What can beautiful yoga teachers teach us?

Not the yoga teacher in question. (Henri Rousseau, The Dream, 1910)

Steaming for Steemit I found myself, yesterday, having a problem with 5 quotes that will make you really happy or 12 things I learned about myself. Call me a grouch.
I feel myself again, now.

But yesterday, I didn’t like the idea of self-massage with oils that cost you an arm and a leg (ok, at least, that leaves less to massage). It gave me the creeps how this health guru I had stumbled upon smiled at me. I don’t think they can never not smile. Or even worse how they "cuddle with their man" before hopping deliriously out of bed with a greeting to the sun, as if this (presumed stud to match) is a teddy bear. Does she actually mean, have full on kama sutra sex? Or maybe, she has squeezed all the juice out of him, years ago, already, with all her up-for-life peppiness? She has to be in her late forties (not that he has to be).

What bugged me? I got to thinking: we won’t find the likes of her on Steemit. None of our beekeepers, poets, mountainbikers and skateboarders will rise to her heights of fame. Tut-tut, dear girl, I pat myself calm again (no oil to hand), who knows,…?! Besides, we Steemians don’t want to be on such topply heights. The yogi’s advocate again: but she’s been around forever! Her formula must be working! I wonder: How is ours then so different? Why can't we live comfortably off just living our life? Is there an ethical or (more my field) a spiritual-moral difference? Now, that would be exciting.

My mind’s eye needs to study this, and I watch her step up and out of a down-dog. I do this modestly from behind screen lashes, since she can do this in the nude, because her room is well heated, so as to be kind to her ligaments, tendons and all-over lubrication for the fasciae. I let her, quickly, slip on an organic Peshetemal cotton kimono, and dash after her, down the broadly sweeping stairway to the blender, for a papaya, matcha, monk fruit, beets, greens, acai, mint and manuka honey smoothie (don’t try this at home!). With each sip she draws in fesh, zippy zest for another glorious day of yoga, meditation, changing people’s lives, doing her humble bit for humanity.

I remove myself from the webpage that is causing me to ruffle my feathers so. Don’t even know how I got there. Back to my original search I go.

Out of sheer rebellion I click on a “terrifying pics” link (https://www.boredpanda.com/weird-vegetables-fruits-sprouting/) - something I seldom do (if ever?! What’s Steemit turning me into!?). A wave of peace comes over me and restores me to myself.

Beautiful organic processes have been captured by miffed and astonished people looking in their fridge. I am not quite sure why tomatoes would sprout at 5 degrees centigrade, let alone strawberries, which famously propagate through runners, but I can see how an organic artichoke might find the last spurt of life energy within themselves to open up a dazzling bloom, and a cut cabbage can easily have another go at life, yet; nothing so vital as anything from the brassica family.

But I simply must return to our lovely flexy lady, because I still don’t quite see why I ever virtually met her in the first place (a decade ago) and now bump into her again. If you are a fairly modest surfer like myself, when it comes to pausing for individual encounters, then you can’t just pass up on such an “accidental” meeting. What to do with these people behind their screen personas? I suppose leave them be…. And that might be the difference between an interactive forum yogi and a poster-face one.

They seem to "serve" as a kind of conterpoint to something in my etheric space...

I’ve known this celebrity-yogi now, for ten years, without knowing a blind thing about her. One picks up bits and bobs during one’s research, say, on essential oils and she happens to promote a brand of her own (liking). She too.

I get how it works. Sort of. Her lavender might sell to people who love her leggings and never thought of oils before: they would start there. Many people buy inferior (useless and dangerous!) quality oils which are affordable, so her promotion could enhance (maybe save?!) lives. I trust that she has strict quality controls in place for her brand…. Then again, what makes them three times more expensive than my top brand? How superior can it get on top of a brand that is already organic, fair trade, undiluted, tested (for the innate chemical properties)?

I get that I don’t need to “buy into” her: I am not her target audience, but there are hundreds of thousands of (middle class women predominantly) who are. So, good for her to supply a demand - they didn’t even know they had. Why would it not come with perfect, tanned skin and blond, silky hair, toned arms and flat abs? This should not detract from her authenticity. She will be the last to instruct us to be like her, and she may be past the stage of needing to be liked by us, even. All she means to do is suggest some things that worked for her in the kind hope that they might work for us, too. Effecting what though? My yogi advocate sighs. Your inspiration, numpty! But she doesn’t, I flop back into child’s pose. Whose problem is that? the advocate snorts lightly with dismay.

I zig-zag out of my childish sulk into a camel and up into a mountain. The thing is, I proclaim to the advocate, who is wishing I were milder, for love is a very gentle energy - no it isn’t, I slice through his stance with a restored fighting spirit but, swiflty, move past him to find my desk, to sit at it and to report back on my findings to you Steemians - the thing is, that she isn’t the one I’d pick for my team. The thing is, that she wasn’t set out on the fringe. She has made a respectable living out of finding herself. So be it. All fine. But I can't waste another second of my fading life on her.

She is where she is, living her life, doing her thing. If it irritates me that there is, yet, another one going the long-way round and upholding the idea that this road leads to the final destination, it will betray nothing but my own weariness.

You can't have cut-out silhouettes for Mankind, you need backgrounds and veil upon veil of being for it to work as a total picture. It is imperative to let the likes of her be (and work out the veneer-energy till it can go no further). She needs her students and clients and wonderful life-style with all its suppliers to complete herself and so does the bourgeoisie, a level that exists to be transcended. The (albeit exponentially stagnating) middle-classes make up that transitional phase from surviving to finding meaning to life.

She is not disingenuous. But she is not inspired, either. But either way, there is no judgement required, damning or extolling her. The thing is, is that she doesn’t meet the criteria to be on my team. It's just a me-thing, after all.

Team-building

So, after all the huff and the puff, I suddenly have my first criteria for a team I only ever vaguely had a notion of that I, just maybe, should be bringing together.

I feel I am (as always) too many steps ahead of my time. I shall note this and then meekly go back down to the pre-last period of significant development I belong to. I am not ready to build a team, but clearly I know my vocation: to fill a taxi (sedan, van, bus?) of builders of a future. If we all aimed to do this, we might get some of us accross.

Wholesome is to feel there is something missing in your life. It sounds crazy-paradoxical, perhaps. But the words have to spin a bit to hit the right brain cells.

I feel incomplete. Literally: the I feels. Start there. This is not about the emotions we need to feel there is an I in there somewhere. That’s for the first 21 years (see previous post!).

This feeling summons up more than an urge, a veritable sense of urgency. This can be very confusing and make the younger ones among us (and usually it begins around 21 already!) restless and overly reckless for a while. What’s there to lose in the illusion of life? You will forever be trying to get to the marrow of this leukemic existence and heal it with your wholesomeness.

To what aim? To answer that, you must learn to focus inbetween the I and the All. Not too far into the distance. Maybe use a 100mm macro lens and an F-stop of 32, which in a dimly lit room may require a loooong shutter speed time. Keep focussing....

End of Part One.