The Kleshas Week 2 - Asmita: Opening to our Natural Smile
You are being lived by an immense power—
an extraordinary intelligence.
To deny that, you would have to say,
“I am living myself.”
And we’ve been through this a thousand times together, haven’t we? You would have to go inside and regulate your heartbeat, manage every hormonal secretion, keep all your bones in balance, run your entire functional system.
How are you doing so far?
Busy in there?
A billion different things
you would have to contend with
just to exist.
And thankfully,
there is a great power and intelligence
living you on your behalf.
You don’t have to do anything for that to be the case. And there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Nothing can exist separate from this unfathomable mystery that is living us all. There is nothing you can do to excommunicate yourself. Nothing you can do to cancel yourself out, to separate, to divide, in any way whatsoever.
Ever.
You are always there, taking the hand of God—no matter what you do, no matter how bad. It’s just good to remember.
That’s always the yogic bottom line: you never were, and you can never be, separate from the great power that is. Nothing can exist outside of you.
As high as you go—still here.
As low as you go—still here.
As far east, as far west, out into infinity—
you cannot step outside.
And when you do śaraṇam,
you are calling into that power.
You are the wave being lifted by the ocean,
and then cooling back down into its depth,
in a powerful acknowledgement of its presence
and its power.
The yogis said, that’s just so—
simply looking
with an acknowledging attitude.
So we often use this terminology—you hear it everywhere in spiritual language:
“I feel connected.”
“I feel disconnected.”
And it’s true, on some level, that we can feel that way. But it’s always good to acknowledge that it can never actually be the case.
That is the singular impossibility:
that anything could exist outside of totality.
That something could be unconnected.
That an ocean could be separate from the wave,
or the wave separate from the ocean.
Have you ever seen one?
Nothing can exist outside the ocean.
And yet, sometimes our feeling sense tells us otherwise.
“I don’t feel there with it.”
And that is really the beginning of our exploration of the kleśhas.
Last week we were looking at the question:
what is the cause of human suffering?
How do we make ourselves suffer?
What are we doing inside ourselves
to create suffering?
The understanding is this:
suffering is not an act.
It’s an activity.
We’re not suffering an experience.
We’re suffering our response to an experience.
It’s not what’s happening—
it’s our relationship to what’s happening.
That’s been in our teaching together since day one, hasn’t it?
“Wow—look what I’m doing here
to create suffering for myself
in a forward bend.”
The experience itself is utterly innocent. Like the weather. It’s not raining at us. Rain is just being rain. But our relationship to the rain may cause us to suffer—or not—depending on how we meet it.
A relationship, in this sense, is simple:
are we opening into the experience,
or are we resisting it?
That alone determines whether we suffer it,
or whether we grow through it,
open to it,
deepen into it,
and allow whatever wants to happen
to happen.
And not only that—
when we are resisting something,
we are not actually experiencing
the reality of it at all.
For true seekers,
that’s the most confronting thing to hear.
“Am I not actually experiencing reality?”
Yes.
That’s exactly what we’ve been saying
for a long, long time.
If we were truly experiencing it,
we would have to open.
So there’s a very good chance
that in our resistance,
we are missing much of reality altogether.
So the first kleśha (avidyā) points to this closing down inside of us.
It’s essentially this movement—
from being open,
to closing.
We know this one.
We feel it.
We experience the closing down in ourselves
again and again.
The idea is simple: once you can consciously recognise this mechanism that’s happening inside you, you are then in the driving seat of your own liberation.
You can set yourself free.
You can return to unconditional love.
You can return to your native state
of inner joy.
But it requires something very ordinary—getting real with what you are doing inside yourself. Seeing how you close. Seeing what that closing creates.
Feeling the constriction in the flow of life within you.
Feeling the suffering of closing down—blocking, separating, becoming divided.
And then feeling the joy of opening back up.
All of our practices exist for this reason: to help us become conscious of this mechanism and more able to work with it. So that in daily life—where we are endlessly challenged—we begin to notice it happening.
And once we can see it, we have a choice.
