Samskaras in samsara – part 2

Tags

Asana, Asatoma Sat Gamaya, Ayurveda, bandha, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dance, Deepak Chopra, duality, Karma, Krishna, Limitations, martial arts, Meditation, metaphysical, mula, non-dual reality, pranayama, psychoanalysis, Reality, Samsara, samskara, self-loathing, Shanti Path, Slim Calm Sexy, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati, Tara Stiles, Wake up, Yoga, yogic philosophy, Yogis

I didn’t take this photo, but I’ve driven past this statue of Arjuna in Bali. It’s magnificent!

[Read part 1 first]

Okay, so enough with the psychoanalysis of our western self-loathing mind-set for a moment.

How about we go beyond the physical, to the metaphysical for a bit? Yeah?

Okay, so let’s take a tiny peek at some of the subtleties of yogic philosophy.

Note #1: I’m going to do my best to explain these rather complex concepts to you as passed down from my wonderful teachers. Of course, my understanding is still limited and imperfect but hey… I’ll give it a go. Also, there’s only so much I can pack into a single blog post!

Note #2: This is another long post. Try to hang in there!!

Samsara is considered to be this world of duality – the place where the universe can experience its Self as Other than its Self. ‘Nuff said about that for now…

And samskaras are deeply embedded patterns of energy within collective energy forms that manifest as individual human beings. “Pattern” being the key word here – a pattern comes from actions being repeated over and over again. And of course, the more often a pattern is repeated, the harder it is to change it. Kinda like a train running on the only tracks it’s got.

Samskara is a very peculiar thing. It is the library within a DNA molecule, containing everything that we have imbibed. One DNA molecule contains the total information of all of the libraries in the world combined. Samskaras are like that too. Samskaras are the inputs of volumes and volumes of books which we carry within us and which have been accumulating over millions of years. When these samskaras come to the surface of the mind, they are very powerful.
~From Yoga Darshan, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati

A samskara then, is a thought or activity that’s become part of how the world appears to us. It can define our preferences, personality, understanding of other people and things. And with those definitions come limitations – what is subjectively true and what is not. However, limitations aren’t actually “bad”, not in the least.

In fact, they are key to our ability to exist in as humans where we all appear as separate entities, cut off from source/the universe/god etc. So, samskaras can be considered to be both useful (i.e. they comprise and make possible our limited view of the world) and problematic (when we can’t discriminate between our limited view and a wider view).

Still with me?

Limitations are a naturally occurring construct of this world and universe. They are part of how we function, our identity, why we have certain opinions and emotions and ideas. Our samskaras interact with karma (another much-maligned and misunderstood yogic concept) and form a filter through which we view “reality”. As we know, reality at this level is different for everyone, and far from the non-dual view the rishis and wisdom masters speak of. Hence, our diversity of opinions!

However, one of the true goals of yoga and serious yogis is to free ourselves from the limitations of the dual world, while simultaneously existing in both the dual and the non-dual. In fact, we can’t exist in the non-dual without duality, because then it wouldn’t be a non-dual reality – for the non-dual to be truly non-dual, it also has to encompass duality (hope that makes sense!).

Asatoma Sat Gamaya
Lead me from the unreal to the Real

Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Lead me from the darkness to the Light

~Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

And so we yogis work to free ourselves from limited views through an intimate understanding of, and connection to our mind and body. The path to achieving this can include: asana, pranayama, mula, bandha, meditation, martial arts, dance, Ayurveda and so on. Usually, more than one of these methods is required to develop our mind-body awareness. Ultimately this MUST include long and deep hours of meditation (as opposed to say, fifteen minutes a day).

Freeing ourselves from limited views does not mean however, denying our anger or any other emotion. We need to go fully into the experience of being a human being in order to understand and liberate ourselves from the suffering of samsara. Because, how can you possibly be free of what you don’t understand?

As such, suppressing emotions or decrying other people’s anger as “un-yogic” is doing little more than keeping you stuck on those same train tracks, going around and around and around… and the more circuits of the train track you make, the harder it is to change. Get it?

It is tricky, because on the one hand we are here on this planet that exists in duality, and so we play by the rules of this world where interactions with people, our emotional states and experiences DO matter. But then, as we learn to drop into non-duality more and more (it comes in flashes or waves), we begin to see how much none of it really matters in the end. And things start to change as we begin to increasingly experience non-duality as our actual reality.

It can be both incredibly liberating and stupendously confusing at the same time…

And yet. We MUST learn to see the real from the unreal. This for me, is what makes the false and harmful messages about body image (burn that bra fat, minimise those wider-than-desired hips) so completely alarming.

Because it is being condoned not just by Tara Stiles (who, as a yogi with connections to Deepak Chopra should bloody well know better), but by so many other people involved in yoga.

The outcry in return seems to be all “don’t hate on Tara”, “don’t hate on anything we want to define as yoga” and “you people who are complaining are just simply un-yogic”.

