What's in a name

My parents gave me the name Mary, which I love.  Haven't met many Mary's, even though Mary is a poster child for common names.  So it is distinctive.  The associations with the divine mother and all of her magic and love appeal as a sacred cloaking.  I am humbled to share such an awesome name, and I imagine a dose of divinity flowing my way like a blessing every time someone calls me by my given name.  My last name is Green, a color associated with the heart chakra. So Mary plus Green equals some pretty serious mother energy and love.  So I'll take it!  But I will never be it.

I've had many monikers in my lifetime.  As a Chinese major in college I was called Feng Mei Li, a classical Mandarin name bestowed by my Chinese professor.  It means "beautiful plum blossom." Professor Pease explained that the plum tree sprouts the heartiest flower out there.  Plum blossoms are the first brave blooms to appear after the winter, often on snow-covered limbs.  Cool!  Beauty AND strength and fortitude...I'll take it!  But I will never be it.

In the Kundalini yoga tradition we are often given spiritual names based on the tantric numerology of our birth date.  In the nadh of the name is our highest calling, a destiny we can choose to claim through discipline and right-living.  What was in the stars for me?  I am blessed to be living as Dharamdyan Kaur. This name means that through the strength of my meditative mind ("dyan") I can always know God's will and stick to the path of righteousness ("dharam" or dharma).  All women are given the surname, Kaur, which means princess or lioness invoking our innate grace and power.  So my name means "princess or lioness of God who meditatively and steadfastly holds to the path of righteousness." Wow.  I'll take it.  And I strive to manifest that destiny.

I've had as many nicknames, it seems, as I have friends and relatives.  I have been called Maresy-doats, Mer, Merary, Mer-na, Moo, Kute, June, Beverly, MFG, marygreen, DD (short for Dharamdyan!) and Mom-mom.  Each name is an affectionate bond, filed with laughter, stories and history.  I accept each name and bond with gratitude, but I am none of those names.

With respect to names, I often tell the yoga students I teach that before they had a name, before they were Mark or Eva or Kate, they were sat nam.  Sat is "truth" and nam is "identity" or "name."  So truth is our collective identity.  And if we are all truth, then we are all one.  I once met an amazing man who recounted a near-death experience.  He described the world after life as pure truth.  "In heaven you breathe the truth," he said with assurance. And he wasn't even from the Kundalini Yoga tradition.  I guess all traditions boil down to truth, and we seek that truth through whatever practice feels like home. 

So sat nam.  Breathe in and mentally vibrate "sat," affirming the truth with each life-giving inhalation.  And exhale "nam," remembering your eternal identity with every breath.  I'll take it.  I am it.  We are it.

Truth off the mat...

I am a yogi who works at the quintessential U.S. multi-national company.  I don't know how I happened into a career in finance, but a yoga mentor once told me it must be part of my destiny since I've been at it for almost 20 years.

Year after year, I have felt like a fish out of water--a creative, spiritual type amid a mass of gray suits.  A chubby pink crayon in a box of number two pencils.  I've walked the canyons of Wall Street and meditated at the Himalayan foothills in India within the same month.  Instead of being bothered by the friction and incongruity of it all, I decided to embrace it, and bring my real self to work.  I set up a little altar with Ganesha and Yogi Bhajan (master of Kundalini Yoga) quotes underneath the Bloomberg screen.  I am off the mat and into the board room, teaching my colleagues to breathe as we go through some tough days in the office.

Several of my teachers studied with Yogi Bhajan for many years.  One told me that Yogiji didn't particularly wish to spend the most vibrant years of his career in the U.S.A., away from his native India.  But he felt his mission was here.  He arrived on the scene in the late '60s and happened upon a population of souls in pain who increasingly sought refuge in substances and the material world.  He wished to share a technology that brought them home to themselves.  Teaching each soul that it is complete, perfect and joyful in and of itself (or as he put it, "bountiful, beautiful and blissful").  This was his mission: to birth a generation out of pain and into the present, and to create teachers of this yogic technology to continue his work.  He, too, was a fish out of water (and certainly looked the part, wearing flowing white garb and a turban to match!).

While my ego resists the idea of a mainstream career, I feel my mission is in the corporate world.  Each day I try to uplift my team, my organization and my company with my presence and my work.  I am in the world trying to make it a better, more graceful place.  And as a sweet payoff, I have the honor of being a mother (the most sacred work of all) and teaching Kundalini Yoga (my joy and saving grace).

The mantra "Sat nam" means that the truth is my identity.  Kundalini Yoga teaches that chanting this mantra awakens the soul and delivers one's destiny.  I look forward to sharing the experiences and insights of a yoga teacher both on and off the mat--reconciling the spiritual mission with the human condition.  For as a spirit having a human experience, it is all one.