Adhikāra - The Right to Have
"Yoga Elsa told me it would be okay if I quit training, that no one would think less of me.
"But I thought you said it's normal for it to be this hard and for everyone to get injured and for us all to feel like we're dying right now!" I wailed.
"It is. But you have to think it's worth it. There has to be something worth it in this for you. If you are just miserable the whole way through, it's okay to stop."
Yoga Elsa is pretty badass.
I am not sure why this training seems to be so much harder for me than for the others in my class. I'm sure part of it is the failure to rise above my job situation. I think part of it is also that most of the others have someone supporting them -- a partner, or a spouse, or even a studio. I'm climbing Mount Everest on my own here and hoping my oxygen holds out."
I wrote that weeks ago now when I was afraid I would quit. It hadn't even occurred to me to quit until Yoga Elsa said that I could, and then the OCD part of my brain became TERRIFIED that I would quit by accident. (It's hard to explain OCD.) I was obsessed with the idea that my lack of impulse control would lead me to quit in a blaze of glory while I was at the height of misery and then I would regret it.
Training was just so fkking hard. There wasn't even any specific thing I could point to and say, 'Yes, this right here is enormously taxing!" It was the combination of the 12 hours a weekend, the 4 books to read, the physical aches, the emotional flaying, the COVID setbacks, the dozens of scripts to write out, the sheer un-endingness of it all.
When I think of hard work, I think of Sisyphus pushing that damn rock up a hill. I know he didn't have a choice, he was doomed. But how did he manage, with no end in sight?
Without a doubt, my favorite yogic concept is that of adhikāra. It doesn't really have a direct English translation, but it's a term that basically means "the right to" or the pre-requisite for. A student who has only been playing the piano for 3 years does not have the adhikāra to play Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C# Minor. He hasn't put in the work and the years of practice; therefore, he has not earned the right to flawlessly perform such a complex piece, one that was difficult for me even after 12 years of practice.
Adhikāra says you must do the work if you want to experience the fruits of labor. Adhikāra tells us that when we are ready, the rewards will come. But not before.
This concept was completely enraging to me when I first learned it a few months ago. I wanted to say the following things:
* I have spent 5 years in therapy
* I have filled up 29 journals with self-reflection and work
* I have read hundreds of books and articles to educate myself on the things I did not know
* I have been faithfully practicing yoga to integrate all the parts of myself
* I have set and maintained boundaries
* I have let go of unhealthy relationships
* I have been applying for high school English jobs for 15 fucking years. Do not sit here and tell me that I have not done the work.
Adhikāra tells us:
You do the work
and
You do the work
and
You do the work
and
You
Keep
Doing
The
Fucking
Work.
You go on the 18th interview of the season.
And then one day it happens because you have earned the right to have.
I got a job. I’m going to teach English and Creative Writing.
It's a one-year-only job, but it's at a high school. My boss thinks I'm nuts to give up a tenured teaching position to take a one-year-only job that may leave me without employment come next May. But this is the opportunity the universe has offered me, and I have done the work. I'm taking it.
Life offers no guarantees. I've been thinking about that a lot.
In The Comfort Crisis, author Michael Easter deals with Americans' obsession with being comfortable and contrasts it with our overall lack of happiness and satisfaction.
The author travels to Bhutan and interviews a monk to ask why the Bhutanese -- consistently ranked amongst the world's happiest people -- are always thinking about Death.
The monk basically replies that Death is like a 500 foot cliff ahead of all humans, and we are all walking toward it. We will all eventually reach the cliff and fall off of it. Westerners avoid thinking about the cliff, concentrating instead on their checklist of things to have and accomplish. The Bhutanese, on the other hand, make it a practice to think about the cliff and its ramifications. In this way, they can make different choices: should I slow down? should I take a different route? should I notice things more on the walk? with whom should I take this walk?
You can't do that when you avoid thinking about the cliff.
I dated someone I really cared for who lived simultaneously in the past (talking and thinking constantly about what he lost) and the future (talking and thinking constantly about what he wanted). And it left little time to be present in the moment. As it turns out, it was hard to tell how compatible we were or were not because we were rarely in the present for very long.
It's really hard to live like that.
I choose to take this job offer because I want to be present in the moment, in all my moments. Not just when meditating or practicing asana. I want to be present for the opportunities Life presents, knowing that I have put in the work. And I will be able to survive the discomfort of not knowing where something is going, whether jobs or relationships, because I have put in the work for that, too.
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