When a Great Teacher arrives...

A Great Teacher has entered my life. This teacher must have drawn near some months ago but waited just outside the reach of my awareness for a while, allowing me time to ready myself.

In the presence of my new teacher, each moment, every day seems infused with a kind of light that makes more brilliant what's true, and the unessential disappear. I do not even have to think what to focus upon and where to let go, such a clarifying force is the presence of this teacher.

I feel stronger than I have ever felt. Stronger than I could even have hoped or imagined. Yet it is a very gentle strength, one that is more wind than steel. My body moves with me as it always has, yet it feels like a fragile friend to cherish. It asks for gentle movement and then rest. I am compelled to grant this humble request from this lifelong friend. You see, it is overwhelmed at a cellular level by the advent of the teacher.

My new teacher is known as cancer (lymphoma, to be more precise).

I know that sharing this with people will inevitably lead to questions like "why". I am aware of past stresses upon my body and psyche that could have contributed to this. I know enough about genetics, epigenetics, pesticides, microwaves, radiation, energy, viruses, etc. etc. etc. to know that there are a myriad of very subtle factors that can combine to originate something that progresses into a physical issue. The root cause be what it may, I have a very strong sense that the illness is teaching me everything I need to know and that I am in a healing process, as contradictory as that may seem. I know that the people who know me are shaken by this news. I understand and I have been there. Some may feel disillusioned, having believed consciously or not that a regular yoga practice like mine should have granted me some kind of immunity. It's understandable. However, I have always enthusiastically conveyed that while yoga may not make you immune to life's stresses, it is a wonderful tool that helps a person to live deeper, stronger, more resiliently, more joyfully. I can also now say with even more resonance: it works!!!

I feel absolutely cradled by spirit and the good intent and prayers of friends and family, too. While I am focusing on my connection with friends and spirit, all of the material manifestations of how supported I am in this challenging time amaze me (such as the excellent care I am receiving on the physical level). I will make good of this experience and will be grateful for how it contributes to my evolution. I am deepening, mellowing, learning so much... I AM HEALING! Even if I get sicker, even if I have to go through chemotherapy, whatever the road entails, it is for me a process of healing on every level.

I am not only "going to be" okay, but I am okay. I am not worried, because I know that I have always been blessed by the Great Teachers that have come into my life. While the nature of this situation is daunting, it is helping me to learn in a very deep way things I've needed to learn for a long time: not to strive, to surrender and trust, to be kind to myself, to let in the love and caring of others, to let my light really shine.. If I can share the joy of all that is good in this, it resonates even more strongly within me (0: Thank you for being here with me.