Guruvir

Satsumi tangerines can be misleading. You pick one up and it is mushy, it is dirty and it is tiny. What could be inside?

After inspecting a large number of these tangerines at the Park Slope Food Coop I have found that the mushier, the dirtier, and the most unappealing of these tangerines is usually the most tasty. I’m sure this isn’t news to most readers, but these tangerines contain one of the secrets of transformation: a rotting outside doesn’t mean you are rotten inside.

Let me explain: as you move along your spiritual path, things will come up. By things I mean the ugly stuff, that no one advertises when they tell you to come to a yoga class or a meditation session.

It never says:

7pm kundalini yoga and meditation
with ample opportunity to CRY
get ANGRY
and even NEGATIVE: ROAR.

No, instead we are told we will be uplifted, energized and transformed. That can be true.

But there is also the ugly peel of transformation. It is part of being on a spiritual path and yet it gets little air time.

True, advertising these aspects wouldn’t be a big draw, except to me. I look for things that will push me to cry, because I have learned that going through this stuff is crucial, and I’m totally fine with breaking down in the middle of a yoga studio after class. Hundreds of people have seen me cry.

I share that because sometimes people get discouraged. They are doing all this yoga and they start feeling worse instead of better. And then they start feeling a lot worse because they want to cry and their friends don’t understand why and they feel isolated and so on. But I say, that’s how you know you are on the right track. Transformation is great but it usually comes with a lot of crap. So in case you haven’t gotten there yet let me tell you that you will: cry, scream, forget why you started, feel like it might never end, and want to throw a tangerine at someone. But there is a sweet sweet fruit just beyond that ugly peel. It will fall away, and you will taste something so delicious, like a satsumi tangerine, that you can’t even believe it was already in you.

If: you are someone with your finger stuck in a mushy rotten peel (Go You!), you probably are scowling at this lame little article about tangerines and crying, and that’s fine with me. Just go ahead with it, I support you. In fact you are welcome to dump some of your negativity into the comments for this website. Maybe I’ll read it.

So: remember that transformation is a process and embrace it. It is the only way to go through the ugly peel that’s keeping you from being you.

For a look at some secular support of crying please visit: www.whocriedthemost.com