The following reflection originally appeared in the newsletter I sent out on March 23rd, 2021.
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Early on in my spiritual practice, I was mostly practicing Yoga postures and breathwork. After experimenting with different styles & lineages, I eventually found a home in the Ashtanga tradition. Their particular practice involves doing a roughly two-hour sequence that one does every day, and as it’s always the same sequence, one does it self-guided at one’s own pace.
However, at the Ashtanga Center I went to, we would start the practice together — and, at the beginning, everyone would chant a long Sanksrit mantra in unison.
For the first couple of months, I would just read the mantra off a piece of paper. However, looking around, I saw that nearly everyone else seemed to have it memorized. Being somewhat long and in a different language, it was hard to wrap my mind around how everyone had it down so well.
In turn, after class one day I asked the teacher, “how is it that almost everyone has the chant memorized… it feels so complicated…?”
A man of few words, he stood contemplatively for a moment before replying, “When you want to learn the chant, you’ll learn the chant.”
That was all he said, yet when I returned the next morning, I had the chant memorized perfectly.
I’ve thought about his comment many times over the years. I find there are many challenges that I see as difficult, insurmountable, or simply requiring “too much” of me.
Often these perceptions of difficulty and challenge aren’t even conscious. Maybe it’s just that I’m in a grumpy mood and unconsciously it feels like a lot to change my attitude/mood, so I carry on as I am.
However, when I have the awareness to realize where I am and where I’d like to be — when I really, really get clear with myself on what I want, I usually find a way to get there.
So what do you want? With your inner life, your relational life, your spiritual practice, and on and on? What really calls you most of all right now?
If it’s something relatively simple, like shifting out of grumpiness, change might come instantly.
If it’s something that takes a little more effort, it might come overnight, like memorizing a Sanskrit chant.
If it’s something that you’re not sure how to do and will require a lot of trial and error, like forgiveness, not being enslaved by anxiety or depression, ending procrastination, quitting a bad habit, living with an unshakeable kindness, or stepping into deeper layers of insight and concentration, if you really want it — if you really, really want it — you’ll eventually make it happen.
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