Cleaning up our Karma

I first remember thinking about the possibility of reincarnation when I was in elementary school and began listening to the Indigo Girls’ song “Galileo” incessantly. The lyrics to this song are very fruitful for beginning to think about reincarnation, especially when one is young, impressionable and unsure about most things in this life and beyond. I was always comfortable with the idea of having had past lives and the possibility of living different lives in the future; it seemed too limiting and fatalistic of a thought-system to pin yourself down to this single episode in history. More and more, I have come to be more certain of this idea. As I continue to learn more about yogic philosophy, from more literary and spiritual sources, I have found so much hope by placing my belief in this system of cause and effect, action and reaction, or karma, if you want to be more definitive.

In Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda explains karmic law:

Death and indeed sleep, “the little death,” are a mortal necessity, freeing the unenlightened human being temporarily from sense trammels. As man’s essential nature is Spirit, he receives in sleep and in death certain revivifying reminders of his incorporeity.

The equilibrating law of karma, as expounded in the Hindu scriptures, is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping. In the course of natural righteousness, each man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the molder of his destiny. Whatever universal energies he himself, wisely or unwisely, has set in motion must return to him as their starting point, like a circle inexorably completing itself. […] An understanding of karma as the law of justice underlying life’s inequalities serves to free the human mind from resentment against God and man.[1]

Karmic law works much like the law of conservation of energy. Energy can be transformed into varying mediums; however, there is a finite amount of energy in the world. It is how the energy is harnessed and for what purposes it is used that creates new and seemingly different actions or materials. In the same way, our souls – our true Selves – are part of a finite and all-encompassing system in which our actions and reactions determine the bodily forms and experiences we each have in each of our incarnations. The notion that we are each in control of our actions in this birth is very reassuring. While there may be past actions from previous bodily incarnations for which we are facing the effects in this life, we have the agency to clean up our karma so each subsequent incarnation is less affected by the previous one. If you choose to accept this and to live presently and to be very self-aware with a meditation on a higher life force, you have the opportunity to advance each of your future Selves to a more blissful state, enlightening your spirit. We are all interconnected and a part of the vastness that is the universe. Krishna illuminates this idea to Arjuna:

Because you trust me, Arjuna,

I will tell you what wisdom is,

The secret of life: know it

And be free of suffering, forever.

This is the supreme wisdom,

The knowing beyond all knowing,

Experienced directly, in a flash,

Eternal, and a joy to practice.

Those who are without faith

In my teaching, cannot attain me;

They endlessly return to this world,

Shuttling from death to death.

I permeate all the universe

In my unmanifest form.

All beings exist within me,

Yet I am so inconceivably

Vast, so beyond existence,

That though they are brought forth

And sustained by my limitless power,

I am not confined within them.

Just as the all-moving wind,

Wherever it goes, always

Remains in the vastness of space,

All beings remain within me.

They are gathered back into my womb

At the end of the cosmic cycle –

A hundred fifty thousand

Billion of your earthly years –

And as a new cycle begins

I send them forth once again,

Pouring from my abundance

The myriad forms of life.

These actions do not bind me, Arjuna.

I stand apart from them all,

Indifferent to their outcome,

Unattached, serene.

Under my guidance, Nature

Brings forth all beings, all things

Animate or inanimate,

And sets the whole universe in motion.[2]

           

In “Galileo,” Emily Saliers asks: “How long ‘til my soul gets it right? Can any human being reach that kind of light?” These are questions that many of us might often ask ourselves, especially after endeavoring upon a yogic way of living. While these questions are a valid means of critically examining a thought-system, they should not be dwelt upon too much. That energy is better put to use by living well now and not letting questions of the past or the future weigh us down so that we are unable to live presently. If we do as Krishna advises Arjuna to “dive deep into [ourselves],/fearless, one-pointed, know[ing] [Him]/ as the inexhaustible source,”[3] we can have faith in the karmic laws and live by right actions knowing that we are living well and evolving our soul so future incarnations will have less karma born unto each of them. In this way, of sure and steady practice, the hope is there of someday achieving that light of which Emily sings. When we eliminate all of our karma and all of the obstacles we face, we reach the ultimate bliss that is self-realization[4]. For this to occur, we have to act without expectation of results and without attaching meaning to each action. In this way, each of our actions will cease to necessitate a reaction and our subsequent incarnations will be less and less filled with karma with which to be dealt.

We are each on separate paths and no two paths are alike. Thus, we must each take responsibility for our own Selves and make the appropriate life choices that we require at this episode in our spiritual journey through this universe. This is encouraging news because we are offered many births to “get it right”[5] and live better for ourselves and for each other. Rather than thinking that we are each “let[ting] the next life off the hook,”[6] let us each become more aware of who we really are as we journey toward self-realization.

[1] Paramahansa Yogananda. Autobiography of a Yogi, p.289 n. Los Angeles, California: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1998.

[2] Bhagavad Gita. Translation by Stephen Mitchell, 9.1 – 9.10. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000.

[3] Ibid., 9.13.

[4] Sutra 4.30 reads: “From that Samadhi all afflictions and karmas cease;” Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and Commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Yogaville, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 2008.

[5] Lyric from “Galileo” by the Indigo Girls, 1992.

[6] Ibid.

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Meeting our Fears.

Fear is an interesting thing. Most of us at some time or another is fearful of something, someone, some place. Perhaps there was a scary basement stairwell you encountered as a child, an intimidating boss, or a move to a new country you can recall that still irks you. A fear that I have been working through for quite some time now is the fear of inverting.

