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

Are you a lover or a fighter?

Tags

Amedeo Modigliani, AnthroYogini, Aum, Body image, EmBody Talk, Love, Meditation, Om, self-loathing, The BlissChick, Yoga

Reclining Nude by Amedeo Modigliani, c. 1919

I’m sure most of us would immediately say we are lovers! We prefer peace and harmony in our lives over fighting, right?

But what about the war you wage against yourself? Whether it’s physical, mental or emotional – or all three – we are hyper-critical of our Selves in so many ways, aren’t we?

This is however, the way it goes in a world where duality rules the roost. We always want what we don’t have, we always perceive ourselves as not quite what we want to be.

And that is war. Or if you prefer, self-loathing. Any time we are in that mode of thinking, then we are in conflict with ourselves.

Just the other day I found myself cursing my poor left shoulder, for no other crime than being injured and limiting my movement (it is getting better BTW, just slowly)!

Now, if a friend came up to you and told you they were injured would you curse them? Would you be rude and mean to them or ignore them? Probably not, right? You’d probably be sympathetic, perhaps send them love and healing vibes. Maybe you’d even help them work out the best course of action to get some healing going on. Yeah… that sounds about right!

This is especially true for our relationship with our own body. Women have complexes about their bodies in droves (an epidemic perhaps?) but I believe many men do, too. Personally, I’ve had a life-long struggle to accept how I look and some aspects of that struggle are ongoing.

Sometimes it seems like no matter how much yoga I do or how many times I chant Om or meditate, those thought patterns about my body remain. They run deep! Of course, the more yoga, meditation and chanting I do, the easier it is to see those thought patterns and marvel at their relentlessness.

My negative body image thoughts have become transparent to me now and I can separate my Self from them, but they never really let up… too tall, boobs too big, not pretty enough, too muscular, too heavy, not thin enough, not graceful, too different, thighs too big, nose too chunky, jawline not defined enough, lips too thin, too many freckles, wish I looked more like HER instead…

I know now those thoughts are not my true Self; they are part of the tricksy and distracting monkey mind that comes with this body and existence. The mind rules the world of duality and the more conflicts it creates, the harder it becomes to peel back the layers of delusion to an awakening of who we really are.

So this work of self-acceptance is vitally important.

Recently I was asked by The BlissChick (aka Christine) to participate in an interview series called EmBody Talk. It took a while to consider Christine’s questions properly and then attempt to condense a lifetime of body image issues into a (relatively) short response.

You can read the interview here: EmBody Talk: Svasti, Yogini & Survivor (cool title, thanks Christine!!)

I could’ve written so much more!

The wonderful thing about Christine’s interview series is that hopefully we’ll all learn more about what goes on beneath the skin of others. We will all be able to relate in some way to the stories being told and see how our negative self-image thought patterns are entirely detrimental. We are not alone in our self-denial!

Certainly, many of my own issues as documented here on my blog have stemmed from a deep dissatisfaction and self-hatred of my physical appearance, including (but not limited to) the reasons I found myself working in the sex trade industry all those years ago.

So I hope you enjoy the interview. On the same topic of body image issues, I also invite you read a couple of Anthroyogini’s recent posts (here and here).

Namaste!

~Svasti