Not to examine the teacher is like drinking poison, not to examine the disciple is like leaping from a precipice.
Padmasambahva
Hmmm! I am purposefully a day or two behind in my Michael Singer podcast listening. I decided to spread the magic out a bit ...to limit the days without a listen. So, I just listened to Thursday's podcast from Temple of the Universe, and I was once again like: Wow! I get it! Everything resonates so deeply within me.
Some of the things Michael Singer spoke about, I wrote about in recent entries. Yesterday, I wrote about my vision in meditation and about the learning/reminder that came from it: pull your eyes away from the samskara full psyche layer we are all so attached to, and trace every bit of light that emerges from beneath it up to the Source. Somehow, this morning's podcast reflected that/echoed that. Or maybe my consciousness is just echoing what I have learned from him. I don't know anymore. lol I wrote what I wrote before I listened to this podcast.
What is it about Michael Singer, as a teacher, that pulls this learner I call "me" in?
For some reason, I am pulled to his teaching in particular. My morning, no longer feels right until I listen to him. As I reflect on that, I get a little antsy. Though I respect him as a teacher and person, I do not want to be attached to any teachers. I don't want to see anyone, especially another Westerner, as a Guru. I don't want to blindly get lost. I watched too many documentaries, I guess, about yoga gurus gone bad. The words "guru" and "disciple" don't resonate well inside me and I tend to resist them.
Yet, here I am connecting so much on a level I cannot understand. And I come here every morning and I listen, I take notes, I reflect on those notes, I mash them around in my mind, with all the other stuff I have learned, studied, read, heard or have come to know through expereince. Then I spit it all out on the page.
Practicing Yoga for a Long Time, Even When It Wasn't Cool
I have been studying and practicing yoga for over a quarter of a century now. (Man...it surprises me to look back and realize that I began practicing yoga, in tiny ways, way back in the 90's...thirty years ago.)
It has, since then, become an integral part of my life, long before I even heard of Michael Singer.
My committment to learning about yoga and practicing it always seemed to be a very isolated and often misunderstood one(even for me). Yet...the pull was so strong. The only way I can desribe my attraction to yoga is as , " being pulled toward this learning even when my ego was digging its heals into the ground screaming, "Noooo!" It was so in contrast to what "little me" wanted.
"The natural behaviour of the tribe often overpowers the desired behaviour of the individual." (James Clear, page 120)
I always felt and did my best to adhere to that natural need to fit in, not to stand out. Yoga would make me stand out, especially in my community where few people knew what yoga actually was. My desired behaviour, surprisingly, overpowered the tribe's. So, when I realized I couldn't resist the pull forever, when my curiosity became stronger than my resistance, I succumbed to it and I began to "quietly" practice. I told few people about it. Teaching it, then , was definitely not going to be in the picture for a few deacdes!
Those who were close to me, however, were aware of my practice, no matter how private I made it. They watched me practicing my asanas and attempting to relax in meditation. They could see that I always had my head in a book about spirituality or becoming a better person. They observed that I always listened to things people deemed as woo-woo or even blasphemous. Back in the 90's most of the people around me thought Yoga was a taboo practice physically, mentally and spiritually. I got lectures from the instructors in the fitness trainer course I took that Hatha Yoga was harmful to the body and that all yoga poses should be avoided for liability reasons. I got lectures from concerned family members that what I was learning about could be taking me mentally away from reality. They even questioned if my yoga curiosity was a symptom of a mental illness. I got lectures from"born again" loved ones about how evil yoga and meditation was. At one poin,t I was asked to sit down to a video of yogis experiencing ecstacy during meditation practice, so I would see how the devil can enter us at those times we are weakened by such evil practices.
So as you can see, Yoga...was not the normal path to pursue, in my part of the world, at the time I started. As James Clear says in, Atomic Habits, "Running against the grain of your culture requires extra effort." page 121. Practicing Yoga was running against the grain. Something inside me, not my people-pleasing ego, but Something, however, was more than willing to put that effort in, to run against the grain in this practice, if in none other. It pulled me in. I became a yogi.
As Yoga became more and more accepted in my part of the world, if not fully understood,(Hatha Yoga became a trendy thing here a decade or so ago), I became a little more open about my practice and what I was studying. It wasn't until about 2017, though, that I started publically writing about yoga and waking up in my blog. ( for many years it was private). It was not until 2018, that I became a Hatha teacher, though I have been practicing Hatha for 30 years. And it wasn't until around that time, that I first heard of a western Yogi named Michael Singer. There were many, many teachers indirectly in my life before him. Many were amazing, having a wonderful impact on my learning. Yet, here I am now... decades after beginning this sadhanna...wondering why I am so drawn to what he says, why I feel a connection to him.
I read this from Vivekananda last night before falling asleep. It didn't dawn on me until this very moment why I fell asleep to those words. (I had no idea I was going to be writing about this, this morning.)
The soul can only receive impulses from another soul, and from nothing else. We may study books all our lives, we may become very intellectual, but in the end we find that we have not developed at all spirituality...To quicken the spirit, the impulse must come from another soul. The person from whose soul such impulse comes is called the Guru-the teacher; and the person whose soul the impulse is conveyed is called the Shishya-the student. Page 66
Man...it really is a soul to soul thing, isn't it? Whether I resist the words "Guru" and "disciple" or not; whether I insist that I will not blindly follow another human being or not...doesn't matter. It isn't about "me". Just as this "me" could not stop me from being pulled into the practice of Yoga...this "me" cannot prevent me from being a Shishya. There may actually be something to this Guru/student thing, traditional yoga insists upon. I don't know.
I am not sure Singer is my guru...I just know my soul is drawn to his soul, for whatever reason, just as my soul was drawn to yoga. Sigh!!! It is all so amazing.
All is well!
James Clear (2018) Atomic Habits. Avery: New York
Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( Thursday, April 4,2024)The Dance of Consciousness and Creation. https://tou.org/talks/
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