My Teacher

I have a Teacher whose contribution to my well-being I am yet to fully appreciate. But I seem to get a rough idea of how it could be. Suppose you are about to make a 3000 mile long journey. You are sitting in a craft as a pilot and have just taken off. Suppose a person comes over and makes a slight three degree shift to the right, in the direction in which the craft was headed almost at the very beginning of the journey. Suppose you just accepted that direction shift without much knowledge about where it would lead. And then suppose as time flowed on, and after a considerable distance has been covered, the landscape around you was getting more and more pleasant and you become more and more sure that you are traveling in the right direction and the destination is up yonder.  You may never guess the importance of the small change of direction at the very beginning of the journey! You may have initially been heading towards a desert!

My Teacher asked me to seek knowledge from my Guru. In accordance with those directions I prayed for knowledge.  I feel I was thence blessed with a degree of self-awareness that my Teacher didn't seem to possess. My Teacher had blessed me with a certain set of procedure for my spiritual uplift, but I surmise (I stress that I only surmise) she didn't quite know the logical purpose or the reasons why the procedures worked. It apparently appears so to my perception.  However the Guru's directions to me clarified the purpose of the procedure to me (I add that it could be only one of the purposes among several others that I do not know).

And in accordance with the innate human tendencies I had mentioned in my previous blog entry, I sort of judged my Teacher for a lack of self-awareness that I seemed to perceive in her. This after my Teacher only had directed me as to what to ask my Guru for !! I do feel quite contrite now but I do keep my fingers crossed that I do not make a grave error by being ungrateful.

One of the main steps that spirituality advises is a set of procedure to still your mind. The more restless and rapidly flitting your mind is, the greater is the danger you are supposed to be in. So before anything else, the Teachers try to still your mind and to achieve this you may be advised a Mantra to suit your personality or even advised to watch your breathing. The mind - body - breath interconnection has been given a great degree of importance in Yoga and if one is really open, one can get to experience how watching your breathing and thence regulating it can bring a degree of stability to a troubled mind.

The advice that is frequently given in India to respect your teachers is to forewarn you about the tremendous value that lies in the teachings that you are to get and the extent to which they can change your life.

          xxx