What Did T. Read in 2022?

 




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Tamas - Spiritual Inertia

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When I first met my former therapist (Therapy Elsa), I eyeballed her with a great deal of distrust. I had finally been in therapy enough years to understand that the client, too, gets a say in whether or not the fit is right. "Are you one of those therapists who talk about sin a lot and how it's wrong to be gay?" I asked. Therapy Elsa smiled. "That's an interesting question. Why do you ask?" I assumed she was mentally writing down some kind of note like, "Prospective client probably gay." "Because you have diplomas hanging on your wall and one of them is from a seminary," I said. "Also, I know many Christians, and they care a LOT about whether people are gay." "Ah, I see," she said. "Well, to answer your concerns, the seminary I went to was quite open-minded." She went on to tell me how they used gender-neutral references for God, which basically made my head explode. Then I worried maybe she was too liberal ...
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Kannadi - Mirror

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In a place some 8,000 miles away, there is a small village called Aranmula. In that tiny corner of the Indian subcontinent, lives a family of alchemists. For hundreds of years, this family has jealously guarded the secret of the kannadi , or mirror, of Truth. It is said that the family was first conscripted -- along with several others -- to create objects for a temple to Krishna. That temple, now over a thousand years old, traces its lineage back to the  Mahābhārata  and is alleged to have been built by the great warrior Prince Arjuna himself. All kannadi  today are descendants of the temple Kannadi in that they follow a carefully-guarded family recipe in a complex series of steps by which tin, copper, and other alloys are alchemized to create a reflective surface that reveals the True Self.  Grab the closest hand mirror you can find and take a look. What you see is a close approximation of what you really look like...but it's not perfect. If you lay the mirror flat...
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Tadsana - Mountain

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Here's a picture of me celebrating in front of a big-ass, famous mountain in Indonesia. Unfortunately, it is foggy and you cannot see the mountain. It's probably judgment for lying about menstruating when grilled by the holy man guarding the temple. I've been fortunate in the instructors I've had the opportunity to study under, particularly in Bali. One was Marylene Henry, who studied with the students of Orit Sanj Gupta , who is part of the lineage of Krishnamacharya himself. A bit of yoga history... Around 1,000 A.D. many yogis began moving toward the mountains and caves of the Himalayas, withdrawing from the world. They were devotees of Shiva and their leader was Matsyendra Nath, or the Fish Lord (from whom we get matsyendrasana , or Lord of the Fishes pose).  Under Nath's leadership, it is said that the yogis developed siddhis , or supernatural talents. Periodically, they would come down from the mountains to perform miracles for the common people, in order to d...
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Samskara II

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School starts on Monday. I didn't make any super-tight friends in my 9 months at the high school, but there have been a couple of good people who texted me, checking to see how I'm doing as I head into my 16th year of middle school. One promised she was moving to Florida at the end of this academic year, so I could have her position when she vacates. In response, I sent her this meme: You could not pay me enough money to move to Florida. I mean it. If someone offered me six figures and the chance to teach at an inner-city school, I still wouldn't do it. So, here I sit, ready to start teaching 7th and 8th grade in the Midwest again. At least the other teachers seem nice. I take back everything I said about the department head's beard; he is a lovely human being. As is usual with me, everyone I immediately dislike, I end up adoring, and everyone I have an instant affinity for, I end up loathing. It really doesn't do a lot toward encouraging me to trust my instincts. A...
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Rowan

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I have written up Rowan a million times this year. I sent a note on his last office referral saying, "These referrals are not working. Do you want me to keep writing him up? Or should we try something else?" The grade-level principal asked if -- for his most recent display of ridiculousness -- I wanted to give him 3 days of in-school-suspension or try a restorative conversation. I voted for the latter and came to her office a few minutes before our scheduled meeting with him. "End goals," she said. "Ideally, what do you want to happen from this?" "I don't even know anymore," I said. "I just feel like I've completely failed him." "How so?" "Because he cared so much about wanting to be a good student at the beginning of the year. And now look at him! I feel like maybe I didn't encourage him enough, or... something." "Love the self-reflection, but I don't think you can take ownership of all this beh...
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Tāpas - Heat

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TAPAS The Heat The third  niyama  of yogic philosophy is  tāpas , or self-discipline. I don't think it really means self-discipline as we know it. It means something more like friction, aggravation, unease, and the heat of discomfort. It is what we feel when Life rubs up against us in ways that are unwanted. The concept asks us, "Can I persist through the pain of this terrible thing that is happening?" Or perhaps more accurately, it is the practice of preparing for those times. Of all the  yamas  and  niyamas  in yoga's ethical code,  tapas  is probably the one that I intuitively understand best. It is also the one I like least. They say that the pose you like the least is the one you need the most (Dolphin -  barf ). It is the one that creates the most friction and chafing in your mind and will and discomfort in your body and breath. Your very desire to avoid this pose is the reason you should do it: it is necessary and important work t...
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Mudra (Sign/Seal)

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I had been hoping that if I failed to contact anyone from my new (middle) school, they would forget that they had hired me to teach there and just go on paying me without expecting me to show up. I think my years in Hazelwood set me up with false expectations about how payroll works.  Alas, I received a phone call (people still make such things!), asking which day I was available to come in. The woman whose room I'm moving into is just moving to the gym to be a PE teacher. She never introduced herself, just asked what I was doing there and why. Then told me I was doing it wrong. Not off to a great start. The man I report to has a beard that's half wavy, half straight, and exceedingly long. He's apparently quite brilliant but it's hard to tell because he constantly starts slow-moving sentences and then leaves them trailing off in the middle so he can start new ones. The entire time I was meeting with him, I kept envisioning myself grabbing the beard and whacking the whol...
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