I am a yogi, a modern-day yogi, a truth-seeker at heart. To seek truth is my innermost inspiration. I try to understand life – at the visceral as well as the intellectual level. I seek to get to the bottom of things. I seek to grow and be a better human being. I seek to serve. I seek to become like the many enlightened masters whom I cherish and revere.
On the other hand, I have a passion and a matched talent. I am a gifted orator. I enjoy playing with ideas and words, as if it is a sport. To express this aspect of my authentic self, I conduct trainings. I get a lot of love from my students because I almost mother them and facilitate many breakthroughs in their lives. I get a lot of adulation as well and get hooked to it. It becomes tricky here. I am on a quest to defeat my dependence on recognition. But my well-received trainings only reinforce it. Until I become aware, time and again. Until I rise after every tripping and trudge my way back to non-attachment to recognition.
These training initiatives also give me a lot of fulfilment. As if to extract a cost, in return, they occupy me. Freedom from occupation and from any type of structure is my basic nature. I often feel occupational involvement a burden, a necessary evil. I guess extroverts have it easy here. Their work is often their primary passion. For introverts, inner involvement is their primary passion and work is something else – at best it’s their best expression.
This conflict between what I originally crave for (my truth-seeking) and what I have to do in order to live my self-expression (my occupation) often takes a toll on me. I am here to learn, grow, serve and enjoy. I am here to be an earnest learner and at best a volunteer, not a teacher. Why do I get caught up in doing a myriad other things that I am not here for? I try and balance between my inner calling and work, but work is not yet taking enough of a back seat. Dictated by my excitement, I end up taking on too much. Before I finish one project, I take up two more and in doing justice to all of them, I get too busy to bother about my innermost inspiration.
My intellectual understanding of keeping my spiritual quest on a higher priority is yet to translate into a living truth. In the meantime, I feel pained; I struggle, look for solutions and if I get them, life comes in the way and I often forget implementing them. One solution I have found is to go on a month-long walking pilgrimage, all by myself. Plan to do it sometime soon. To resolve the struggle between extroverted excitement and introverted inspiration, the struggle between the enthusiastic influencer and the curious truth-seeker in me. Let’s see if it eases my struggle. And if it does it in a way that is most satisfying.