“Do I go with this?
Or do I act differently?”
Even when we do close—and we do, don’t we—there can be a subtle move inside that says:
“I shouldn’t be doing this.”
“This isn’t spiritual.”
“I’ve gone wrong.”
Even when I do this—and I do—I am still in totality. God still loves me. I am still immersed in love, bliss, joy, peace. That is still the underlying reality. The presence within me is still that.
But I’ve done this.
And because of that,
I can no longer feel it.
I can no longer experience it.
It’s not gone—
it’s just struggling to get in.
All I’m really feeling now is my contraction, my resistance.
And that is an activity.
So this is where we begin to talk about asmita.
To understand it properly, we have to see this clearly:
there is no such thing as ego
as an entity.
It does not exist.
Separation, remember, cannot exist.
But I can perform an activity inside myself—an egoic activity. The word ego simply means to divide, to separate myself off from the great oneness.
And that distinction matters. Because if ego were an entity, something real and solid, then we would have to fight it, overcome it, get rid of it. But if it’s an activity, it’s simply something to notice.
And when it’s noticed, it can soften.
When that softening happens, something else begins to move.
Love flows.
Joy flows.
Creativity flows.
What we need to know in that moment flows to us. Life can speak to us again because we are open. And strangely—even in our vulnerability—we feel secure. We feel supported. We feel connected to something bigger.
Even though that connection never actually went away.
When we close down from our true self—inside this great, deep, unfathomable presence—we lose access to something that is endlessly alive, endlessly creative, endlessly new. Life, when it’s allowed to flow, is endlessly entertaining. There is depth there. Mystery there. A richness that never runs out.
When that flow is interrupted, something else has to happen.
When we close down to that presence, we don’t simply stop. We have to replace what we’ve stepped away from.
And so, having closed down to the great power, we now have to find a substitute.
And that substitute becomes me.
Having stepped away from absolute security, I now have to fabricate security for myself.
Having stepped away from innate joy and peace, I now have to seek them.
Having stepped away from a power that was never mine to begin with, I now have to try to become powerful.
And this is where the false self begins to take shape.
Once that false self begins to take shape, it has a very particular flavour.
It is always trying to become what it has stepped away from.
Having closed down to abundance, it now feels scarcity.
Having closed down to love, it now goes looking for love.
Having closed down to peace, it now tries to manufacture peace.
And because it has lost contact with something infinite, it will always feel inadequate. It will always feel like it’s not quite enough.
Not because something is wrong, but because it is trying to do what it cannot do. It is trying to replace what was never meant to be replaced.
This is asmita.
The contraction into a limited sense of self that feels separate, that feels deficient, that feels it must become something in order to be okay.
And so it begins to seek.
It seeks approval.
It seeks power.
It seeks validation.
It seeks certainty.
It seeks to be seen.
It seeks to be special.
It seeks to be secure.
All of this effort is born from one simple movement:
closing down from what was already here.
There’s an interesting detail in the language.
Smita literally means a natural, authentic smile—a smile that arises when life is flowing freely.
And a-smita—with that small “a” in front—means the absence of that smile.
Not a moral failing.
Not a personal flaw.
Just the loss of ease.
The loss of relaxation.
The loss of being smiled through by life.
When that natural smile is lost, we have to put one on.
We begin to pretend.
We begin to perform.
We begin to wear a mask.
And the mask says:
“This is who I am.”
“This is what I need to be.”
“This is how I will be okay.”
But what we are is not something we have to create. What we are is what remains when we stop trying to be anything at all.
Once the mask is in place, life starts to feel like effort.
Because now there is something that has to be maintained.
I have to keep this self together.
I have to protect it.
I have to defend it.
I have to prove it.
And the moment I do that, comparison enters.
I begin to measure myself against you.
“Am I more than you?”
“Less than you?”
“Safer than you?”
“More successful than you?”
“More spiritual than you?”
And whatever answer I come up with—
I lose.
If I feel less than you, I suffer.
If I feel more than you, I suffer too—because now I have something to protect.
This is why asmita is such a quiet source of suffering.