BUT all of the folks in that camp – including Tara – are missing the glaringly obvious point here:

Yoga is about liberation from samskaras and the human condition of suffering. NOT about playing into and re-enforcing those patterns for ourselves and others. NOT about continuing to make people think there is something wrong about their physical appearance that needs to be fixed – this is a mass personal and cultural samskara and one that’s deeply embedded!!

This isn’t a personal attack on Tara or anyone else, but as my own Guru would say: WHERE IS YOUR MIND??

My criticism comes from asking: what kind of yogi supports messages that invoke deep-seated insecurities and self-esteem issues of others? From generating and confirming samskaras as real instead of limited thinking that one can learn to revoke?

This is not good work. And it is not yogic in the least. In fact, those in the yoga community who buy into this, saying that it’s all okay, are demonstrating minds that are still deeply embedded in their own samskaras, whatever they might be. Some things are NOT okay, especially coming from yogis.

Seriously, anyone who thinks Tara Stiles’ “Slim Calm Sexy” yoga is an okay way to market yoga to the uninitiated masses is not engaging in enough discernment or discriminate thinking. And those uninitiated masses? They probably spend most of their time feeling deeply unhappy and thinking self-loathing thoughts anyway, and don’t NEED anyone else to point it out to them!

Even as Tara et all are claiming “it doesn’t matter how people come to yoga” – and I’ll admit that’s generally true – in some ways it actually DOES. Because by pressing the self-esteem/physical appearance buttons you’re embedding those samskaras just a little more deeply than before and messing with someone’s appreciation of what yoga is all about. Who knows how much extra work – conscious and sub-consciously – will be involved in undoing all of that?

Basically, the Tara Stiles school of yoga marketing is unhealthy and unethical.

And as another teacher I’ve studied with would put it… WAKE UP!!

Or as I’d put it… WAKE (THE FUCK) UP!!

This is not a popularity contest where we have to be friends with everyone and accept everything that’s said about yoga, simply because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

SO WAKE UP!!

Remember, Krishna was a warrior and he worked very hard to make Arjuna fight a battle. It’s not always about having the most friends, but about cutting through the crap and seeing clearly.

Lead me from the unreal to the freaking real, already!

~Svasti

If the world is closing in on you…

Tags

bare bones, Depression, filthy dirty lies, Freedom, harder to breathe, Intimacy, loving kindness, Mirror of Recrimination, own worst critic, personas, pigeon holes, post-it notes, private tropical beach, Samsara, strained, stressed, wicked misdirections, Yoga

–This post grew out of a comment on someone else’s blog but has since expanded quite a bit!–

If you’re unbelievably stressed and strained, or depressed, or sad or terrified or generally unhappy or numb… or if the world is closing in on you, weighing ever more heavily across your neck and shoulders, if the air around you is getting thicker or thinner and it’s getting harder and harder to breathe or if you’re not quite sure how you’re going to get to tomorrow, then this post is for you.

Because I’ve been most of these things, and more than once. And I’m likely to experience them again, too. So I get it, I’m coming from a place of solidarity, from love, from wanting to share what works. From the inside out because seeing from the outside in is never the same.

This is for you. For all of you out there dealing with the human condition of suffering, just like me.

With much love…

****************

Its times like this make me want to strip it all back, right down to the bare bones. Down to my own naked self, with no job titles or brand labels or clothing or hair styles or any other way for people to judge me. Especially not myself because like many people, I am my own worst and harshest critic.

And it’s these times too, when we should stay away from mirrors which in many respects only reflect back at us those things we tell ourselves are true, whether real or imagined, positive or negative. Most of those things are filthy dirty lies but we’ve convinced our Self they are true and usually these are soul destroying negatives and wicked misdirections that chip away at who we think we are until we feel like nothing more than a pock-marked old statue, all crumbly and not quite right anymore.

And when we feel like this, when we lose sight of what is really real and who we really are because we’ve been juggling and tap dancing and cart-wheeling for so long now, and singing so many different songs and to all kinds of audiences… I think what we really need is to just drop it all and right now already!

Okay, maybe not literally as in running off to a simple bamboo hut on a private tropical beach (although that does sound nice, doesn’t it?), but we do at the very least have to stop looking in the mirror for a while. Stop comparing. Stop analysing and stop trying to live up to what we think we should be. Or what we think others think we should be. Shed all our requirements and get back to just Being and Doing. A human-being. Being a human. Just being. Not projecting. Not jumping through hoops. Not doing things because “what will [insert name] think?”

Just being… because labels and roles and expectation lead to a loss of intimacy with our Self, specifically with our own breath and body. And by intimacy I mean closeness, sensitivity, loving kindness – for yourself. Respect – for yourself. Your self-worth levels must be replenished until they’re full to over-flowing with juicy sweetness, enjoyment and love for yourself first.

Because if you don’t let yourself have that and experience life in that way, then you’re running on empty and giving out to others becomes a constant strain and worse, it can make you sick.

