012 - Mini Musings: Off the Pedestal
Welcome, friends. In today’s episode, I’m reflecting on the importance of taking our teachers and ourselves off the pedestal.
I talk about my experiences as a yoga teacher, the grief of realizing our gurus are fallible, and a lesson I heard from Elizabeth Lesser over 13 years ago— that we’re all just bozos on the bus.
Join me as we release our heroes and come back to ourselves, so we can embrace paradox and step into the whole story.
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Episode Transcript
[0:00] Music.
[0:07] Welcome, I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love.
[0:27] Music.
[0:38] I wasn't originally going to make an introduction to a mini-musing this mini-musing. They often speak for themselves. But I want to say that I'm using a phrase in this mini-musing that I heard from Elizabeth Lesser, I think, 15 years ago, 13, 15 years ago at the Omega Institute. The phrase is bozos, we're all just bozos on the bus. And when she used it, she used it with humor and love to kind of break the spell of what can be a pretty serious energy in the spiritual community or the self-help community.
And so when I say I met all these incredible people and I found out that we're all just bozos on the bus, or if I'm referring to teachers or teachers of teachers or anything, the phrase bozo for me is not indicative of...
[1:36] I don't even like to say this word, is not even indicative of calling somebody an idiot or finding out that they're a fraud. To me, it is simply saying that we all are human. We all have areas in our lives where we trip over our own feet. That the very thing we teach might at some time or some day be something we're still tumbling, stumbling over.
That we might be that unhealed healer. And it doesn't mean that the gifts that we have to share are not still worth sharing. So here, I just wanna be very clear that when that phrase is being used, it is not to then say, oh, and therefore that person was a fraud. More to say, oh, we are all on the same playing field. And the playing field is our humanity. So I walk a fine line in this podcast, I think, but I mean it with such love and humility and appreciation. And appreciation. Enjoy.
[2:45] Music.
[2:55] Welcome to Threshold Moments. Today, after talking about preparation and the last many musings, today I'm finding myself wanting to come on and be here somewhat unprepared with something that's stirring in me. In my last newsletter, I said, what do you and the Dalai Lama have in common? And the answer is that we're all just bozos on the bus.
[3:29] This is a line that I heard from Elizabeth Lesser when I was at an event held by Omega. She is a co-founder of Omega, which is one of the largest or maybe the largest adult learning centers for spirituality and wellbeing in the world, and at least in the country. What's most important to me is that as she was up on stage sharing this theory, it came from years of experience, it came from years of hosting some of the most sought-after gurus and wellness advisors in the world at that time. I believe amongst those people were the Dalai Lama, Oprah, Deepak Chopra, and many of those that we look up to and that we strive to learn from and be more like.