Tags
Ahimsa, casualties, collateral damage, destruction, hostages, Human rights, Patanjali, peace, self-acceptance, self-hatred, Violence, warfare, Yamas
Did you know the majority of people on planet Earth are at war?
It’s true.
But it’s a war with no name. And it’s silent and sneaky. Very few people talk about it. There’s no protests, or political action to bring it to an end. But it takes plenty of hostages and casualties. It cuts a path of destruction on all seven continents. There’s no place it does not reach…
This my friends, is the Great War. The murderer of souls. The sniper of happiness. The assassin of freedom. The destroyer of self-acceptance.
That’s right. I’m talking about the collateral damage we drag through our lives. The absolutely violent thoughts and actions we take against ourselves every day. The unkind words. The self-neglect. The hyper-critical and unfair attitude we have about our actions and/or appearance. The public and/or private flagellation we suffer at our own hands.
Let’s not forget the way we pass our own misery on to the next generation so that it may flourish… through our actions, we show them how to be self-defeating and self-loathing. We teach them that that’s how life is for most people.
One of the worst fall outs of this war is the way we’re so willing to believe anything negative about ourselves at the drop of a hat, while being unable to accept a compliment or be proud of our achievements.
We are displaced people. Displaced in our sense of Self.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of it. Because all of this adds up to an unacceptable abuse of human rights.
Worse – most of these campaigns of self-hatred are conducted behind closed doors. Of course, some do make it out into the streets too, where we drink excessively or take drugs, or lay our self-disgust at the feet of others.
But almost everyone else is engaged in their own internal warfare. And so we try to relate the best we can, limping along, tending to our war as well as those belonging to the people we love.
And sometimes we mistake other people for combatants in our war. So, we take the fight externally and make them the enemy. At last, someone tangible to fight with – the driver of the car that cut you off, your lover, your friend, your parents, your boss, the rude waitress… and so on.
Appalling isn’t it? And yet, so very difficult to control. This war has agents everywhere!
The big question for me is this: How are we ever going to make peace with other people if we can’t even make peace with ourselves?
Y’know, Ahimsa (non-violence/non-injury) is the first of the five Yamas (restraints) of Patanjali’s system of yoga. The very first discipline to master, for developing consciousness on the path to enlightenment.
And yet, it seems to be one of the hardest things to do. We can sympathise with the trials of others. We give money and/or service to charities. We’ll give a guy on the street food or cash. We’ll help someone change a flat tyre.
But we can’t stop looking in the mirror and thinking about all the ways we are “deficient”. Can we?
And to win, we have to find a way to make peace with ourselves. Have to!
I’m still working on it. What about you?
~Svasti
Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness 
Yep, me too!
“…we’re so willing to believe anything negative about ourselves…while being unable to accept a compliment or be proud of our achievements.”
so so true!
I talked to my Buddhist teacher about this after I was fired by a yoga studio owner who believed lies about me told to her by some students (I blogged about it.) I asked him how people could say shit about other people and someone else just believes them without investigation.
He said, “let people say what they want to, you know the truth about yourself. people also told lies about the Buddha.”
made me feel so much better.
So true. And to me that’s a lot of what Yoga is all about–getting outside our selves (with a little “s”) and see our “Selves”, which is infinitely beyond all negativity about anything, but particularly ourselves.
It’s not a coincidence that the book that first inject Yoga into my consciousness was written by a psychotherapist turned Yogi, Stephen Cope. He would argue that it’s impossible to separate Yoga from psychology. They are working with the same matter and the same subject, just from very different traditions and angles.
Cope routinely refers to the early Yoga sages as the world’s first psychologists, the first true students of the mind. “Yoga and the Quest for the True Self” (http://bit.ly/Yo8Io) is as much a book about psychotherapy as it is about Yoga.
Dealing with the war within is a prerequisite to reaching higher blissful consciousness. The war can’t be papered over with Yoga technique or positive thinking. Yoga needs to be seen, as Cope sees it, as a powerful part of the therapeutic process.
Thanks for your candid right-on blog.
Bob Weisenberg
http://YogaDemystified.com
Very, very good post Svasti!
@Brooks – Right on! We need all the freedom fighters we can get! 😉
@Linda-Sama – Great quote about the Buddha. I wonder if the Buddha ever told lies about himself??
@Bob – Interesting comment. I get it, on one level. But then, as my guru has asked us many times… what if we had no personal psychology? What if our psychology was based at a community level? Would it mean the end to all of our “my, mine, me, I” thinking, which is what plagues so many people? He even goes so far as to suggest that there’s some places in the world where you can still observe this in action, even today.
Thing is, if you’re not just thinking about yourself and your needs, but the needs of your community, then how could you strike another person? Or think so poorly of yourself that you would rather die?
