Why fearing...?

The above saying which is a famous one from Guruji, K. Pattabhi Jois, and now used still by his grandson who is my guru has been on my mind a bit lately.

I do a lot of things in my life that would stop many people because of their fear. And I am afraid often when I'm doing them, so how am I able? And why do I dive into my fear so easily, rather than avoid it or run away from it as many others do?

This yoga for one. Ashtanga Yoga if you listen to all these people who never practice it will hurt you, shorten your life span, blah, blah, blah. All sorts of bullshit spouted off about it all the time. So when I discovered it and realised it was for me I was afraid and yet I still went forward with it. I did end up hurting myself a lot in those first years, but it wasn't the asana practice that did it, it was my pushing and my lack of bringing the full idea of yoga into my asana practice.

Traveling is what has really been on my mind a lot, and especially today when I've spent a lot of time alone I've been thinking a lot. I'm walking around in a foreign country, which really is no longer foreign to me as I lived here for four months earlier this year and now I'm back again for a month in this town that I'm so familiar with and two months in a town two of my favourite people live in, Frankfurt, after this. And I don't speak the language here, but I'm used to that after those four months and now I do really hear many words in conversations that I recognise and can piece together what is being talked about.

I spend many months each year, and in fact consider India my home, in a culture that I don't speak the language of but as above I've started understanding enough words that when I hear a conversation I can figure out what is being talked about. There the difference is that most often they realise I am from abroad and come to me speaking English often before I get the chance to try my rudimentary Kannada or Hindi on them. Unless I'm dressed a certain way, wearing a lungi or such, then they assume I"m from Kashmir. This last 6 months in India I was taken for a native more times than I can count and that makes me happier than I can ever explain, my heart is there and one day I hope to be an official citizen.

But here in Germany I look like I am German, in fact much of my heritage comes form here so they're not wrong, but I don't speak the language and I realise it when they come up and just say things to me because I then realise I know very few words, but when I look blank and say sorry, they realise and speak English to me.

I go out around town a lot too and still have fear about this but I can't let that stop me. I am a social creature half the time and the time I opend at home I don't have to worry about understanding the culture or knowing the language.

I do have to say that I think I love living in the fear. And in feeling this way I no longer believe it is fear, but maybe a better word would be in awe. Awe of the common ground we have as humans and how even though they find out you're not really one of them they immediately feel like they want to take care of you and explain things or help you figure out where you're going or what som word means on a menu or on a placard in the market.

Being alone in all this makes it feel even more exciting, or full of awe. I almost wrote awful but really that isn't understood as the word I think its supposed to mean as I now look at it after having typed it. If something is awful, isn't that a good thing?!? There is a Hebrew saying that I learned when I was studying Kabbalah which means fear of god, but the word is escaping me at the moment, but when translated by my Kabbalah teacher it was in awe of God, or just in Awe because everything is god. I wish I could remember that word or phrase because it was powerful. And according to him it was the state we want to live in, in awe. And maybe as I'm writing this I realise I am living in that state.

So does that mean that living outside one's comfort zone is the key to living in awe?!? Maybe so, or rather probably so. There's that famous meme that has a small circle with comfort zone written in it and outside the circle which is a very large space it says where the magic happens. This is true, within the comfort zone some amazing things can happen but true transformation of the inner being seems to only happen outside that circle. Hmmm, this is exactly where I've been living especially this past year and some months since I left St. Louis.

When I would go away to Mysore, or wherever I went (I've been traveling alone since 1991 when I took my first plane to Cincinnati on my own, began my sojourns to Chicago alone that same year, drove all over the country in 1997, to Florida, to Colorado, to many other places, all by myself) I would have this amazing growth experience and expand in ways I could never make anyone understand but once I got home I'd fall back into my old patterns and get comfy again and lose much of what I'd learned, until yoga. Then I though I'd go to India immediately and did go to meet Pattabhi in five months. But never went to India. I think innately I realised that I'd never be able to be the same again, and even when I came back each year I often kept many of the changes that happened but realised after that third trip when I came back the fourth time it had to be for good.

SO then Germany came up and back to India and now back to Germany, both uncomfortable places that I've learned to love and have built families in. So I think going back is for sure out of the question, and if and when I do it will be known that its not for good because I don't belong there anymore. I belong wherever I am at that time, which maybe back home for a visit sometimes, but not permanently. And it definitely is in India, especially Mysore, but it's for certain to be in teaching this yoga.

This week in only three days so far of being back to teaching I've realised in a big way that this is to be a part of my life and that I can't go without it or for so long again. It's part of the yoga for me. I do my own practice, stuff comes up and as I'm teaching and getting out of my head about things they are allowed to flow away and it seems that when I let them go during this time they don't come back up again. Yes, it's nice.

What a great life I've created for myself. If you can get out of your own way and stop trying to do things, then universe will be more free to deliver the things you want to you, maybe in ways you don't understand at first, but for sure in ways that will be beneficial.