You see, all of our requirements for living and our requirements for other people are just streaks of colour and light we once painted on a canvass we call our life. Once upon a time this is what we thought life should look like, but at some point or perhaps multiple points along the way, we forgot to update it. We forgot to say – hey, I no longer want to do this or be that person. And usually we forgot to update our view of the people we love, too.

But all of this stripping things down, becoming your own best friend and updating your world view… all these things are necessary and important if we’re to extract ourselves from the swamp of pigeon holes, post-it notes and baggage tags, addresses, and personas that we or other people have seen fit to bestow on us over the years.

We all deserve freedom, absolutely we do. And it is attainable. But the only way to start is with your Self. Stop looking in that Mirror of Recrimination and start getting in touch with who you are when you’re not calling yourself every name under the sun!

Who are you when you aren’t living in a world where everything has a name and a price? Who are you when it’s about nurturing, feeding, finding joy and happiness, and discovering the things you’re naturally attracted to and interested in?

We all have those answers in our heart, but first we have to get our ticker back in working order! It may need defrosting, or some other kind of return to room temperature. It may need a little excavation – taking down those brick walls or moats. It may need a little excitement, or de-numbifying and so on.

There’s so many ways that we cut out enjoyment, love and connection to ourselves and the world… and while it’s possible to function in that kind of space for the longest time, eventually some part of us, even if it’s the tiniest of seeds – it says ENOUGH! And if/when it does, then you’d better listen up and listen good, because it’s time to pay attention and make some changes before the changes come and re-make you.

And believe me, once we get back in touch with our ever-patient heart, everything changes. For me it’s yoga that helps me find those answers, both on and off the mat. Especially yoga that’s not about form and shape and everything being perfect. Especially yoga that’s inclusive of the breath-mind-body-heart connection, feeling the sensations of the body, allowing the mind to tune into the practice, the very here and now-ness of it all. Brooks has just written a gorgeous little post about exactly that (and you should read it to get more of a sense of what I mean).

I wish you well. I wish your loved ones well. I wish for love to reside in your heart and soul, in your loving relationship with yourself and if you have them, with your partner and children.

I wish you freedom to dance across glittering oceans of inspiration and joy. I wish that your cup overflows with beauty and love and that you find who you are amongst the maddening dreamscapes that pervade day to day existence and insist on calling themselves Reality.

~Svasti xo

Circles of samsara

Tags

Apologies, Christmas, Friday night, I'm sorry, Love, Misunderstanding, Samsara, Suffering, Trams

Out and about Friday night after a relatively serious drinking session with friends (for me, more than three glasses is serious!)… I waited at the tram stop outside the Arts Centre.

A handful of minutes pass and a young girl approaches, crying. Lost and upset, she doesn’t have a jacket – always a bad idea in Melbourne unless it’s the middle of a heat wave (the saying goes: Melbourne – if you don’t like the weather just wait five minutes).

She wanted to use my mobile to call her boyfriend. I obliged. They had a brief, catty and drunken conversation before she hung up on him.

Eventually, she told me her name and what’d happened. She’d jumped on a tram to find out where it was going – but it took off. And her boyfriend’s crime was that he hadn’t followed her.

So they were separated. He had her phone and money and she was stranded. Also, she didn’t know the way to his house exactly, where she was staying.

She was crying and swearing at her boyfriend, utterly furious with him.

I called him back and asked what I could do to help her. He asked if I could put her in a cab and he’d pay for it at the other end.

Easier said than done at one in the morning this close to Christmas.

But we tried. We went to the side of the road (trams run down the center) and I put my arm around her to keep her warm.

The cab didn’t materialise but a tram arrived going the right way… so we both got on – luckily there was a female tram driver, who helped me figure out where this young thing (just twenty-three) needed to go.

Still really pissed at her boyfriend, she was calling him every name under the sun. But when I questioned her about things, it was clear she was just mad at herself and blamed him. Because she could.

As we talked she finally agreed, several times, that it wasn’t her boyfriend’s fault, what’d happened.

I kept her talking until my stop. The lady tram driver said she’d call a cab for the girl from the terminal to get her the last leg home. Other passengers were also really lovely, looking out for her. I gave her a hug and said goodnight.

A little later her boyfriend called me – she hadn’t arrived at his place yet. He sounded really concerned and upset. I explained where she was and that she was okay.

Funny thing is… they were both so mad at each other over a silly drunken Friday night misunderstanding.

And what did I learn from all of this? Despite the late hour and being rather sozzled… I saw how easy it is to blame people for stuff that isn’t their fault, especially when we’re already hurting in some way. And make them the object of our anger…

One person reacts. The next person reacts to that person’s reaction – or what they’ve understood of it anyway… a snowball begins, picking up speed.

Just another way in which the human malaise of general delusion and madness strikes… and we have a choice every single time:

To let the momentum build, grow larger, and become overblown. And cause pain to another for no damn good reason – potentially damaging that relationship.

Or… stop.

Call a spade, a spade. Laugh at yourself for your own madness. And pull it apart. The whole stupid thing.

With love.

~Svasti