~The Chopra Center Spiritual Law of the Day
Now that my body feels awesome, I thought it was time to focus on some personal goals. To get started, I signed up for The Chopra Center's 21 Day Meditation and really enjoyed that. I liked the questions we asked each day: Who Am I? What Do I Want? What is my Dharma? As I asked the questions of myself I began to feel that there are a few things in my life that have served others and myself that no longer nourish me. I get the feeling that it is time to move on to new things. What those new things are, I don't know yet, but I trust that I will when the time is right.
One thing that still works for me is teaching. It is something that feels right to me. School was always a struggle for me. I did okay, but it didn't come easy. The struggle I experienced as a student myself has given me my strength as a teacher, I believe. As my students struggle to learn new things themselves, I can easily relate to why they are struggling and I get excited as I challenge myself to come up with a variety of ideas to teach a concept. I often get feedback from students that I am "patient" and I "show lots of different ways to learn". I think that comes from struggling to learn myself.
Deepak Chopra often talks about finding our Dharma. How can we serve others? When I go to work, I love it! (I don't always like driving or leaving my family though) I think the reason I love it is because while serving others with my own individual gift, I am also serving myself.
Last night I met with two of my past students who have now graduated from the ESL program. For the last year we have tried to meet at least once a month for dinner and also talk through email and Facebook. They are good friends.
Kanya shared that besides working on her GED, she is working 60 hours a week, caring for her family, and started guitar lessons. Salvador brought a pretest he took in his "for credit" English class. He was disappointed with his 60% and wanted me to explain each of his incorrect answers because he is determined not to make the same mistakes. After we talked for a while, I pointed out to him that he is in a class with first language English speakers doing just as well as they are. Few people did any better than him on the test.
As I listened to the exciting things happening in their lives, I realized that although both of these amazing people are being led by their own determination, I played a very small part in their success. However small my part was or is, it feeds my spirit.
When Salvador arrived he commented that I look "younger". Kanya agreed. They started asking me what created the change. I told them that my diet has been very clean and that I started on medications. Salvador said, "Real drugs?" They both know the struggle I have gone through the last few years. I said, "Yes, I am back on drugs. What you see as looking 'younger' is you seeing me without pain for the first time."
I giggle at this picture because before we left I told them if I looked so "young" I needed to capture it in a photo. I tried taking it with my iPhone, but we couldn't see if we were all in the photo. I was laughing so hard because I was the only one ending up in the picture and they were teasing me. Finally, I looked around and saw a young woman who was cracking up at us trying to take the picture. Thankfully she came over and took it for us.
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