I have started to go back to my satsang on Tuesdays.
Satsang: (Sanskrit: sat = true, sanga = company) sitting in the company of truth. A traditional activity in the Indian spiritual context, meaning "being with good/righteous companions." Satsang is a sitting together with an enlightened person who usually gives a short speech and then answers questions.
Any strength that I've shown through the last two years is directly linked to joining a satsang, at Anandi Anant, which B and I first started to do about 7 years ago. It felt amazing to be back there with some of the same people who have been gathering at Anadi's each week for this privilege for many years.
I hope to post some of the ideas from there in here over the coming weeks.
I love that fact that, with any sort of spiritual lesson or experience. wherever you are in your own life you can take some lesson which seems to suit you, or fit your current situation. All the other people in a satsang might take away some slightly different experience, based on their previous knowledge and their current life. We all can feel touched or inspired by our teacher and her words, but it will be slightly different for all of us.
For me, this week, Anadi's talk seemed to be mostly about going to work. It was about lots of other things too, but this was the element which most connected to me, for where I am now.
Anadi had a quotation on the board from Swami Vivekananda (to be fair she said it wasn't an exact quotation, but the gist of one which I think I only roughly copied) is was along these lines:
- "Our immediate work, the work at hand, if we complete it well: it increases and slowly raises our own capacity. We can be fortunate enough to get opportunities to do the most prestigious work for society and life itself."
Anadi developed this idea to say we can all increase our capacity to work, and to make good contribution to our society by doing what we do to the best of our ability. Rather like athletes who train hard to achieve more, we can do that with our own work. I also warmed to the idea that working to the best of my ability is pretigious work. This is true whatever sort of work you do.
Anadi also talked about how to deal with criticism at work, which is a big theme for teachers who often resent lesson observations and results reviews at this time of the year. She advised: "When you are criticised try to think how you can improve, how you can GAIN from the criticism." She went on to say, "Be careful not to claim that you have 'done your best' when you know you haven't really." I really recognised myself when she said "Criticism often rankles most when you feel it is justified." I know that I do this about comments in lesson observations, and I am going to try to give this up! I think it will be very positive to be more relaxed about reviews and critques and to use them creatively, as they are meant to be used, not as a reason to retreat into self-justification and excuses.
I was talking this over with Brigid later, and we usually do after a satsang and she added an anecdote that her Headteacher had used in a staff meeting at the start of term. He has been impressed with the success of both his own school and the British cycling team at the Olympics and had done some reading around about the team. Apparently the GB cycling team was offered a certain amount of cash to support 40-odd riders and they went back to the funding body and said: Thanks, we'll take the dosh, but use if for 20-odd riders cos we only want to work with people who have real medal potential, not with ppl who are going to come 4th to 8th."
Well that sounds very harsh, but it seems that they were basing this in research about the mental outlook of ppl who place 4th to 8th in a range of sports. When asked why they didn't achieve in the top three these people are far more likely to blame external factors and other issues rather than accept responsibility for their own performance.
This obviously paid off for the GB cycling team in the Olympics. They also used a psychologist as a big part of their training regime. It obviously meant that the cyclists were constantly in the presence of other riders who take repsonsibility for achieveing their own best, and don't hide behind other factors if they don't reach it and work on their mental strength as well as their physical strength.
Anyrate, I've gone far from the original satsang, but this is what I have learnt this week.
- I hope it helps
