by Patsy O’Brien
If yoga has taught me anything, it is about being okay with who I am. I’m not going to say that after I took my first yoga class, I transformed into a confident, self-assured person. No, it took time. It took finding myself through a precious elephant deity to understand that who I am is essentially good.
There are MANY people who are drawn to this deity, making him one of the most popular deities in all of Hinduism! That’s right, I’m talking about Ganesha.
The thing about being a freak, is that there is often something traumatic that happened in our lives to make us that way. Before Ganesha was the beautiful elephant man who we have all come to know and love today, he was just a strong, good-looking young man–a powerful, handsome god. One day, his mother, Parvati (an unbelievably beautiful goddess), asked Ganesha to guard her bathhouse so that nobody would come in while she was bathing. This was a bit tricky, because at the same time, she sorta-kinda summoned Ganesha’s dad, Shiva (one of the most POWERFUL gods — he’s blue and amazing), whom Ganesha had never met before. Parvati might have wanted to make Shiva a little bit jealous… just for a second! Because, like I said before, Ganesha was a good-looking young man! Ganesha, of course, didn’t back down to Shiva. Shiva, who didn’t know he had a son, decided to cut off the gorgeous young man’s head for not letting him enter his own house. Well, you can imagine how distraught Parvati was when she realized that her baby’s daddy had just cut off his own kid’s head (now THAT is mercury in retrograde)! After finding out that Ganesha was his son, Shiva decided he would find him a new head, which he took from a devoted elephant demon (another long story), and then placed the elephant head back on the young man’s body.
I have never had my head cut off, but I have gone through difficult experiences that have helped me become the freak that I am today. We go through metaphoric beheading throughout our lives, which is why it is said that everything and everyone in this life is your teacher. Actually, it is a good thing to be metaphorically beheaded, because YOU are still alive and what you THOUGHT you were (your ego) is actually now separated and gone from yourself.
My beheading experience happened when I participated in a ‘direct action’ against the Iraq war in 2004. I thought that it would be like any other protest, where you go, chant, meet people and then go home. But when I showed up, I saw people getting beaten with batons and sprayed with pepper spray for no reason at all. I was so outraged, I decided to stand in front of the front lines (and not just “supportively” watch from the side lines). Right before the cop hit me, I felt like I was doing the most courageous thing I had ever done in my life. Before I knew it, I was injured, arrested and charged with a gross misdemeanor. I spun into shock, depression and deep paranoia. For several years, I forgot who I was, and I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t comprehend who I had been BEFORE experiencing that pain. It wasn’t until I found meditation, and then my yoga practice, that I would begin to regain memories of myself — bodily, mental and emotional — from when I had been genuinely happy.
It is not only okay to have experiences that transform us–it’s profound! It is important that we don’t cling to the different identities, but it is wonderful for us to be different from each other, our families, and our culture. It’s a gift to be able to articulate our manifestation as it is. You and I and we will never be again. There is only one moment in time where we get to shine. We get to wave our flag — not to separate ourselves or to make ourselves inferior or superior to others, but to live with a lust for our own particular, peculiar lives! Ganesha would want us to. He wants you to be you! And so do I!
Patsy has been in love with meditation and yoga at Laughing Lotus SF since 2009. She completed Yoga School at Laughing Lotus in the Fall of 2010. Having a beginner’s mind is particularly important to her on and off of the mat. She loves to paint, teach yoga, write, and surround herself with her Laughing Lotus community!
Laughing Lotus Yoga Center San Francisco 