It doesn’t shout.
It doesn’t announce itself.
It simply says:
“This is me.”
And from that moment on, life becomes personal.
What was just happening now happens to me.
What was just sensation now becomes my experience.
What was just movement now becomes my story.
And yet—nothing has actually changed.
The great power has not withdrawn.
Life has not stopped flowing.
The ocean has not disappeared because the wave forgot itself.
Only attention has narrowed.
Only openness has contracted.
This is why the work here is not about destroying the ego. There is nothing to destroy. And it’s not about perfecting the ego either. There is nothing to perfect.
It’s about recognising the activity as it’s happening.
Seeing the contraction.
Feeling it in the body.
Noticing the story it tells.
And then—not adding to it.
Not resisting the contraction.
Not making it wrong.
Not turning it into an identity.
Just letting it be seen inside something much larger.
And when it’s held that way—inside awareness, inside kindness, inside truth—it begins to loosen on its own.
And this is where it stops being theoretical.
Because this isn’t just something to understand.
It’s something to work.
Something to notice as it’s happening.
Right now.
In the body.
In the breath.
In movement.
So you begin to experiment.
What happens if, instead of moving from effort, from control, from identity, you soften?
What happens if you let presence move you rather than trying to move yourself?
You let the body pulse.
You let sensation arise.
You make as little choice as possible.
You relax into the movement rather than directing it.
And then you feel.
Does this work?
What happens when I do this?
You begin to see something very clearly:
one thought can divide you from the whole.
And one thought released can reunite you with it.
It’s never very dramatic.
It’s never far away.
It’s always just a thought.
A way of thinking that tightens.
A way of thinking that separates.
And when it’s seen, it can be let go.
So you keep catching yourself and releasing. Whatever your tradition calls that—they’ve all been pointing to the same thing.
Noticing.
Softening.
Returning.
And over time, something changes.
Life begins to move again.
Not blindly.
Not unconsciously.
But with awareness.
With participation.
With humility.
Over time, as this is lived, everything changes.
Not because you’re trying to change it, but because life is moving.
Two years down the line—everything’s different.
That’s what a moving life is, isn’t it? Life grows. It evolves. It changes. It transforms.
And that means we keep meeting new layers, new depths.
The kleśhas are designed to give us an understanding of ourselves, and to shape and direct our lives through that understanding.
They help us see the genesis of our suffering, how life can move outward into it—and also how it can return inward, back to source, and from there create a very different kind of life.
Along with that, this understanding is meant to give us an understanding of humanity itself.
Not so that we judge it.
Not so that we sit in some arrogant place of “I found it and you didn’t.”
If the understanding is genuine, it brings compassion.
A deep forgiveness—for ourselves, and for others.
An understanding of why we went out looking for joy, creativity, love, knowledge—when it was always already here, locked into us.
When you look at the world and the crazy things we get up to, it’s really only humanity, isn’t it? The rest seems to be doing fine.
But the desperation that drives human life—that frantic reaching—is just the attempt to reclaim an inheritance that’s already right here.
Everybody’s looking for love.
Everybody’s looking for joy.
Everybody wants deep security—something foundational that doesn’t collapse.
And everybody wants to know the truth of themselves and their own nature.
But when the lens turns outward, when the connection to the inner realm is lost, we can only go one way.
We desperately try to get it out there.
We compete.
We feel scarcity, not abundance.
We harm each other—because we’re all chasing something that feels rare.
And yet—it’s right here.
What a message.
You know this.
You’ve woken up.
And it’s not a small thing.
There’s nothing more to do now except to deepen, and become convicted:
“I am here,
and I am being smiled through.”
That’s something else, isn’t it?
We can practise that.
And for those still looking elsewhere, a prayer doesn’t go amiss.
May all beings find this—
when they’re ready.
No force.
When they’re ready.
You can be in this world without being obvious.
You can be in this world without buying into desperation.
You can bless it.
You can pray for it.
And you can be the possibility.
Because the world we’ve created came from that suffering trap.
And the world that changescomes from waking up.
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