Meant To Be- or Not To Be?

I had an interesting, slightly challenging and potentially awkward experience today. Yesterday, I received an email from Russill Paul- a teacher of voice, raga, Sanskrit, mantra, and the intersection of all of these as a spiritual practice. The email began “Would you like to be a fly on the wall while I work with students on mantra and devotional singing? My answer was, Yes- absolutely! I then received an email asking what my specific interest was since this was his core group of students. I was asked basically to participate in some way so it wouldn’t just be weird for me to be there observing. So apparently I was not to just be a fly on the wall!

As soon as the session began it was evident that indeed these were very advanced students, some clearly professional musicians who had also been studying ragas for some time, some with beautiful Sanskrit pronunciation… I felt like an interloper. The beauty of Zoom however, was that I was able to sing along as they practiced with no one hearing me. I have been struggling with my voice for a long time, beginning after I had a severe respiratory infection in 2009. I “lost” part of my range and also developed a strong vibrato and singing has become a very sad event for me at times, as it was something I had previously found so much joy in.

I felt like in the course of the session I had a breakthrough- literally, at a certain point my voice broke through. I was actually in a certain amount dread before the session due to my self-consciousness and sadness over the loss of my voice and had spent much of the morning in tears, trying to decide whether I should even bother- but for whatever reason, I had received that email and had made a commitment to be there- so I showed up in spite of my doubts. I’m not sure if the email that was sent to me was an accident, since it became apparent that it was for a close circle of his students- but it turned out to be a happy accident for me, whatever the reason was.

After the session I spent the entire afternoon practicing a chant with my harmonium. So, whether I was “meant” to be there or not, I came away feeling inspired and motivated to go deeper in my practice, despite some of the awkwardness of the initial situation.