“These mental modifications are restrained by practice and non-attachment.”
–The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Abhyasa Vairagyabhyam Tannirodhah
Abyasa: practice | Vairagya: non-attachment (abhyam: by both) | Tad (tan): they | Nirodhah: restrained
The two key things that are required in order to gain control of your mind, and to achieve noteworthy results on your Eightfold Path, are practice and non-attachment.
Every day, you must make it your goal to practice your Yamas, Niyamas, Asanas, Pranayamas, Pratyaharas, Dharanas, and Dhyanas as you strive to reach Samadhi. And every day, as you practice, you may experience slip-ups as you work towards perfection.
It is, therefore, vital that you not only make it your habit to continue to practice each day in order to move forward with consistent effort toward your goal of self-mastery but that you also make it your goal to remain unattached to any outcome of your practice within any given day or moment in time as well.
When analyzing one’s mindscape, it is sometimes challenging to remain in a non-attached state that prevents emotional involvement with past or current internal and external experiences, especially if one has a history of trauma and/or is over-identified with his or her worldly identity, ego, or experiences/observations of the world.
As you practice walking up your Eightfold Path each day, you are prone to not only create attachments to illusions through memory, but you are also prone to judging yourself due to these attachments to a sense of identity around a story about how things should or could be (based on your culture, desires, etc), or on how things were (based on your history and/or past experiences).
Working to remove these Smrtayahs (smrtis/memories) through non-attachment and non-judgment/non-violence through neutral observation, can, therefore, be a very important part of your Yama and Niyama (lived values) practice. And acceptance of things as they are/were helps you to stay present in the moment in order to do this, which further supports you to also become more available for higher expressions/experiences.
Your mind, however, likes to stay attached to the past for the “safety” of familiarity that comes from an ego-identity and sense of historical context, so, at any given time, you may need to work through the memories that get stored in your mind (as well as your body) in order to make progress on your path (especially when working in the areas of your body that are deeply connected to your brain/nervous system, like your gut, heart, and spine–but also in every single cell within your body as well through your breath and blood since they are all connected and communicating with your brain through your electromagnetic, hormonal, and circulatory systems).
Objects, words, smells, feelings, phrases, sayings, and just about anything that you can imagine as existing in the sensory world, all have associations with past smrtis (memory) and have a way of pulling your mind and body out of the wakeful present moment awareness into egoic reactive states based on psychological and emotional wounds, desires, social pressures, and so forth.
Although it is difficult to remain unattached to your stories, identities, form, creations, and sense of self, etc, at times, remaining attached to these illusions through your memory of false senses of self (built with the bricks of the four other types of vrittis discussed last week) causes you to experience and create further suffering as you miss out on the experience of being, and being in, your ever-present higher Self and self-expression.
Even if you have not experienced intense circumstantial trauma during your lifetime, the experience of simply living life and suffering in your own unique way (and coping with the initial trauma of ego-creation), and from your vritiis, creates “trauma” in your mind that has strong attachment force through memory in more ways than one. These small “traumas” come in the form of everything from minor losses and gains, to the discomfort or pleasure of mood and physiological variations throughout time. The resulting accumulated stress from the karma of these attachments (the act of energizing or reenergizing past disturbances through any number of vrittis or just through memory) is first felt through bodily tensions. Over time, the act of living everyday life attached to past lived and historical experience in the forms of mental and physical muscle memories, therefore, creates manifestations that need to be worked out with your Asanas/body-work and Pranayamas/breath-work (limbs 3 and 4 of our Eightfold Path) as well as with your social (limbs 1 and 2), and mind-work (limbs 5-7).
The traumas that humans carry from the context of their existence as homo sapiens in the world, the context of their existence throughout history and societies (stored in the form of DNA), and from living their personal journey in their lifetime, all get stored within personal minds and bodies and can cause not only attachments to the past, but also to the expectations and desires of a future that is bound to these past experiences as well, leaving many with less “room” within themselves to fully experience the present moment.
When humans get attached in these ways through memory and fail to live out their existence in the moment, their memories of their past then begin to color their present-day experiences through their distorted thoughts, words, and actions. This is a big waste of energy that could be better spent on their Pratyaharas (control of our desires and senses), Dharanas (concentration/devotion), and Dhyanas (meditations) in order to reach Samadhi and gain freedom from suffering through their connection with their highest expression.
This week, your assignment is to gather up some old memories that you wish to release attachments to in your mind and body. After writing these down in your journal, picture these vrittis gathering in a canoe designed to fit them all.
Each day, sift through your mind, deciding which vrittis to let go of (remembering that the canoe can fit them all), and then, at the end of your week, let the canoe, with all of your chosen vrittis flow peacefully away from you on a long cleansing river of light.
Ask yourself: How does it feel to let these distortions and attachments go? What does it mean to free up space within me to invite my higher expression into my full being and lived experience?
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