My beautiful elephant head

Work with what we are given and make it beautiful

I just came from Patrick Montgomery‘s Friday evening yoga class at the North Boulder Rec Center. It was extremely inspiring and also very moving. Tonight he told the story of Ganapati (Ganesh), the elephant-headed boy/god of Hindu mythology. I had heard and read this story before, but never in the way that it was just presented. Tonight it was interwoven with the symbolic meaning that this story is about each of us, in some way, and offered as one of the greatest lessons Tantric philosophy has to offer us. This lesson is to work with what we are given and make it beautiful.

Ugly duckling / elephant head

Each of us has our own version of an elephant head that we have to deal with in our life. But the lesson teaches not that we must overcome it as if it were some kind of handicap, but rather to embrace it as an essential part of what makes us a unique, beautiful and shining being.

This theme is one that touches my heart deeply. I must now sit with my own elephant head, and learn to love it.