What my teacher taught me

The more I learn, the less I feel that I know.

I have been doing yoga for more than 25 years, and it seems that most of those years I was stuck in a place of knowing. Always knowing the "path", the "rules", the "way".

Lately I have been reflecting a lot on "where I have gotten" with all of it.

When I left my teacher (not my guru but my yoga teacher) I was at first in a hiccup of a situation. I realized that I didn't quite know where to go, what to teach.

Then things started to come and although the surface somewhat resembled what was given, something was much different underneath.

Then came a major block. Resentment, anger, very intense anger.

When this lifted my views began to dissolve. They resembled nothing like the surface face of what I had assumed was the "path", the "rules", the "way".

And I sit here today smiling at a new day.

As I sat contemplating my teacher and what he had given me I have gratitude. Not for the techniques, or even the teachings.

It was the authenticity. It was his own devotion to investigation. It was his constant ability to change, adapt, and most importantly evolve.

Even back then I had a sense of these things but my own view felt that it somehow had to adapt to his. This was a major block, impeding my own progress as I struggled to conform. Some may say that this was a shaping element and it was, it shaped certain things.

Then I began to crack the mold. Step out. I still am. And it is like hatching from some strange egg.

The tools that we use to build a beautiful house are not the house itself. How easily we forget this.

More than learning the "yoga", in the years that I was with my teacher I had all along been studying how he learned. To this day that piece was far more important than any technique. I don't even know if he knew that I studied him in that way but it doesn't matter.

He gave me a wonderful blessing when I left him and told me to stand on my own two feet and not look back. It took me a while but I feel that I am finally upright. And I am finally starting to not look back.

Now I just have to keep walking forward.