I'm in SNOWY (heavenly) New York for the weekend, taking care of business and, as luck would have it, yesterday I got to teach my second community class at my beloved Laughing Lotus. This month's theme at the Lotus: the Bhagavad Gita.
Confession: I LIKE the Bhagavad Gita. I do not loooooooooove the Bhagavad Gita. I find it a little masculine and head-y and I always feel like I'm slogging through it, which is not the quality I'm looking for in my spiritual texts...I'm more of a gliding-through-the-sky girl when it comes to writing I love. So, okay, so I slogged through it once again and marked a lot of passages that stood out to me, confident that if I just kept plugging away a theme would emerge.
Cut to, the morning of class. I have left my beloved in our warm bed so that I can spend some quiet AM time meditating, practicing, and writing about the BG (in hopes of coaxing out a coherent theme). I've settled on "I am not the doer"...a subject that is littered all throughout the book, and something I've been touching on in some of my classes this week anyhow. Good, I think, that's good enough. And I put away my notebook and climb back into my still-warm bed.
On the way to class I'm feeling nervous, but the nerves have an underpinning of confidence. I know what it means now to teach a class, and more and more I am learning what kind of teacher I am...what I need and what excites me and most of all, how to look for and respond to what it is my students need...how to be in the room with them and feel okay throwing away plans and coming up with new ones on the spot in order to best support them. So, that feels good. And I'm sort of rehearsing what I want to say about all this I am not the doer stuff, but I'm sort of leaving it alone...I don't want to overplan. I'm good, I'm gonna be good.
So, here is what my there was SUPPOSED to sound like:
[Introduce BG, say there is a lot of this "I am not the doer" stuff in there], then say:
"A few months ago I got an email from a teacher in response to an update from me on all my goings-on which read, 'remember, you are not the doer'. And I was sort of like "oh okay, right, so yogic, blah blah blah I am TOO the doer! Didn't you read all that stuff I am DOOOO-ing?!" But it's been sitting with me for the past many weeks and I finally realized what she was talking about. Which is, I better hope that I am not the doer, because the "I" in that scenario, is my overly-controlling, competitive, approval-seeking small self. If "I" am the doer, whatever I just "did" is probably going to be pretty crappy. Let's hope that "I" am not the doer, because if "I" am not, then it means that something else is working through me. Something larger. Something inspired. Something so much greater and more skilled than "I" could ever be. Etc., etc., etc."
But here is what it ACTUALLY sounded like:
[Introduced BG...with way too much detail. Like someone recounting the plot of a movie to people who have already seen it, and including all the minor interludes and jump-cuts. I think more than one person started staring off into the middle distance. Oh my god, this is only an hour and fifteen minute class, Lia, let's get to the point.] And, then say:
(I can't even begin to replicate what I actually did say on this blog, because I'm going to fall into a coma just trying to type it...but I definitely said something along the lines of, "because the I who is the doer, is not the I...it's the little I instead of the big I...in all spiritual traditions there is this contrast between the big I and the small I...and the I in the "I am not the doer" is the...ramble, ramble, ramble)
Argh! Thank god the actual CLASS went really great. As soon as I shut my big mouth I immediately stepped into the class, for reals, as teacher (talk about not being the doer, sheesh). I felt confident and light-hearted and we all had a lot of FUN, I believe, which felt good. I even managed to reapproach the theme with a lot more ease throughout the course of the class and get to the heart of what was originally a totally convoluted point.
So, redemption was had, but still I've been thinking a lot since then about what happened with the ol theme-a-rating, and I've realized that two major things went wrong:
1. I didn't get specific enough with MYSELF before class started. The themes are usually effortless for me because, in one way or another, I have tapped into something--some question or idea--that I'm very passionate about, and so I don't have to think of things to say (I am not the doer)...I just sort of touch that little tender spot where the question exists in me, and the words flow (I am not the doer). But, obviously, if that's not readily accessible to my conscious mind, it means I need to dig a little deeper. (Or find another freaking theme).
2. And this is the big one. I. Wasn't. Being. Honest. I'm NOT moved by the Bhagavad Gita, I DON'T love or even completely jive with everything it has to say, and THAT'S where I needed to start with my theme. Instead I think I was subtly trying to sound a certain way...like a "yoga" instructor, maybe.
Note to self: next time...less doing.
