Yoga Sutras Week 2 - Dis-identifying with the fluctuations in consciousness

The Sharanam meditation does two things. First of all, it reassures us. It shows us that we are being taken care of, that Life is doing everything and we don’t have to worry about a thing. Yet at the same time, it is confrontational; it confronts the parts of us that aren't relaxing into what we know to be true. It is difficult to disagree with what the meditation is suggesting, but some part of us isn’t living in total accordance with it, and it is that part which is confronted. That is a healthy confrontation. 


Life can do weird stuff. It can produce all kinds of karmas that can come to fruition in our life and it may feel like you are out of control and life is a mess. This is why it is crucial to regularly relax back into an unfathomable intelligence and surrender to it. Life may not always be smooth, but there is something valuable in everything that happens. 


Anything forced is resisted. Whenever we force something upon ourselves out of a ‘should’, even if it’s tolerated for a while, our body and our minds will resist it. Anything worth doing is chosen within our own system. Once we choose it, there is an energy behind it, and then we can really transform. 


Anyway, on to the Yoga Sutras…


1:2 Yogaś citta vritti nirodhah

Last week, we covered the first Sutra, which states that “now begins the journey of Yoga”. It is the greatest journey any human being can make, the discovery of their unity with the whole. People have different ideas but, according to yoga, the greatest discovery a human being can make is the discovery of themselves. To the degree that we know ourselves, we know everything else. If we don’t know ourselves, then we can't know anything else because we are only ever knowing through the Self. To know that you as a living being are part of the totality of Life, that is the thing to discover. 


The second Sutra is the most famous Sutra there is: Yogaś citta vritti nirodhah. This is Patanjali’s attempt to encapsulate what Yoga is in one Sutra. 


Yogaś = Yoga/Union

Citta = Consciousness 

Vritti = Fluctuations/whirlpools 

Nirodhah = Cessation/Disidentification 


Yoga is the cessation of or disidentification with the fluctuations in consciousness.


It is very important to understand that yoga is already the case. You cannot be separate from Life, therefore, you are already in union with Life. However, that is not always our living experience. Yoga is the process of making the fact of our union with Life, our living reality. When we know we are one with everything, we behave very differently to when we feel separate, contracted and isolated from it. 


In fact, if we want to see the world that we all wish for, there is only one solution. It isn’t simply moving the furniture around, it is changing the way humans perceive. When we feel separated we behave atrociously on different levels of the spectrum depending on how contracted we are and we have all been there, so we all know. Anybody who is behaving like a wally is doing so because currently, they are in a state of contraction and are very uncomfortable in themselves. Anybody who is acting as the love that they are is acting in an uncontracted state. So it is the solution for us and for the whole. Changing the world externally will always be limited if we are not making those changes within ourselves. The yogis said it is better to spend time doing the inner work than running around trying to re-arrange everybody else. When you are resting in your heart being love, you are way more influential than you think and you are certainly more effective than when you are in a contracted state trying to make everything right. 


Patanjali is suggesting that in order to live in yoga, in unity, as love, we have to learn to dis-identify. The word Nirodhah can mean many things, it can mean cessation, but it can also mean to dis-identify from. The word vritti refers to fluctuations or whirlpools in consciousness. They are the ever-changing panorama inside of our psycho-physiology and they are happening on many different levels. Sensations in the body, energy levels, thought waves, emotional charges, all of these are constantly in flux. All of these, because they are a part of nature are always going to be in a state of flux, but if you no longer identify yourself with these temporary changing scenarios, then you will rest in yoga. You fall back and become the witness of them, resting in your peace you are able to observe them without getting pulled into the whirlpools. 


When we get pulled into the whirlpools, we get spun; we often think that we are the vrittis and that what we are experiencing is permanent. This energises the vrittis even further. We energise our vrittis with our attention and identification with them, so this Sutra asks us to learn to withdraw our prana from them, rest it back into our hearts and watch the show unfold. That is yoga. 


However, there can be a lot of confusion when it comes to playing this out practically, the mind can be a tricky customer. The Sutra isn’t asking us to suppress, close down, or avoid the experience because that is just another contraction. Later on, Patanjali will ask us to engage and feel whilst simultaneously letting go of our attachment to whatever it is we are feeling. We have to learn to go through things while staying somewhat serene, stable and anchored in ourselves. This is the process of enlightenment. 


We all want to feel Life on the deepest possible level. In order to do this we tend to seek out the largest vrittis we can; we like to create drama inside of ourselves. We get a particular sensation in our body which we may like or not like depending on the circumstance and we identify with it. If we like it we grab it and try and make it bigger and if we don’t then we resist it, but if we look at it honestly, we will see that we are addicted to the sensations in whatever form they come in. Patanjali is suggesting that this is the wrong way to go about experiencing Life on the deepest level. The way is to stop creating so much drama about what you are experiencing, so you see the vrittis for what they are, passing waves on the surface of the ocean. 


The most remarkable thing is that the way we are looking to get the deepest experience of Life by creating and reacting to vrittis inside is actually numbing us out and lessening our capacity to feel. It is absolutely necessary to feel them but, the more we feel the sensations without identifying with them, the deeper we fall into the fabric of Life.


You are feeling more and seeing more as a result of your yoga journey, not because you have got more caught up in life, but because you have fallen back from it, you have space. The further you drop, the more you feel and the more you see. If we want to feel our life to the deepest, we have to learn to be with the vrittis without getting caught up in them. 


Of course, we will get caught up in them, and that is how we learn to let go; it is a game that you cannot lose. It is not that we get to the end of the day and see we have been caught up in our vrittis all day and we have failed because we are only just realising. The moment we notice we are caught up and we fall back, we have won. 


This Sutra gives us a formula of how to experience Life deeply, but we have to get friendly with non-drama. We have to get friendly with something that our mind tells us is terribly boring: neutrality. The mind tries to convince us that life is in the passion, the thrill, having an opinion, etc. Patanjali is saying no, it isn’t, he is saying it is right there in the neutral stillness of yourself, from that point everything else in Life will open up to you. You will be able to see more, feel more and understand more. That neutrality point is the space of love and wisdom. If you want to get loving and wise then start to fall back from the drama.


It is a challenge, but isn’t it true that you have more of a taste for peace these days? Do you not look around and see the drama that everyone is making for themselves? It is easy when it is not our vritti, but the more we catch our own, the more we can have compassion for others. We catch ourselves creating chaos inside and stirring up our inner waters and we enter the process of creating space for the chaos to dissolve back into. 

 

It is a matter of what we value. It is all very well saying we aspire to peace, but we have to value it in order for that to become our reality. Most people do not value peace, they value drama which is why their lives are full of drama and peace is absent. If we can shift our priorities around inside then our minds will form around our aspiration and we will discover the peace that is inherent to us, the very core of our being, yoga.


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