We are all teachers and all students.
A few weeks ago, as I was pondering what to do with my future, I recalled a paragraph from Sharon Salzberg’s book Faith.
The whole story of how that book had come into my life was full of synchronicities. First, a friend of mine gave me a copy after somebody else had given it to her on the same day. Second, with my friend’s permission, of course, I gave that copy to another friend when he asked me a question that was answered verbatim in the book.
And, while I considered the prospect of finally launching my spiritual counselling practice, and dodging my mind’s ruminations of endless excuses, these were the lines that crossed my mind:
When I was preparing to leave India in 1974, I’d gone to see Dipa Ma to get her blessing. Suddenly, in the midst of our conversation, she said to me, “When you go to America you should teach meditation.”
I was astonished and immediately protested, “No, I can’t do that. I’m not at all qualified.”
She smiled patiently, as though at a child who had lost the point of the story and answered:
“Yes, you should teach. You really understand suffering. That’s why you’re qualified to teach.”
It was, almost, as if the lines were directed to me.
I, too, have been told that I should be a coach and a counsellor because I understand suffering. I’ve dealt with addictions, despair, and anxiety, with both debt and the malady of too much wealth and the wrong values around it. I have been close to death, not once, but several times.
Yet, I am still here.
And that was all I needed.
I remembered Martin Scorsese’s lines, which I had mentioned in another article: I came out the other side and woke up one day alive…still breathing.
Does the reason that, after going through so much, many of us are still here, still breathing, anything to do with the fact that we are all teachers and students? We learn from those that have walked our path. We teach those that are about to walk the one we already went past.
And if I did, already, walk the past of suffering, what should stop me from guiding others as they transit it?
I reconnected with my inner version of Dipa Ma and said to myself that if there was any reason I should do this, this was it.
How many times do we stop ourselves because we believe there is something we are lacking? We feel as if we lack the credentials, the knowledge, the experience — but what we are really lacking is confidence.
My therapist used to say that depriving the world of our gifts is the most selfish thing we can do. Now I can see how she was right. I can hear her voice now:
All that matters is that you’ve walked the road, and that you’re willing to guide someone else as they walk theirs. Now, what are you waiting for?
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Javier Ortega-Araiza is a spiritual coach who focuses on healing and forgiveness through the Ho’oponopono philosophy, which he has practiced for several years. In this human experience, he is also a serial entrepreneur and investor, a tennis player and coach, and a writer, chronicling his human experience from its different angles.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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