There’s a man sitting poolside. Palm trees stretch skyward. Turquoise water sits still as glass by his side. Closing his eyes he rubs his brow, taking a long slow breathe before returning to the impermanence we call life… and I chuckle aloud, thinking he’s frustrated with the thirty naive students he’s promised to mentor over the next month.
It’s day four and he’s a sweaty mess, looking less like guru with the passing of every vegan meal. White cotton clings to him like freshly microwaved Saran Wrap as he slowly lifts his guitar to lead us in our morning meditation for gratitude.
His voice is weaker than it should be, yet somehow I struggle to keep up. His tone is off, yet somehow it resonates at a depth I can’t access alone – like he has the strength of a senior mason, but it’s built from spirit rather than stone.
My eyes well with tears as long buried emotions flood to the surface dragging rusty epiphanies into the light of day… Independence is my weakness. Guilt serves nothing but fear. What I am isn’t who I am. Love is acting without expectation. Learn to be and let the doing happen.
Eleven minutes later my heart opens to all I am, all I have and all I’ve experienced – the good and the bad – my cupped hands filling with blessings as my subconscious mind pulls warm lessons from the harshest of life’s offerings.
Six weeks later I’m sitting on a small sheepskin rug across from woman I just met. We’re dressed in full white, perched under a pavilion shielding us from the desert sun. Two-thousand others sit attentively beside us in long rows stretching East to West.
We lock eyes, raising our arms to begin a one-hour partner meditation. Pressing our index fingers to each other’s foreheads we start chanting a Sanskrit prayer. Within minutes the awkwardness fades, only to be replaced by searing shoulder pain. She wiggles forward, changing the angle of her outstretched arm hoping to ease her pain. Minutes pass. She wiggles ever closer, forcing me to uncross my legs and extend them long over her hips.
Her eyes smile in return as I relax my body, unleashing a machine gun style fart that richochets off her thighs and reverberates through the crowd like a grenade dropped down a slot canyon. An army of shell-shocked yogis erupt in laughter as I shrug my shoulders and continue the meditation feeling lighter than ever.
Day two begins with a new partner sitting across from me. The meditation leader calls for quiet before projecting an image of my guru onto a giant screen. It’s time to pay tribute to a man who touched thousands. To a man who knowingly gave the final weeks of his life to teach a group of strangers how to fall in love with themselves – believing that contentment is built from within upon the foundation of self acceptance. To a man who embodied the prayers he sang and the lessons he taught, patiently answering every question with conviction and sincerity while pancreatic cancer chopped at his body – felling him the same way my mother passed a few months earlier.
I wept as they played a video of his final song, feeling both the pain of his illness and immense gratitude for having the privilege to learn from such a humble and generous soul.
When done, the leader took a moment to implore all the creatives in the audience to share their stories, their art, their music and their creations with the world – citing Guru Dass Khalsa’s work as a treasure for future students to learn from and imploring us to share that which we have to give, for it is through expressing our own uniqueness that we each play our role in the theater of life.
Yesterday I did yoga at the studio where I took my first class. I found a spot in the back behind a guy who reminded me of myself nine-years earlier, bending slowly and reluctantly like a crowbar trying to lift the moon – and I chuckled once again, seeing no end in sight to the path he’s just begun and every yogi seeks to follow.
