LY #34: "Instant Karma's Gonna Get You..."

from Spiritual-knowledge.net

But it no longer knocks me off my feet.

The second or third hour into class this morning I told a student, "You are karma.  You are my karma."

Why?  Let's look at the behavior.

From the very beginning of the class last night he called attention to himself with his loud voice and occasional mild challenges to classroom activities.  He offered a funny response at every opportunity.  He drew attention to himself as the different student who usually had something to say that could mildly undercut the focus of the current discussion.  He talked about himself as "bad at teams" and "a troublemaker."

Yet he also did the work, both on his own and with his team.  He came up a couple of times to clarify his choices with me and once to apologize for using bad language (that I hadn't heard and really didn't care about).  And even though he joked and challenged and called attention to himself, he did none of it with a dark spirit.  He was friendly and open and by making himself a site of class attention, he acted as a lightning rod and ground for any negative tension in the class. 

Nevertheless, his loudness and regular challenge to my authority were tiring, physically and psychically.  I needed to welcome in- and deflect out- all this energy at the same time.

And that's karma.  He was ME at his age.  When I get this kind of student I see it as part of the pay-off on a karmic debt accumulated over 8 years of grade school, 4 years of high school, 4 years of undergraduate work, and 5 years of graduate school.  I tested my teachers.  I called attention to myself.  I was loud and invited attention. I required a lot of response. I challenged teachers who were probably struggling to spread their attention out equally and not have it all pulled to  one magnetic spot in the classroom.  When I get "me" in the classroom I realize how much strength it took to manage that much energy bursting from one person in a group of thirty.  It must have made them tired.

But these karmic interventions also let me understand that it wasn't necessarily a "bad" tired.  By seeing myself in these others, even the very masculine others (today's with a full dark beard), I see that I may have contributed a spark of energy to those fifth grade, high school and university classes.

So as karma unfolds its wisdom about what a discomfort in the derriere (torment in the tookus, cramp in the keister) I could be as a student it's also teaches me that said pedagogical pain was accompanied by class-enlightening sparkle and fire.