Human beings are creatures of necessary habit; all we do in our day is cloaked in among these rituals of habitude. Our perceptions on how to perform any given task are an expression to the world of how we wish to appear as individuals, everything from the conscious way we chew our food to the conscious (unconscious) acceptance of likewise chewing a lip in pensive solitude. These rituals of lifestyle are attached to everything we do and are mental-physical cues of how we think to act, our own internal codes to the external world on how to reciprocate these actions. However much we might like to believe we’re unique, some things in our body language remain universal, such as the way Matt Damon is instructed to move his eyes in Ocean’s Eleven: above or to the side means he's making things up, and down would mean he's lying. As he’s being taught to bluff without detection in a game of cards, the solution is to look straight-deadpan ahead, and never deviate.
But despite anything that ritual might signify to you, it is when our modus operandi is interrupted that there can often be most to learn. Just as revealing as how a person reacts in high-pressure situations, it is in these surprise deviations from the norm that life finds way to say things to us. And so, it pays well... to be awake, watching and listening.
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This past Saturday evening, I decided to bypass my normal 20-something nocturnal gallivanting and spend a rare evening in, rejoicing in the refuge my apartment had to offer from the ongoing leggy heels attached to noxious clouds of saccharine perfume descending the stairs, and - even more so - boys masquerading as men in blue pinstripe button-downs. Instead of schmoozing, dancing or trapezing around, my evening’s activities would instead involve a long, overdue watching of (classic, classic!) Vertigo. Some incense, meditation, and tea-drinking were in order, and - most importantly - the guilty pleasure of my evening in: starting my blog.
Tea is one of the small pleasures in life my mother approves of having passed on to me, one much more affordable than shoes, and I have a cupboard full of it. Nothing too exotic, but always herbal. Counting twenty-two kinds in my cupboard a few months ago, I told myself I would not be allowed any more tea purchases until I at least moved down a peg from having three kinds of green tea to two. So it was to my delight that I discovered I had one, singular sachet, of Yogi Peach Detox left; a blend Ayurvedic practitioners refer to as “trikatu,”: the three pungents of ginger, black pepper, and long pepper, coupled with dandelion for liver cleansing, and over-laced with the combination of cinnamon and licorice that I love.
Preparing food and drink is a common thing to attach ritual to; for me, even a simple cup of tea is no exception. I have my own ritual of filtering exactly only one cup of water through my Brita so I don’t wait absolutely any longer than necessary for the water to boil, and my tea to steep. I’ll stand by the stove in anticipation until the steam begins to quietly rise from the kettle, and I relish especially the cloud of steam that wafts up from the gleaming arch of water as it hits the dry tea bag, sending a sniff of what is to come. Today, the ritual was even more sacred, as I glanced down to notice that Yogi - in all his wisdom - had something to say on his tea bag tag:
“Recognize that you are the truth.”
~ PAUSE ~
... To allow you to process this for yourself, and take it in on your own, before I overlay your thoughts with mine....
On a visceral level, I felt it and agreed with it. It was so simple. Of course we are the truth; each person to himself/herself is all we can ever truly know! But in the moment it took me to process this, I simultaneously had to thank - and curse - my semesters of philosophy for the sequence of thought that followed in my head, and, most especially, for the full, hearty laugh that followed. Basically: “Sorry Yogi. I know you’re trying to say something really profound, and you might actually be right. But today, I’m going to traitorously imbibe of your tea, yet not your thoughts. I’ve chosen not to take you seriously, and I’m not going to allow you to get into my head.”
(Ummm, yeeah. Yeah. Right. I could only wish!)
Because then I had to wonder; the simplicity of his statement seemed such a blanket overstatement, and I like to snuggle. You mean to tell me, that it’s been that easy, all along? You actually mean, to tell me, that after a lifetime (I speak only of the agony, not the length as mine has hardly thus far been long) of wondering - agonizing - about truth and what it is, that when I have someone turn around and whisper, “Psssst. Hey - hey, you. You’re the truth. You've been it, all along, and you've always known it," that I’m just supposed to accept it?Call it my eternal internal devil's advocate, but excuse me. “What Truth?” could he be speaking of? Which truth was this, and who did it belong to? And even if belongs to you (if truth is something that can be possessed) what is truth and what is your truth?” ...And, Voila!! It was that easy. Here we were, once again:
"What is truth?"