As a child, I would happily walk on my hands along the sandy beaches of Florida making handprints in the soggy sand as the light waves came and went. Not that long ago, I was able to do headstands in the middle of the room with my eyes closed while I was practicing yoga at the Sivananda center in Paris while studying abroad. Now, that fearlessness has mysteriously vanished. While learning the standard triad of headstand, handstand and forearm-stand as I became more and more interested in my asana practice, I clutched willingly and openly to any wall that was available and if none was, then I modified my practice and only did preparatory poses. This crutch at first was both physical and mental. I was not sure how to come up safely in these poses and did not at first have the upper body and core strength necessary to keep me up. However, over time and with precise instruction from wonderful teachers, I was able to come up on my own without the wall in all three of these postures. And yet, I still clutch to the wall. I am scared. I know I am strong enough. I know this because I can come up just far enough from the wall that I will not touch it, but mentally I know it is there and, if I want to, I can touch a toe or two to the hard plaster that reassures me that something other than me will be there if I fall besides the floor, which is always there waiting. As I grow my practice by teaching yoga to others, I am trying very hard to overcome this fear of mine that is now very much all in my head.

I think of this often: every day even. It is a big obstacle, or klesah, around which I must work in order to progress my yoga practice. Sutra 2.3 tells us that the five obstacles, or klesahs, are “ignorance, egoism, attachment, hatred, and clinging to bodily life.”[1] My fear involves all of these obstacles: my ignorance at my own physical strength, my egoism to not allow myself to fall in front of others, my literal attachment to the wall and to my way of inverting in proximity to a hard surface perpendicular to the floor, my hatred (for what a strong word it is) of my reluctance to trust in myself, and my very plain clinging to my bodily life as I imagine an array of spinal injuries and concussions that will occur if I attempt inverting without my life crutch – the wall. It is interesting for me, thus, to observe the moment in classes when it is time to invert. Many teachers have the students come to the wall no matter what – I like those classes too much. Others don’t make the inversions a very big deal and then neither do I as I practice dolphin instead of going up to prophetically fall on the person teetering next to me. And then there was the teacher recently who had us come up in the middle, but only if we knew we could practice safely in the middle – I counted myself out of that group immediately to take the opportunity to work on my form with everyone else – and otherwise to stay with her instructions as she brought us through some preparatory work that would lead to a shorter stay in headstand far away from the wall. Good.

As I happily and determinedly went through the preparatory steps to gain the confidence I needed to bypass the first klesah, the man next to me threw himself into headstand so fast that the teacher came rushing to him to get him out of his unsafe posture. This gave me pause to reflect on our different approaches to inversions: my fear and his hurried excitement. While clinging to bodily life was not exhibited in the least in my neighbor’s practice as he attempted to balance his unbalanced weight on his cervical vertebrae, he was also working with his own obstacles in his own practice and in his own way. While I am not one to pass judgment on how people deal with their own fears, there was something to his eagerness to “just do it” that I so envied, until I thought about how change is really made in each of us.

It is how we deal with our fear that allows us to progress and make changes, hopefully positive ones, on our path toward enlightenment and better living. When we are brought up against our fear – be it social anxiety, a new job, or the seasonal flu – we are given a chance to acknowledge our humanity while accessing our strength, both physical and mental, to minimize the obstacles in our lives. When we meet our fear head-on with intelligence and courage, we can evolve. It is very helpful as you go through this process to seek the help of a mentor or a teacher. More important is the ability to truly trust in your Self and your own abilities and limits. When we step outside of our comfort zones, we come up against a lot of “stuff” for lack of a better term at what we might encounter there. Focusing on the Self that resides deep within this body and this mind is a very good way to meet your fears and start to overcome your obstacles, changing yourself for the better along the way.

After the headstand incident with the cervical-spine-stand neighbor, I had a dream that was a very accurate visualization of this fear issue for me. The dream, convoluted and partially forgotten by me, had to do with me swinging from a rope (similar in nature to a yoga strap, actually) hung high in a tree in a field with few surrounding trees. Holding the rope lightly with my hands, I swung back and forth with glee gaining speed as one does when swinging on a swing-set. I was free and moving in the elements. There was no harness and yet I trusted myself to hold on to the only implement keeping me from the ground far beneath my body in motion. As with most dreams, I was outside of myself watching this scene, which would normally inspire terror and fear in me and yet, it was a pleasant dream. I was comfortable in my knowledge that I could hold on and be free in the same moment of motion. It is with this attitude and awareness that we should come to those practices that bring us up against our fear.

A little fear is a healthy thing, but too much can keep us from progress and change, which keeps us from life: life is change. As I continue to work on my practice and come up against my fears, it is always helpful to keep in mind the first two sutras in the Sadhana Pada, the Portion on Practice:

(1) Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books, and the surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice. (2) They help us minimize obstacles and attain Samadhi.[2]

These instructions for how to develop a yoga practice are fairly simple to keep in mind, if ever more challenging to work out in our day-to-day lives. If we keep with this idea of practice and change as a means to achieving a better us, it is very valuable to come back again and again to these instructions on practice. When meeting our fears, we have an opportunity to grow. We can accept any pain that is caused as a means to purification. We can read spiritual texts or go to a respected mentor for guidance. Finally, and most importantly, we can surrender unto that inner Self, the Om that is inside each of us and constitutes all of us. Meeting our fears head-on in this manner, gives us great opportunity for evolution towards Samadhi. So, tempt yourself and play outside of your comfort zone to test your fears and see which ones are really mental manifestations that clutter the mind to keep you from knowing your true Self.

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[1] Patanjali. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. Translation and Commentary by Sri Swami Satchidananda. Yogaville, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 2008.

[2] Ibid.