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The glass shoe

published: 2010-03-25

We all have days we feel particularly good about ourselves, and for no apparent reason. The result being: the world opens up. It becomes a beautiful, welcoming place and: safe. Especially that. It loves you and you love it.
“Wow,” says the man you run into and haven’t seen in years, “you look great.” Of course I look great, is what you think. Life is great, I am great, and everything is great.
For as long as it lasts, it’s actually the truth. The thing is though, it never does. Last, I mean. It never lasts. The clock always strikes twelve and you find yourself back at home sweeping ashes. While studying those ashes the next morning, I wonder: why did I run into that particular person? He was one of my yoga-teachers. This was at a time when life was depressing, or – if you will – I was. To be depressed means nothing works anymore nor makes any sense. It felt as if I was erasing myself. The type of yoga I happened to find myself doing was extremely phyiscal and challenging. This turned out to be a good thing: it kept me in my body. It kept me here.
There had been another teacher first, though. He was all the yoga-teachers’ teacher. I had never met before, but he had taken me into his home. Just like that. No questions asked. The only thing he asked of me was that I helped in the household. So I did dishes and mowed lawns and helped prepare meals. He had five children, girls. And a lovely wife. One morning he invited me to practice yoga with them. It was my first encounter with it. It resulted in me crying all night and throwing-up.
For a while, I kept in touch with that man. I poured my heart out to him in various emails. He patiently answered all of them, including my questions about choices and fear. Soon after, he died of cancer.
Now let’s return to my contemplations about running into the other teacher. I caught myself thinking I would’t want to run into him again, not in my usual state of being: the rags and the ashes. But what did all this mean? I looked for the exchange of emails between myself and the teacher’s teacher. I couldn’t find them. And then suddenly I remembered: hadn’t he said a few something about searching for things?
And as silly as this may sound, Cinderella doesn’t search for her shoe. It comes to her. Think about that for a moment.






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