History repeats itself, especially when the truth of the past is locked in the shadow of redesigned stories upheld as true. But does it depend on who’s version of the story we are sharing? And what if we thought we had the right story but then later find out it’s not quite right? Though we have clearly made incredible progress in so many areas over hundreds of years, it’s undeniable that we continue to perpetuate miserable and deplorable behaviors for a civilized, conscientious world with plenty of mistakes to learn from. We may not see it in our comfortable pathways of life, but just outside of the cozy lane we’re in, lie many current day stories that would shock many of us. Some that are out of the ordinary, some we know about but that we’ve learned to turn a blind eye.
Since COVID and shelter in place, I’ve become much more of a hulu.com watcher than ever. As if I’m not spending enough time on screens teaching on zoom, somehow I’m pulled to stay on past my bedtime some nights. But I’m working on it, realizing more in-person connection and real life stories are what I need! :] As hulu does, ads for shows appear at the top of the screen and I stumbled upon the 20/20 program episode showing the shocking story of 13 children abused by their parents, forced to stay in a filthy, home of horror. They were often chained to their bunk beds and grossly neglected. Years and years were able to pass before one of the girls escaped and called 911. This is a story from 2018. How is it possible something like this could happen in a common suburb? Outsiders had suspicion, but no one knew what to do. In many ways I wish I wouldn’t have watched it because it was so awful, but on the other hand it made me more aware of the unusual suffering that exists.
And this is just one family in the midst of stories from countries all over the globe from ethnic cleansing to torture and humiliation in the name of religion. It’s quite clear, we are not treating each other as we would wish to be treated. Some would say we’re treating humans like animals. But then, we are torturing and causing extreme harm to animals and that’s barely even on anyone’s radar because of our intense obsession with eating far more meat than a human body needs. So to that I come to a place where stories of our day may temporarily surprise me, but with another pause, I’m not surprised. This is the journey of being human and realizing the inevitability of stories of this sort appear at every turn. It’s not just happening somewhere over there, it’s also happening here, along our everyday paths. And to add to the cut, we are essentially agreeing to this and pay for it to happen every hour of every day by our choices and our purchases. It’s an inconvenient truth and with our obsession with convenience and nervous system that repels discomfort, it makes it very hard to change.
Just the other day, someone was asking me if I know about Shadow Yoga. I said I’d heard of it, but decidedly was already not interested to really hear much about it. Then this person went on to explain how interesting it sounds and how it feels to be a deeper practice than most forms of Yoga out there, focusing on freestyle movement versus static postures. I felt a defensive side of me reject the possibility of there being a Yoga with greater depth than the one that I practice and that comes from the lineage that I hold dearly. I was compelled to look it up on my phone, right there at the dinner table between bites, to get a better look at this type of Yoga. I was ready to see something that would cause me to quickly and justifiably reject it.
Then as I read, I realized that the words drew me in, saying it was a practice that was based on texts prior to Hatha Yoga, prior to the work gathered by the sage Patanjali. As I read more, even more defenses went up and I realized I had a choice – to be rigid and unmoving, to hold firm to what is comfortable and familiar to me, or to be open to the idea that there really could be something with deeper roots than what I knew. Shadowyoga.com states that its “practices preceded and gave rise to Hatha Yoga.” Then something switched and I became more open and curious, in awe of new information that I was open to exploring. It could be true or not, but I felt open. I knew that I felt secure and established in my own practice and that to honor my practice, it felt important to be flexible and open-minded. In fact, the more I read and saw, the practice became quite a beautiful path to learn about! Can it be additive to my practice versus competitive?
And I share this as a way to have a look at our own American history and the celebration we hold tightly around Thanksgiving. Like many, I learned a very happy story of Thanksgiving and the discovery of America along with the friendship of the Native Americans. It was only much later that I learned there was a different story. I had to see if I was open to hearing this different story or if I wasn’t able to make space in my very neatly organized mind as to what it meant to feel grounded in the original story I had learned. On some level, I was happy to imagine that we all got along at the first meeting. It helped me feel a sense of ease being darker skinned and looking more related to these members than most of my friends. I liked that story even if it wasn’t true. It made us all look good in a new situation and in a weird way it was good role modeling. Only that it wasn’t true and missed the part about the original people of ancestral lands becoming diseased and murdered, then having their land stolen. Colonial behavior is woven very tightly into much of our human story and expansionism is seen as a natural behavior. A battle to the top, a king of the mountain, a victor and a loser. Maybe that really is all we know and there’s no way to stop that raging waterfall of humanity. But can we be open and even unlearn what we’ve learned in order to honor what is really true? Build a dam of sorts to gain some control over the inevitable?
I have learned a great deal by pondering the events around my partner Fox and his study of language in order to understand his heritage. It goes something like this: During his teens, Fox, then known only as Brett, was curious about his background, knowing that his grandmother had an accent. It was understood that she had a French accent and she spoke French, but it sounded as though she had lost her roots to France and therefore it was being lost through the generations. Fox was eager to enliven his lineage and entered college to study French and be a professional interpreter, which he became. Then, some years later he came to learn of the French invasion of Lebanon and that his grandmother was actually a victim of French colonialism while living in Lebanon. For political and social reasons, she elected a more convenient truth and kept her ties with the story of being French the leading one.
That truth shook Fox into a new direction and in the last several years, he has been taking lessons 3 times a week to study and become fluent in Lebanese Arabic. Wow. His connection to this and reason to practice are able to remain steady for the sake of maintaining and honoring his family’s history. And this inspires him to study and in a way, understand who he is. His own grandmother doesn’t speak Lebanese Arabic, but it was important for Fox to learn it. “I was motivated by knowing the truth which I understand is easier to choose than it was for my grandmother, since I live in a more liberated time and place.”
