THE LAKE, THE MIRROR, AND THE 4 TEETH I NO LONGER HAVE

I have believed I am not this body for years. Then the dentist gave me a way to find out.

Hi dear one,

A few days ago, I had four teeth removed, FOUR! All in a row, upper jaw. When I smile, the real smile, the one that arrives before I can manage it, there is a black space where teeth used to be.
I will have new ones eventually, when the bone is ready. But the body does not rush, and I have to wait five months before anything new can go in. So this is my smile now. Five months of it.

And I have decided, somewhere between the dentist chair and a few days into being toothless, to treat it as a test to grow my spiritual muscles and grounding myself more in not being attached to the body.
Because here is the teaching I have carried for years, long before any of this. Nalanieji my beautiful spiritual teacher gave it to me, and it runs back through the whole lineage she stands in.

I am not this body. I am not this mind. Immortal Self I am.

On a still morning and after a peaceful meditation, I believe this completely. Not as a borrowed idea, but as something I have actually touched. The part of me looking out through these eyes is not the eyes. It is the one who sees.

The Sanskrit word my teacher uses is atman, the true Self. And the whole point of the practice, the very second thread Patanjali ties in the entire text, chitta vritti nirodha, is to still the movements of the mind so that this Seer can rest in its own nature.
Sri Swami Satchidananda explains this with such warmth in his commentary on the Sutras. He talks about the mind as a lake. When the water is whipped up into ripples and waves, you cannot see the bottom, and you cannot even see your own reflection clearly. But let the lake settle, let it go still, and the whole thing becomes transparent. You see right down to the depths. You see your true face.

A vritti is one of those ripples. A movement of the mind. And Patanjali is almost cheeky about it. In one short line he says when the lake is calm, the Seer rests as itself. In the very next line he says, and the rest of the time, you mistake yourself for the ripples. You become the wave instead of the water.
Which is exactly what is happening to me in the bathroom mirror at the moment.
Because the thought arrived, fast and loud and very sure of itself.

You look terrible.

You cannot let anyone see this. 😒

Stay home until it is fixed.

And for a moment I was that thought. I was the ripple. I forgot entirely that I am the lake.

I was scared before they got pulled out, in pain after, the body in shock from the extraction and very, very sad about the whole experience. I needed to feel all of that, but not stay there.
Here is the part I want to write about honestly.

The distance between knowing a teaching and living it is enormous.

And missing 4 teeth will measure that distance for you with great precision, for me anyway. I can sit in meditation and dissolve into something vast and quiet, and twenty minutes later catch the gap and actually feel the cool air on my gums where its empty. My stomach drops and my mind runs its inherited programming. Both happen on the same morning.

Patanjali has a name for the deeper trick underneath all this. He calls it asmita. It is one of the five afflictions, and Satchidananda unpacks it so simply. Asmita is when the Seer confuses itself with the instrument it is looking through. When the awareness behind the eyes decides it is the body, is the face, is the smile. The camera mistaking itself for the photograph.

And that is the real conditioning, isn’t it. Not vanity exactly, or not only vanity. It’s something far older. The face was always our passport. It’s how we are received, how we are read, how we belong. That program sits below thought. I did not choose it. I inherited it from every ancestor whose survival depended on the tribe liking their face. Take four teeth, leave a dark gap, and that ancient code lights up the whole control panel. The face must look right. The face is me.

So now I get to find out whether my practice is holding me, or if it’s just a nice idea I keep on a shelf for calm days.
Right now, the training ground is my own home. I am not out in the world yet. I am practicing this new smile at home, with the people who have loved me through far worse than a gap, and I notice my hand keeps drifting up to cover my mouth on its own, like a small animal protecting itself. I let it. Then I notice it. Then I lower the hand, not in triumph just as practice. Just as nirodha, the gentle settling of the ripple, again and again, the way you would calm a restless child rather than shout at it.

And I want to be precise about what the teaching does and does not mean, because this is where a lot of spiritual talk goes soft and useless.

I am not this body does not mean I float above the gap, untouched and beyond it all. That would be a lie, and you would feel the lie. What it does is loosen the grip. It slides a sliver of space between there is a gap in my mouth, which is a fact, and therefore I am less and must hide, which is only a ripple telling a story. The fact is real. The shame is optional. I get to decide whether a dental situation sets the size of my life for the next five months.

The old teachers were very clear about this. I am not this body, the body is my instrument while I am here, so I will care for it. Satchidananda was firm on this. The body is the temple. You do not worship it, but you do not let it fall down either. Non attachment is not neglect.

So no, I am not going to spend five months smiling with my lips sealed and call it acceptance. The implants are coming. This too shall pass is not a comfort I am whispering to myself. It is simply true. The bone is healing on its own schedule and the new teeth have a season.

That, to me, is the grown-up version of the whole thing. You hold both hands open. One hand says, I am the Seer, the atman, the still water, and that has never had a single tooth and has never lost one. The other hand says, and I will tend this temple kindly until it is mended. Neither hand cancels the other. The fear wanted me to grab one and hide behind it. The practice is in holding both, loosely, at the same time.

So this is the little test I have been handed. Five months, one big gap, one mirror, and a question I cannot fake my way out of. How still is the lake, really, when the wind picks up. How much do I actually rest as the one who sees, and how easily do I still mistake myself for the ripple.

I don’t have a success answer yet. Its week one. Most days I am somewhere in the middle, settling the water, watching the hand rise and lowering it again. But I know which one I am, even on the mornings I forget. I am not the gap. I am not the thought about the gap. I am the quiet thing watching all of it from a place that no dentist will ever touch.

Five months. Let the lake go still. I am still here, entirely intact, behind a smile that is simply under repair.

Thank you for being here and letting me rant on about the challenge I’m going through.

Until next time, stay grateful and curious.

Much love and joy,

Kim