best not to start.

Earlier this week I got the news that a really wonderful friend of mine had died suddenly. Sarah was a great mama, a devoted yogini, a witty feminist, and a delight to know. We met during our yoga teacher training program a few years ago, where we learned and grew by leaps and bounds alongside a handful of other smart, sassy women. Those weekends were among some of the best days of my life. One of the things I loved best about her was that she struck me as someone who sought enlightenment and social justice, who pursued clarity and focus, while also retaining a healthy dose of badassery. Between weekends of healthy vegetarian lunches and intense self study and discussions about moderation (and oh, who are we kidding, frequent lunchtime runs to Starbucks for chai lattes), I'd often run into her at the liquor store where we'd both be stocking up on bottles of red wine. The first time it happened, we both laughed hysterically. "Balance!" Sarah said. "It's crucial." Sarah wore leopard print the way most of us sport basic black. She told stories of her wild past and her sweet present. She posted hilarious shit on facebook. She loved her son with a fierce fire that I admired. She took care of the rest of us with a sort of subconscious motherly instinct that amazed me. She was compassionate and pragmatic and gave the kind of advice you actually wanted to heed.

On the very first day of our training, our teacher Mona warned us that once you made a commitment to a spiritual path, things would change, and they would never go back to the way they were. Sure, sure, we all said earnestly, not really grasping the depth of it all, not yet fully aware of the exhilarating, exhausting, emotional rabbit hole down which we were all about to tumble. But suddenly over the next few days and weeks and months, we all noticed it unfolding. Life was changing for all of us, and fast. Relationships ended. New ones began. We got jobs in other cities. We decided to go back to school. We got engaged, married, pregnant, and divorced. We got sick. We got well. We made plans, and then laughed and cried when those plans went completely pear-shaped. It was happening. Things were speeding up. I think we thought we'd gotten used to it, to the constant and beautiful chaos of which we were now so aware. Which is why it hurt so badly to learn that we'd lost one of our own. How could a bad thing happen to us when we spent all our energies seeking out the good?

Mona also had a line by Chogyam Trungpa that she liked to mention a lot (when she wasn't quoting something like Spaceballs or Ghostbusters to make a point about mindfulness, that is; and that is why she is my favourite teacher), about how the spiritual path is arduous and often horrible, and how it is "best not to start." We laughed at the frank simplicity of it, but I've gone back to it often. Sometimes when things are particularly hard I wonder if it would be any easier if I didn't have yoga in my life. Ever since I found out about Sarah I've been thinking about this even more. Would it be easier if I weren't so aware of the pain in my own heart and in the hearts of all those who knew her? Would a fog be easier than this stark clarity, this firm knowledge that she's gone, this confirmation that this practice really can't save any of us? I'm still not really sure. But what I realized around four in the morning (that universally acknowledged time of night when things are both grimmest and clearest) is that while this path might make hard things harder, it also teaches us to soften into the struggle, to open up to the lessons of hardship, to sit in the shit until we can let it all go on the next exhale. And if not that exhale, then maybe the one after that.

Inhale, exhale; right foot, left foot. Yoga taught us to use our breath and our bodies to work things out. The notion that Sarah's body is no longer breathing breaks my heart. The absolute truth that someday my lungs will stop cold too scares the hell out of me. We learned how to breathe together; what do we do now that one of us is no longer here?

This practice will not save us. Nothing will save us, not in the way that we might fundamentally want it to. Nothing saves us from death. We talked a lot about that in teacher training too, especially when we were sorting out the Bhagavad Gita with the help of the incredible lectures of Devarshi Steven Hartman. Devarshi talks about how all of our fears really boil down to the fear of death. The big secret, of course, is that death is nothing at all if you know the real truth--that we are all connected, that we are all eternal, that we are all one. When we stop resisting our fears, we get closer to that. Yesterday as I reached out to my teachers and my friends, trying to make sense of what had happened, I felt just a shred of that one-ness, that connection and interdependence. With suffering comes unity.

So where else do we turn for consolation? I often head right to my yoga mat but after bawling my face off during a Sivananda practice the other morning I think I might need a few days' quiet respite. Oftentimes I bury myself in a book but right now my attention span just won't let that happen. Instead I've been listening to this song over and over again (proof that there really is a Bob Dylan song for all of life's milestones). It makes me cry, and it makes me hurt, and it makes me feel alive and hopeful, and that's what I need right now.



Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Sarah.