Taping, etc.

Had a really great chat w/ my friend Travis tonight. Range of subjects really, but Travis and I communicate best on existential matters. I love that he's the only person I know raised as a Buddhist who then rejected it and is now making his peace w/ it. It helps to bounce ideas off of him b/c of his capacity for conceptualizing and his remarkable breadth of knowledge.

So, in other news, I re-taped my class for the Baron certification tonight. My horoscope for today says that silence is golden especially in matters where I don't have it figured out but what the hell. The impetuous Sag in me is throwing caution to the wind here in an attempt to flesh this out. L2 was over a month ago, and I'm personally astounded by the changes that have taken place in me since then. The last year has been tumultuous at best at work and w/out even realizing it, my confidence had suffered dearly. I suspect it actually had roots prior to the last year, but was made apparent by a frenzied work schedule. It came to a head at L2, as apparently is wont to happen there. I left L2 thinking I had it licked (wow how many times have I made that kind of assumption?!) and taped my first class shortly upon return. Post-taping, Hav remarked that I lacked confidence. I decided during my NYC trip to retape. After all, even since the first taping I've been doing what feels like a ton of work on subconscious thought patterns, honing and honoring my intuition, etc. I am constantly amazed at what a benevolent place the universe is, really! and very little of my conscious self identifies w/a diminished self esteem. In fact, at my core, I feel really, really good. All week I've been actually looking forward to taping. The day went well, except that I got so busy I didn't eat lunch and found myself at 5:10 having to frantically shut down so I could get to the studio in time to meditate for 5 minutes or so before class. Perhaps my harried trip to yoga contributed, but I don't think so. Jesus if I didn't teach the exact same class as last time!!! In fact, I think it was technically inferior. I couldn't get my assists right, I did oh, one Sun A (who does one Sun A?!), forgot to remind people to use blocks, oh it goes on. More than that though, the energy level wasn't there and I couldn't seem to pull it up. Funnily enough I can tell when I've taught a strong class, and I haven't been feeling weak for a while. But that doesn't matter, b/c apparently there is a particular message that I'm supposed to hear. Seriously, I type this half sort of laughing because I feel like the truth is I could teach ninety more times and potentially have solid classes, retape and have the exact same experience until I hear what I'm meant to hear.

If I must be honest, and well, I must :-), I would admit that I think there's a part of me struggling because I want to control a perception of me and so I'm disappointed when I've not mastered the output. In practice I am working on being truthful in every moment, but living for so long trying to sugar coat, appease, etc has had its effect and I can't expect to change on a relative dime. And though I've made great progress trying to rush my process is folly. It's almost like by having the expectation in the first place to teach a strong class tonight that I had hoped to circumvent a message ultimately destined to get to me anyway. I'm smiling at the irony of working on assuming the beginner's mind in taking a class and yet in teaching I couldn't apply the same principle. I tried to stop the message before it even got to me. I guess when I said in class tonight, "approach your practice w/ a beginner's mind" I should have heeded my own advice.

Okay so tired. Going to bed.