![]() I was in love with my hip length jattas/extensions. I loved how they defined me. I loved looking like Swamiji. I loved following Guru Vak. I loved doing my best to live as fully as a Hindu Yogini as possible. I loved knowing that they were supporting me in my journey by containing energy and clearing the higher chakras. I loved meeting the people who were drawn to them and talking about them. When the first extension fell out after about year of having them, I was shocked and repulsed. Even though it was synthetic hair, I felt I was losing my hair. Over three years, more and more of the 36 extensions fell out, which is the maximum length of time for extensions to stay in. At first I was disappointed. At the end of the fourth year, I cut out the remaining extensions, happy to have chest length jattas and all my own hair. I fractured my elbow only a month after finally posting a blog about my jattas, fantasizing that I would have them until death. I had no idea how so much of the struggle connected with an unusable left arm would focus on my jattas. I went from loving them, to having a complicated relationship with them, to hating them. I was unable to care for them one-handed. I couldn't get them out of the way at night. I couldn't wash them. Leaning forward to eat, they would get in my food. They were getting yanked and pulled, caught by the velcro brace. But fighting with them at night was the final straw. I was waking up 5 or more times a night, needing to move my arm, which entailed needing to move my jattas out of the way also. If you've ever been pregnant, trying to turn with one arm is like trying to turn over in the ninth month. I would finally arrive in the new position only to feel my hair stuck under me, pulling on my scalp, and would have to start the process all over again.
I went to Facebook and posted a query. There was a lot of feedback boiling down to cut them, keep them. But I didn't see any in-between. I wasn't comfortable with keeping them as is or cutting them off. I started searching on-line for what others did in similar situations, and there were no role models or examples. After so many sleepless nights, self-judgement and hesitation, the urge came again to paint. Putting paint to paper, painting the struggle with the jattas, an aspect of Kali emerged, a more compassionate image that mirrored me. I didn't want to cut them out of hatred. I didn't want to take out my anger and struggle on the jattas, an extension of Swamiji. I didn't want to make this decision while in depression. So I was waiting for clarity. A friend made a suggestion. Going deeper in visualizing what I wanted instead of what I didn't want, I realized that what I was struggling with, and what I wanted, was to have a family or community to physically support and help me with the care of them. I started realizing there were other options; I could cut them shorter, cut them all but a few, untangle some and keep the rest, and that it didn't have to be all or nothing. I started visual zing long wavy hair in the water, swirling and swimming. I visualized having blue hair. I dreamt of being in a jungle swinging from vines made of my jattas, but the jattas broke, no longer able to support me. The doubt and hesitation cleared and I decided to cut one jatta shorter and see where it led. The process was reminding me of our first year of living near the temple, when over and over i had to "follow my nose" with no examples, or maps to guide me. I told my daughter, who has supported my process with the jattas from the beginning, that I had decided to cut one, and she immediately joined me on a video call, creating the community I craved. For the next hour, as I cut most of the 36 jattas shorter, we talked about power, transitions, vulnerability and courage. I told her that twice I had found myself saying that I was afraid if I cut them I would lose everything. I took off fourteen inches, a length I could manage in my life right now. We laughed at how it was coming out, and she begged me not to leave a tail or three on top to make a bun. When I completed shortening 31 of the jattas, I realized how joyful I felt, how grateful I was in that hour. My daughter and I ended our call, and I propped the painting of the Compassionate Kali Mirroring Me beside Swamiji's murthy and did puja to Swamiji. I felt so much love and expansion happening in my inner space. I saw I had made a powerful decision, fueled by surrender, vulnerability, walking into the unknown. Trying to make the decision from what I knew, my past experience, had been full of fear, the outcome I feared was loss. My hair had become a protection, a security, a definition of me. In trying to make a decision based on fear and hatred, I could not see any future besides loss if I cut them. After puja I opened Living Enlightenment randomly and was shown this by Swamiji. "Surrendering to the Unknown" "The unknown can never be trapped with the known. The unknown can only be known by surrendering to it. Intelligence recognizes the mystery of the moment and surrenders to it joyfully. (Otherwise) you continuously remain with what is called 'fear of the unknown'. To the ego not knowing means being nothing." I couldn't believe it. This exactly summed up my fear about cutting my jattas, losing everything, being nothing. It is only with the support and courage of the community that I have created, my families, sangha, homeopathic and Ayurvedic support, allopathic support, and Intelligence gained from being willing to surrender to the unknown, that the mystery of my life is unfolding. In deepest gratitude. "She Moves On" by Paul Simon feels like it is describing the struggle between my analytical mind which tries to now the outcome based on the past and my more powerful, innocent intelligent self - Paramashivoham. This line sums it up, "...my storybook lover, you have underestimated my power, as you shortly will discover." www.youtube.com/watch?v=414FPXLWDVk Paul Simon "She Moves On"
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