He argues that ultimately, enlightenment isn’t something you do as a “my, mine, me, I” person. That we have to drop our selfishness (it’s all about me) before we can approach enlightenment. Because how can we see the world as non-dual if we see ourselves as seperate from others?
But I get what you’re saying and it’s true, while we have a personal psychology, then yes, we need to play by those rules. And we do need to, as the very first step on the road, learn to make peace with ourselves.
I haven’t read any Cope yet. But I know many of my fellow bloggers have, and I’ll check out his writings at some point along the way. 🙂
@tricia – Thank you! I hope you’re doing well!
Svasti. Good points.
Clearly personal psychology is not a new or a Western phenomenon. Otherwise why would the ancient Yoga Sages be writing about ending personal suffering, and prescribing such a range of personal techniques for doing so?
But I agree with you that learning to step decisively outside ourselves in one way or another, and seeing ourselves as being part of the wonder of the universe as opposed to one of its aberrations, is the ultimate key to happiness.
One person might do it by selfless giving. Another might do it through meditation. Many people do it through religion. I might do it by contemplating the Upanishads. Etc. It just that we may need some time and some additional techniques to overcome our accumulated brain chemistry, which is very powerful in its own right.
Bob Weisenberg
http://YogaDemystified.com
@Bob – Definitely suffering, or personal psychology is not new or just Western. For certain. That said, some cultures still function with a greater sense of community than we Westerners do. And yes, we all get to choose our path up the mountain (so to speak). Its actually important that we choose what works best for us.
Certainly, we need help along the way because we are living in a time when its very tough to find the right guidance (from people who’ve traversed the paths before us). And there’s nothing wrong with that. Hence, I am a yogini who has used yoga, meditation and trauma therapy to heal a very nasty fracture in my sense of self/Self. I don’t sneer at therapy because I am a yogini. Instead, I embrace it because its what I need.
and the sociologist in me says- how does our very culture and society perpetuate these feelings of self-hatred?
great post 🙂
@EcoYogini – Ah, society is made of up individuals at war with themselves, and then extending their personal war to other people. And this kind of war is propogated in the same way that alcoholism, physical/verbal (etc) abuse is… by osmisis. And because we think this is a “normal” way of interacting with ourselves and others… 🙂
By the way Svasti, if you’re interested in Cope’s “Yoga and the Quest for the True Self” and would like to see a Cliff Notes version first, that’s pretty much what the core essay, “The Six Big Points” of my website is.
Bob
@Bob – I’ve read it once before, but will take another look!
Sometimes I’m hesitant to recommend Cope because it’s very heavy into psychoanalysis and relating Yoga to Jung and Freud and everything else in Western psychology. He’ll be telling an ancient Vedic legend on one page and psychoanalysing his Kripalu friends or Amrit Desai on the next.
For me this was one of its highlights,and I’m pretty sure you would love it, too.
Bob
@Bob – I’m sure I will! Its one of the many books on my Amazon wishlist! I stockpile future reads there til I go on another Amazon shopping binge! 😉
That’s exactly what I do, if I don’t happen to wander into a bookstore first and walk out with an armful.
Bob
I think that war is life. It depends on our concept of war.
love
henry
Svasti, my friend–
The struggle for inner peace/serenity has been my greatest challenge because it is that self-anger/self-defeat/self-hatred that keeps us from becoming the person we deserve to be. Sometimes it can be so bad that it really does defeat us, as it did with me for so many years, during my heroin addiction. Others are so wrought up with it all that they come to believe they can no longer live in the world so they commit suicide. It IS a struggle but I know from my own experience that we can find that inner peace–although it is not something that you ‘find’ and keep without struggle. For anyone who has inner pain, you always have to strive toward inner peace, to keep working–but I am convinced that if you do, you can live a mostly tranquil life.
Another great message, Svasti–
Melinda
@soulMerlin – Henry, I think this is our general experience of life. BUT I don’t think that’s how it has to be. Just what we as a society generally allows to happen… 😉
@Melinda – I believe we can learn to live a tranquil life, full stop. Not just a *mostly* tranquil life. I think that last bit of peace takes a little while to reach. And much more hard work! Because I think its the self-judgement we hold onto that keeps us in the *mostly* tranquil place. In the end, we really do need to learn to accept and forgive ourselves more than anyone else. 🙂
I can be incredibly mean to myself and utterly believe that I DESERVE it!
And as we live in a world where it seems to me that the bitchy comment and the snide put down are celebrated and applauded and eagerly looked forward to, that’s no wonder. For some reason the critical voice has been widely accepted as righteous. Those cruel nasty voices are either directed inwards or outwards and I sometimes wonder what the more acid tongued individuals you come across are doing to themselves inside. I know sometimes I can give myself a good hard mental beating and I wonder if I’m actually doing it so that no-one else can get a punch in.
I’ve been trying hard to replace that critical internal voice with loving kindness, but after a lifetime of unconsciously honing it it’s quite a struggle. You are right to call it a war.