I did not want him to see that I was not offering compassion in that moment and that I was consumed with adversarial emotions.  My thoughts raged that evening and continued to do so for a couple of more days, not because the intruder was strange, but because I didn’t want anyone to bear witness to my own imperfections. 
With that information flooding in, I had all the answers that I needed and I allowed myself to smile.  I recognized that like an onion, with its tearful layers that are peeled away until you get to the sweet center, I too had peeled away the tearful layers until I got to my own sweet center.  I can now proudly state that I am a Spirituality teacher who has gained a level of clarity about my Spiritual awareness and yet, I am still of this Earth experiencing the full range of emotions and responses.  I am filled with flaws and as I continue on my journey I grow from each new experience…as do we all.
Thank you for reading and Namaste! (The Light in me recognizes the Light in you!)