What does a thing weigh?

That thing you're carrying, how much does it weigh?

Does it slow you down? Tire you out?

Does it give you blisters? Have a pointy edge?

Do special tools help you bear its load?

Our situation often seems heavy, but what does it really weigh? Why is it that sometimes trying to prepare Tuesday night dinner can be just enough to put us over the edge? Why is it that one email, one comment, one argument, one more to-do, can be too much to bear? 

We bump into these things all the time. Little things, insignificant ninnyhammers, that put us over the edge. 

Weight is relative. It depends on relations and circumstances, attitude and approach.  Next time you're feeling the grind, take a look at how you are carrying the load.  

Heavy.

Guru.

The word guru has a really negative connotation in the West.  We have a natural distaste for it.  It could be our Judeo-Christian upbringing.  It could be due to the fact that we don't like to put others above us.  It could be a lot of things, but we are missing one important point.

A guru is a spiritual teacher.  Our spiritual teacher.  My spiritual teacher.

That is not a title that comes easily.  It is not and should not be easily given.  Very few deserve this title, regardless of their achievements or renown. 

When we think of spiritual teachers that impact our life, we think of Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi.  These are people that have impacted us as a society and we can receive their wisdom, their truth.  We can digest it and make it our own.  They are spiritual teachers and we could have a strong connection with them, but in most cases it is often a safe connection.  Safe in the sense that we can enjoy their teachings and their message from the privacy of our own comfort zone. We don't need to extend ourselves at all, we don't need to form a connection, we can just stay in our comfort zone. 

The Tibetan word for Guru is Lama.  Lama has a connotation of being heavy, or serious.  Seriously heavy.

Heavy in this sense doesn't mean a burden on one's shoulders.  Heavy means that you can never pay back the impact that your spiritual teacher has had on your life.  You can never pay back the impact they have had on your mind and how they have transformed your path.

We don't worship the guru as an idol.  You shouldn't worship a guru as an idol.  We pay reverence to the spiritual teacher because they have impacted our life and our life is precious.  Their generosity, their kindness, has transformed our being.

We aren't the same because of them.  We will never be the same because of them and their teachings.  We can only work from this point.  We move forward and we hope to repay their kindness.

We become the working basis.  We become the teaching.  Each step.  One by one.  We start out as a likeness of their generosity and kindness, until the likeness becomes inseparable and we become generosity and kindness.

Then there is nothing left to hold onto, nothing left to repay and no one to repay to.  Everything is complete.  Your mind and the guru's mind inseparable.  

Gravity.

Gravity is very interesting.  We are all familiar with it, we learned how to operate within its bounds and even to use it to our advantage to do amazing things.

But what about the gravity of our decisions, actions and responsibilities?  Those have a lot of gravity, gravity that gives a lot of weight to our lives.  Weight that we often don't know how to deal with.

The interesting thing about gravity is that it always starts off with a fight and a fall.  We have to fight to get up.  We need to push and finagle and adapt.  We need to be persistent.  And then we fall.  The falling is inevitable really.  We may have succeeded in getting up but we still need to learn how to maintain that posture and even more so how to maintain it amidst movement and change.

But we persist.  The falling provides us with the tools to learn and we continue to examine and analyze until we succeed.  But the success doesn't stop there, once standing we move forward, we take steps and learn to hop and skip and roller skate and even fly.  We have actually learned to fly, even with gravity, not despite it.

So let's go back to the gravity of our decisions, actions and responsibilities.

Our initial reaction is to feel the heaviness of our situation.  We are often overwhelmed by the weight of our life, wishing that somehow it would all change and we could soar through the sky carefree and without any problems or conflict.  But it is important to realize that we are the weight.  That heaviness, it is us.  So we need to fight to pick ourselves up.  Or push ourselves up I suppose.

We will fall.

But recognize the problems and conflicts for what they are- learning opportunities.  Opportunities to adjust our posture.  Opportunities to find our balance.  Opportunities to make the right correction at the right time.

As we learn to stand with dignity and confidence, we can then learn to step forward with kindness and generosity.  As those develop momentum we can run with insight and develop the endurance it takes to accomplish great feats, great feats for ourselves and great feats for others.

We may even learn to fly.  Fly even amidst problems and conflict, amidst doubt and the impossibility of doing so because of the heaviness of our situation.  We learn to fly on the wings of skillful means and wisdom.  We can build those.

But first we need to learn to stand.