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# A Love Letter to My Teachers
- URL: https://the-stardust-journal-press.ghost.io/a-love-letter-to-my-teachers/
- Published: 2025-10-10T15:13:23.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-01T16:50:49.000Z
- Author: Daniel Rutberg
- Tags: poetry, gratitude, meditation, Teachers, yoga, #Migrated-1782924600586, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-01 12:50

It’s morning. The radiators are making their gentle symphony for the first time this fall. The day will be filled with writing, learning my piece for my grandson's important day, bits of work in the morning, acupuncture and food shopping in the afternoon. As usual, my mind is a jumble. I keep thinking about the love I feel for my meditation and yoga teachers — the quiet gratitude for how they guide us toward the simple act of settling.

In their company,  
the noise begins to fade,  
and out of the tumble of thoughts  
a few themes emerge that ask for focus.

The practice is not to erase thought,  
but to observe its dance  
to step back and witness  
the mind’s machinations from a distance.

To follow the breath  
And observe the runaway sleigh ride  
down the mountains of narratives  
we hold dear,

Then on the inbreath  
to return to the mountaintop  
and see more clearly:  
the now,  
this second, unlike any other  
the singularity of this moment

In that instant comes the realization  
The mind at rest and the consciousness awoken  
I am the banks of the river  
The feeling is both electric and humbling  
the clarity, the flash of awe  
that everything is interconnected:

All time flows between its shores  
from the first tremor of the Big Bang,  
to the quiver of my first breath of life  
at my mother’s breast  
through the loves and losses  
within the microcosm of my lifetime,  
to my grandson standing at the Bima  
in a few short days at his Bar Mitzvah.

As my eyes open  
Tears form at the fullness of the feeling  
that for the first time in this life’s memory  
that all is as it should be.

The idea forms that perhaps  
I have been bent and shaped,  
formed, tumbled and polished  
by the wisdom of the cosmos  
to be useful in some way

Perhaps only through these words  
To be a signpost  
To the next step  
In the eightfold path

With heart/mind overflowing  
I bow to honor each of you  
And whisper words of gratitude  
For the sacred spaces  
the ancient wisdom and skillful guidance  
you cull from the daily struggles  
of a soul’s journey in a human’s form.