Frustration… It’s simply mental confusion or is it?
So as many of you know, I tend to write about my own personal experiences and my life. And as I continue to grow and evolve with the rest of the “willing” world, I am continually awed at the notion of what growth is. Many of us like the idea of growth, but what we often leave out is that we like it on our own terms. We prefer it to be how we see fit, how it “makes sense to us”. I say HA! You wish, heck, I wish! It can’t be growth if you are controlling it.
A great teacher of mine says that “you can’t engage in anger and frustration and still expect to grow spiritually, you are just kidding yourself. The only thing that grows is your ego to thinking you have grown”. Frustration simply put, is mental confusion. And so, when I get frustrated am I always able to stay cool and calm, not 100%, but what I am really working on is noticing that when I do get frustrated it’s usually not the other person, but me that needs to learn something (well them too but that is for them to see). And so we have a choice. Do I stay as I am or breathe, and see if there is a different way to look at what is in front of me?
There is a big world out there and you will only be holding yourself back if you continually pride yourself on remembering every little thing someone did to you and that you are older and wiser that everyone else. Wisdom is not counted by the number of years on this earth in this lifetime, but rather if you have taken the knowledge you have and applied it to life, you have actually “learned”.
Rudi, a great Swami says in many of his books, that a teacher will want to be on your level with you and grow with you, not want to be above you or put you below him or herself, but rather be side by side. And I think of this only because I was just talking about Kids Yoga classes with a instructor friend and I told her the number one thing to remember is “play with the kids” their whole life is people telling them what to do, you can reach them in a much better way if you become a child, and simply maintain a understanding that you are leading the group.
For me this is something I often try to implement into my teaching and life. So to all my yogi friends, my hope is that we walk side by side rather than in a single file line. That when growth is stunted we are all a big enough person to look to ourselves first, that at the end of the day real growth has to do with the total annihilation of your limited definition of self. So grow to your potential, because you are the only one holding you back.