Ten Lessons in 2020: The Exam

Photo: Gabriella Brooks

I will never forget when the heartbeat of Paris slowed to match the pace of my inner space.

Exam day came on March 17th in France this year as I stood on my terrace in the middle of the Marais and I could hear a pin drop. It was a carefully scripted moment in the cinema of my life and I rode the waves of a range of emotions with crystal clear awareness, me my own audience.

Everything I learned this year came back to one thing: where I am in my practices.

I’m a lifer; my blessing and curse is that I have a deep yearning for staying on this path of healing and constant learning and awareness - its part of my tikkun.

I learned this year that no matter how practiced you are; millions of prayer-filled breaths, stillness, pilgrimages, journaling, embodiment, healings and healers, meditation, conversations with God, asana, Metta, forgiveness…right side, left side, no matter how much Bhakti I pump through my veins…it can all come crumbling down in an instant.

The practices faded away this year, leaving me with a bareness, a vulnerability, a nakedness that felt sobering - and I witnessed this happen to so many of us on this path.

We are after all, very human - on purpose.

In these moments I chose to crawl inside my skin, to a deeper place than I’ve ever been. Once the reaction and trigger are in the past and the conversation with the opponent takes place I am able to dissolve into what is left - the exact place where I am inside of me.

“Before you can hear, much less follow, the voice of your soul, you have to win back your body. You have to go on a pilgrimage beneath the skin.” - Meggan Watterson

I’d like to think that I passed the exam this year, not because I knew all of the answers or because I got everything exactly right, but because this exam was about what happens when the practices fall away. Can you crawl deeper into yourself? Can you do the work there first before looking outside of you? Can you be gentle with everyone involved in this lesson? Can you bow to each teacher on this path? Do you know that you are not your triggers? Do you trust that your life is in divine hands and order?

And, at the end of the day are you leading with your heart?

Thank you 2020.