Please Can I Have My Ruler Back?

Image by Locopelli

I have avoided, so far, commenting on the scandal-fire raging its way through the Anusara community these days.  I have avoided commenting because, a. I’m not a card-carrying member of the Anusara community, besides being a student of the style (as well as other styles), and a usurper of the alignment principles learned therein and b. because it involves real lives and real people and real vulnerable hearts.  

Some of my own teachers, who are themselves Anusara certified and have devoted their lives to the practice, have been left a bit broken by the whole thing.  And understandably.  When someone sets himself up as teacher, and beyond that, as leader of a spiritual community, it’s hard not to feel betrayed when you find out that said person has been…you know.  Diddling around.  In many senses of the word. And so, I want to be careful, because real people feel genuinely betrayed, and there is nothing simple or blog-digestable about betrayal.

This past Sunday I interviewed the inimitable SuzanneMorrison for the podcast (episode 7 is on its way!), she was in Los Angeles to do a reading from Yoga Bitch, and we spent a good deal of time while she was here, talking about the student/teacher relationship.

A major theme in YB is Suzanne’s hot-then-cold entanglement with her own then-teacher.  A woman she had set up as a paragon of wholeness, of yogic fix-ed-ness, who eventually (spoiler alert!) revealed herself to be…merely human.  And flawed and f’d up and messy, in the way that all humans are.  And it was a blow to 25 year old Suzanne.  Because f’d up and messy is what she thought SHE was supposed to be…not her beloved teacher.

And we talked about this—about how easy, how natural it is to project on to our teacher (or boss or partner or cooler-than-thou friend) whatever it is we want for ourselves.  How we need, sometimes, to have a person in our life who seems stain-free, so that from that person we can receive and imbibe unfettered guidance.  We need it because it is a great simplifier.  Find perfect person, do what perfect person says.  But, as soon as that person, that paragon—as soon as it’s revealed that maybe he or she is not making the best choices in his or her own life, that guidance…that treasured trail-marker, is going to get…sullied.

And we are left adrift.

It’s like what happens with parents.  As a child it seems like their advice, mom and dad’s advice, must be THE advice.  It must be THE way to go, because, come on…have you seen what they can do?  EVERYTHING, that’s what.  They are the whole big world—and the arbiter of its rules.  And then…as you get older…veils start to fall away.  You see one or the other of them act badly or choke in a big moment, or just reveal their own scared-ness, and it’s—it’s devastating.  Your measuring stick, the one you’ve been carrying around, the one given to you by them—you’ve just come to discover that the inches on it aren’t really inches at all.  They’re off.  The whole system, all the measurements you’ve been making—it’s all deeply, intrinsically, flawed.

And it’s a terrible moment, because for a while there you feel…stranded.  The ground has been taken out from underneath you and here you are, no way to figure how far you are from your destination.  But also, and we all know this now, because we’re all adults with lives and many of you with children of your own—also it’s the best moment of your life.  Because, it’s the beginning.  It’s the beginning of the process of developing a new and hopefully truer—north.  It’s the place from where we start that very first walk towards ourselves.  Because the mystery rises up.  Where do I go now?  What do I believe in?  What do I want for myself?  How will I get there?

At the reading Suzanne talked about how she no longer expects people not to be human.  That she no longer requires of her yoga teachers perfectly stain-free personal lives.  She has wised up.  Now, she says, she goes to class to be with herself.  It is less, she says, about the bright-eyed guru at the front of the room, and much more about the bright eyed guru that lives right there in her own chest.

None of the people involved in the Anusara controversy are children, and John Friend wasn’t anyone’s father.  Most of them will probably, if they feel unmoored at all, be only temporarily so.  But, for those who are struggling, who feel like they’ve been let down and let down hard, I would say, just remember…that this is the place where a new path opens up.  This is the moment where you get to throw down the ruler-markings of the old system, and find something new.  And those new measurements, you can be sure, are going to be truer and hold steadier, than any that came before.

So much love for my own teachers...and their teachers...and the teachers of those teachers.  May we all get better, breathe more, and forgive.