This is a story of privilege. For his grandmother, it was more a story of survival. And maybe that’s part of the message here. The new generation has the privilege of not being entangled with the actual drama of history. And thereby, the ability to sift through to find the truth is less burdened.
Last night, there was a much needed discussion amongst the teachers and Swamis of SF Integral Yoga to bring full light to the abuse allegations against Swami Satchidananda from nearly 50 years ago. Swami Satchidananda never admitted guilt to these and in fact denied them. The 2 women who accused him of the abuse were left without a case and the charges never made it to a court. Without a solid knowing one way of the other, this still broke the high flying energy of Integral Yoga back in the 80’s and early 90’s and to this day, these allegations have been nearly ignored and seems that the hope is that it has also been forgotten. But during the BIPOC YTT open houses, students brought up these cases as they can be found on the internet…along with allegations and proof of harm by a number of other swamis and teachers from many different organizations. I learned of these stories against Swami Satchidananda in 2009 when I was researching training programs and truthfully, because I also learned that Swami Satchidananda had left his body in 2002, I figured at this point, it wasn’t much of an issue. I didn’t imagine this one man being the center of Integral Yoga anymore, and figured there were many teachers upholding the teachings and I would find my way.
I keep a picture of Swami Satchidananda on my altar with a piece of selenite in front of him. It’s my way of honoring him as my guru while offering compassion for what may or may not have happened while he was in his body. Maybe what happened or didn’t happen is his greatest teaching of all! How do we stay by someone who has been accused of harm when we have imagined them as spotless? Do we give them the opportunity to transform? Have I examined myself deeply enough to locate my own inner conflicts and can make best efforts to avoid harming others? Can one of his great lessons be to remind me to stay watchful of carelessness that may either lead me to a wrongdoing or simply be criticized for such? Given the time and cultural journey, given his reputation and community that guarded him, maybe the outcome we have is the result of that time. What if our limited minds aren’t able to understand the full story no matter what happened in form? Is it possible that if this was appearing as news today and if he was alive it would be dealt with differently? We will never know. The truth may exist in the shadow, but for the organization to miss the opportunity to acknowledge this part of its history, it feels like it could be damaging. Several members spoke of contacting the 2 women and to give them the opportunity to be heard. Then to acknowledge their voices matter and to offer some form of reparative justice. That feels like an action that moves away from denial and towards ownership of history.
Having had a high school teacher encourage me to engage sexually with him, then a college dance professor make sexual advancements and make inappropriate requests, I already had the image that things may not appear as they really are. I looked up to these teachers as did everyone. I learned a great deal from these teachers. So when things turned, it was a painful awakening to my own unexpressed gay identity and shame of being different, with the discomfort of holding a secret. It wasn’t until years later while coming to terms with behavioral addiction, that I fully understood my own ability to lead a split life and accept where I had caused harm based on harm given. Today, I can say that I see all that happened as great lessons in this life. They happened for some reason, they are of the past and I now see that I have the choice in how I live from here forward. To know that stories can have different versions depending on who you’re talking to, I knew to focus more on my own actions than to judge anyone else’s, even one who is seen as an enlightened being. I also believe in the power of transformation and that that is a primary part of our journey in these bodies – to transform to the highest Self that we can manage. We all have some story that could be told from different vantage points. How much exists freely in our life, and how much of our stories remain hidden? How much acceptance have we cultivated or how conveniently have we curated our life’s stories for acceptable presentation?
On my way home just now, I saw a raccoon waddling down the sidewalk then it jumped into a tree and climbed to a perch. It looked content and settled into the branches like a cozy lounge chair. To my eyes, at that moment, it was cute and sweet, gentle and loving. I wanted to imagine cuddling next to it, chillin’ in the night air. But then I thought, what if that raccoon just came from terrorizing some other animal or came from causing harm in someone’s yard. My eyes didn’t see that. My version of the story remains loving and kind. Whereas someone else’s story is one of frustration and upset. Is the raccoon loving and sweet, or awful and a pest?
We live in a world of duality, a world that continues to draw understanding that to err is human, to put someone on a pedestal is to have our own attachments cursed. We long for perfection and wish for things to be frozen in our minds in the way that creates safety and comfort. But it’s not so useful to do that, for anyone’s sake. Just as we can’t keep the leaves on the most beautiful tree attached to the branches at the most beautiful time of year. They must drop so that the tree can have a new cycle.
Again, it is part of the process of nature that we cling to things and have a hard time letting go, even when the information we have makes it very clear that the story is different than it either once was or is currently being told. All that they are, are stories of the past. It’s a real practice to live in the present and accept that to every past, there is a side A and a side B. And that side B might be a dark and heavy one. But it doesn’t have to define who we are or what we do now. Though once again, for that history to not repeat itself, work must happen.
It takes courage to see the darkness of these hidden truths. And it takes a powerful act of humility and grace to illuminate the lies that have been woven into history. But rather than walk away feeling bad about these stories, can they be what they are – inspiration and light for our personal and collective awakening, a collection of stories that build our history of being human? We laugh, we cry, we tell the truth, we lie. We are here now and can take whatever we can forward by learning from the past and making better choices for today and tomorrow. Because many of us have dug our feet deep in our habits, it may be that the newer generation will have better luck. This new generation is the product of a more evolved human being who just might be able to release the stories of our past with less baggage so long as we stop trying to drop it off on them. But guidance from our elders who have the wisdom of experience is crucial in helping open access to this continued awakening.
May we honor and speak truthfully about the land we stand on and the hardship that has been endured to get here. May our own journey be a message of transformation and compassion where we discover the tools to find peace, even if in fleeting moments. May any patterns to create endless war be seen, understood and resolved through healing time.
Let’s stay connected,
Marc
