Dharma Glimpse by Helen
For as long as I can remember there has always been a part of me that has believed I am ‘missing’ something. That everyone else is walking around, going about there day fully actualised and safe in the knowledge that they are fully intact, with everything they need to proceed. But here I am with a nagging suspicion that I was in the canteen when the divine was handing some integral part out (that would track). I don’t know what part that would be of course, its intangible, but its some knowledge that isn’t present.
I know I’m not alone in this thought. I’ve had many conversations over the years with various people describing a similar feeling. Some describing it as feeling that at a certain age some invisible piece of themselves would simply appear and everything would make complete sense.
I know that, from a religious or philosophical perspective I’m talking about a question which has plagued great thinkers for millennia; the perceived separation between oneself and everyone and everything else. Heck I’m in a Buddhist temple, wasn’t the whole journey of his life’s work…
Anyway I digress. Sometimes the latent feeling lays dormant and at others it rears up to visceral levels which I can best label as ‘imposter syndrome’.
There are moment however when the divine mother plays a startlingly simple trick on me, a glitch in the matrix occurs, usually to hilarious effect. One such moment occurred this week at the gym.
I sat across from a fellow gym goer and noticed them on a piece of equipment Ive been perplexed by for months. It’s a leg and glute machine with a peddle on one side which the user pushes backwards to create tension in the upper leg muscles. But the thing is it makes no sense. Everyone knows that you have to work both limbs on an exercise or you will be a wonky donkey, right? So how can this machine work since its only possible to peddle on one side because of how its oriented.
I have consoled myself that this must just be science I done understand and its somehow cleverly working both sides.
So you can imagine my amazement when, without a second thought, this fellow gym user… flipped the peddle over…
Silly I know but it brought my heart a smile and warmth to know. I’m not crazy, or missing anything. I just didn’t know the peddle flipped over…
Namo Amida Bu
Leave a Reply