Well, I’ve never quite been sure, and I'm still not. Everyone’s truth(s) is different; we learn of things of the world, and along the way make choice judgments to form opinions of what we think are true. So many different kinds of truths for endless things in the universe, and the only foolproof way to share-agree-prove them to others is primarily visually. Eye to eye, we all know we have our own diverse perspectives. We all see things differently, in our own beautiful, meaningful ways.
For now, let’s temporarily sidestep this hurdle and allow Yogi to establish that if I, in myself, am the truth, we must then embark on the eternal “What am I, Who am I?” dilemma to find out what the truth is.
Am I the truth? And, if I don’t even know who I am, how can I be the truth?
If you’re anything like me, and have been trying to figure out what you’re doing here on earth (or rather, have eventually chosen to give up on trying rather than wander around in an existential funk, finding yourself wishing you could choose or find something – almost anything – to simply allow yourself to move forward) you might understand my defense reaction of a laugh. There was a point in my life in the -- not so recent -- recent past, when I felt extremely frustrated and stagnated. Being someone who has allowed her heart to govern her life more by necessity than choice, I somehow found myself so out of touch that I couldn’t almost hear what she had to say. It was a dark place, and I felt very, very lost.
Since then, I’ve been able to allow something intrinsic to my being, an internal life force, to accept the material functionality of the world and allow myself to arrive in a place where I can achieve this. I’ve always wanted to help people, and I’ve had the good fortune of discovering the growing field of nutrition as it begins to truly take off. I now know what I want do with my life, and my occupation now is only to figure out how to get there. For now, I have realized that I need to cultivate my own self first in order to be strong enough to share what I’ve learned, and teach others to do the same. Short term-wise I am pre-occupied with how to keep myself going until I can arrive at this plateau, but in terms of the big picture, I’m not really worried how I'll take care of my future because I truly believe the world will always have enough for me. As long as I remain true to myself and make the right choices to follow the path I’ve envisioned, the world will conspire with me to achieve it and I will always have what I need.
Let’s read it again: “Recognize that you are the truth.”
Alright… sure. But says who? What and whose truth am I? After all, if I supposedly know myself and even I don’t know my truth, how can this Yogi of the Tea?
Says me, that’s who.
At the end of the day, all this debate and discussion doesn’t matter. Overcomplicating things is simply intellectual masturbation, and will rarely get you any further. Instead of expanding it, I should have taken it for what it was, paused and pondered for a moment… and moved on. (But then I wouldn’t have been able to say all that I have in this posting, and you couldn’t have been taken along for the unfortunate ride.)
My truth is one of the only things that I can truly possess in this world. My truth, along with my spirit, my soul, my heart, lies within me to discover when I'm ready. So I try to live my life with my eyes open, and see all that I can. In a strange way, yes, the writers who give life the character of Yogi of the Tea are right: you are your own truth. Only you can see, feel, the light within. Only you can find it, coax it out, and only you can live it. Whatever your truth may be, I am of the belief that your truth is tied closely to your passions and inspiration, which is one reason I seek to find and live them, in my own pursuit of happiness.
I'll leave you with this quote, one of the most inspiring passages I’ve encountered recently: a favorite to Akeelah the Bee, my yoga class instructor, and most people I’ve introduced to it thus far. It’s a quote from Marianne Williamson's book, A Return to Love, but often incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela from his Inauguration Speech in 1994 (the next time you hear it misquoted, please correct the person - not on account of the author, as she cares only that her message is heard, but rather on my account - as I believe credit to her will help spread the message she has to say in her wonderful books):
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Marianne, thank you for this ceaselessly empowering passage. And thank you, Yogi, for your insightful, stimulating (albeit, copyrighted) wisdom.
I go to sleep tonight realizing that there is more truth to being true to yourself than I had previously thought. This is my truth, what I've chosen to believe. Whose truth will you believe today? Whatever it may me, you are as free as you are to choose your own truth ritual. And all I can hope is that I may have given you some insight in how to decide.
~ Shanti *~
