Have you ever felt you were ‘burning’ inside with anger, rage or frustration?
I’m learning through my practice of ‘being in the cycles’ that many of our outer seasonal customs mirror beautifully our inner experiences should we care to pay attention to them. So, as we prepare to light bonfires and send fireworks into the sky I figure it makes perfect sense that once in a while I might have an inner bonfire, or festival of sparks, that forms a perfectly normal and natural part of my own inner seasons and cycles.
Five Kleśa
The Yoga Sūtra explains that we might tend to clump together as ‘negative’ emotions are in fact normal and natural experiences of living. They are like seeds that lie dormant in the ground of our being. All it takes is the right conditions for one to grow – a flowering of rage perhaps, or a blossom of fear. We can cover them up with bravado, fake smiles or by ‘being kind’ through gritted teeth, but that’s not Yoga.
Yoga requires that we pay attention to our fiery feelings and do the inner work required of us to understand their causes and triggers.
The Yoga Sutra mentions five kleśa (kle-sha) or ‘afflictions’ which we all have. They are all variations of one particularly tenacious affliction called āvidya which means ‘not seeing things clearly’. From this basic state of āvidya grows anger, desire, fear, sadness and everything else we might classify as a negative state of mind.
The solution does not lie completely in simply cultivating the opposite, though planting seeds of love, joy and kindness is certainly part of the garden plan. We also have to be attentive towards the soil of our being and continuously ‘weed out’ (with compassion) the thoughts which inevitably grow from the seeds of the kleśa. There’s really no easy way out from this, we just have to keep weeding!
Pulling these pesky and invasive plants out at their roots requires some serious tools and a willingness to get our hands dirty. This is our ‘inner work’ and, as all persistent gardeners know, the work is never finished. Every season in the garden brings new challenges.
So, autumn in the garden is for bonfires, and fires can be cleansing, warming and inspiring. They are often used in rituals, ceremonies and gatherings and can bring us together in circles of belonging. We can bring fiery feelings into our yoga practice to be honoured and appreciated. Often it is through these almost ceremonial fires that we do indeed get to the root of what is bothering or agitating us and allows us to move forward with more clarity.
Dhyāna
Yoga gives us with many tools for holding space for fiery feelings and cultivating positive states of mind.
First we must be prepared to DO something. We may need to shake up our routines in order to live ethically and to practice good self care habits like eating and sleeping well, looking after our bodies and engaging in self enquiry. This is what the first five or ‘outer’ limbs are for (yama, niyama, āsana, prānayāma, pratyahāra).
The next step is to just to BE, to meditate. This is what the final three or ‘inner’ limbs are for (dhārana, dhyāna and samādhi). Dhyāna (meditative absorption) is in particular singled out as the way to overcome negative feeling states caused by āvidya ‘not seeing things clearly’ (YS2.11).
While practicing dhyāna it is said that our awareness flows towards our chosen object of attention like warm oil, in an effortless and continuous way.
First we must practice dhārana – diligently and patiently returning our attention to our chosen object of focus again and again. Dhyāna occurs when we stop ‘trying’ to meditate and instead simply allow it to happen. Dhārana is like training a dog – you have to keep patiently bringing your attention back, again and again until one day you sit down and the mind comes to ‘heel’. Dhyāna is making yourself very quiet, very still, very patient – and waiting for the cat to curl up in your lap. These are both skills that need to be practiced if you want to enjoy meditation.
If dhārana is zooming in, then dhyāna is zooming out. It is like looking at one of those magic eye pictures. It is not through concentration and focus that the magic image is revealed but more through relaxation and widening our field of vision. In the same way, it is when we allow the mind to relax in meditation then suddenly our attention can finally be held in one place and clarity begins to prevail.
Instead of climbing up to a point of intense focus, dhyāna is like falling down into a deep cavern of spacious holding.
Many of us have a voice inside us that says ‘letting go’ is lazy or unproductive. It may tell us that we don’t have time or that there are more important things to be doing. I invite you to consider where this voice came from. Certainly there is joy to be found in creating and producing and DOING things with our lives, but yoga reminds us that there is also value in BEING.
It is important to regard your yoga and meditation practice not as another thing to be ‘done’, but as an opportunity to ‘be’. You should look forward to your practice like a warm bath or a good meal. It is time to be held, to relax and let go, to find space and to be nourished.
Being in the Cycles
This post is part of our journey through the eight festivals of the Celtic calendar – Being in the Cycles – during which we are encountering each of the eight limbs of yoga like a series of gates to pass through on our path.
Each season there is an online yoga class and a labyrinth walk, which all are welcome to join.
