Natalie Ullmann

दृग्दर्शनशक्त्योरेकात्मतैवास्मिता ॥६॥

dr̥g-darśana-śaktyor-ekātmata-iva-asmitā ॥6॥

The klesha of asmita, of Egoism, is the tendency to identify wholly with one’s individual self. 

Patanjali, in his Yoga Sutra,  identifies 5 kleshas or afflictions which entrap us.  The first is avidya, or ignorance, which refers to absorption in the material experience, believing that there is nothing beyond our sense experience.  The second is asmita, which is a form of avidya.  Whereas avidya comprises the whole material (physical)  experience within and without.  Asmita is a specific dimension of avidya.  It refers to the tendency to completely identify with our bodies and personalities, ignoring the spiritual dimension of the ourselves. 

Some of the best examples of transcending egoism exist in the stories of the great “Jivanmuktas” or liberated ones of India.  One of the distinguishing characteristics of a Jivanmukta is their ability to demonstrate that they are not bound by form.  In one story told of Anandamayi Ma, a “saint” widely recognized as being fully liberated, she refused to eat.  The pure fast went on for some time, weeks or months.  She was never alone, and her devotees never saw her eat a thing.  Her devotes were concerned and attempted to force feed her.  One day, unexpectedly, she called the devotees, and she begin to eat without ceasing in a single sitting until they ran out of food in the ashram.  She just kept eating and demanding more.  Finally she stopped and suggested to them that they could never fill her as she was as vast as the universe.  It did not matter to her one way or another if she ate or not.  She knew herself as pure consciousness so she was not changed by food or lack of food.

Need Karoli Baba was known to appear in places where he could not have been.  He would be seen in two different places at the same time.  After his apparent death,  he has continued to appear to people all over the world.  Not just a few….thousands and thousands.  He appears to people before they know of him.  In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, a medieval text written by Swami  Muktabodananda it says that the liberated ones roam the universe.  Free as it were from the limitations of body and mind. 

Liberation from asmita  to this degree is always possible, but for most of us it assumes a more mundane form.  A common example is those described as “handicapped”  who transcend their physical limitations and achieve greatness.  Helen Keller, blind and deaf  since early childhood, lived an abundant, enriched wise public life.    But it also could something as mundane as physical changes to the body (weight loss or gain, aging, physical debilities) do not interfere with your sense of who you are.   Healing from incurable disease, which is more common than  we think, also would be a resolution of this klesha. 

Liberation from asmita or Egosim also occurs when we are called upon to let go of elements of our personalities in order to adapt to a change in the roles we play in our lives, jobs, family roles, positions in community.

A powerful means to work with this klesha is to pay attention when you are dwelling in it.  Stop and listen to your self talk and note what kinds of ideas are floating through your mind with the sense of “I-am” attached to them:  I am skinny or fat or smart or stupid. 

I once had a student who was given yoga classes as a gift by  her husband.  She attended my class in a small ballet school in New Jersey.  She was exceptionally large and round of body and was very absorbed in her perception of herself as a body.   Often, she would stop in a posture and say, “I can’t do it”.  I encouraged her to let go of that idea, over and over again.  Finally one day she said “Okay, if you say so, and she took a perfect crescent moon poster.  More even and circular and expansive than I had ever done or ever seen.  It was perfect. 

Such is the power of releasing the programmed limitations by which we have come to define ourselves.  The beauty of this is that it is not always a grandiose transformation, sometimes little victories are the fuel which changes a life.  In a single moment of transcending asmita, we enter a realm of choice.  In the moment in which we are trapped by our egos we see only a finite number of options.  When that shift occurs to a larger vision,  our options expand as well, and our sense of being agents of our own lives begins to grow within us.   It is empowering in the deepest sense of the word.  We are not empowered by someone giving us power, but by accessing our own portal to  the infinite source of all power by remembering that we are one with it.  The practices of yoga are designed to soften the bondage of our afflictions  freeing us lead more fulfilling and authentic lives.

How to resolve asmita?  Consistency in practice is the key to resolving all of the afflictions.  Choose your practice and commit to it.  I’ve been practicing simple standing everyday as my consistency practice in the morning.  The posture is called Tadasana, and I do it every day, hopefully for ten minutes.  I haven’t made it there yet.  Sometimes the power of simple standing is so profound I question whether I am needed as a yoga teacher at all!  This is a resolution of asmita.

Perhaps some of these experiences are familiar to you:

It’s morning and you hop  out of bed ready to begin your daily yoga practice.  Two minutes into practice a deep craving for chocolate arises.  At a certain point it becomes so compelling that you abandon downward dog and head to the kitchen, even though you know that practicing the postures will mitigate your cravings.

Another day you sit down on your meditation cushion and begin to watch your breath.  Your silent reverie is shattered as  a bubble of anxiety about  a difficult conversation with your partner bursts open and floods your attention.  Try as you might, you cannot quell the eruption of memory and projection about the situation, even though you know that a few calm quiet breaths  will give you a more balanced perspective on the challenge.

You are really and truly happy.  As you look around your life, you see that you are surrounded by blessings. But, in the presence of others, you compare yourself to them and find yourself lacking.  Your home isn’t as luxurious or your spouse doesn’t behave like theirs does.   Every time this happens you find that your sense of self is deflated.

You have been at the top of your game for years in your chosen career when the tide shifts suddenly  and you find your role is no longer relevant.  As you go through the process of decision making about your future, you are plagued by the nagging sense that some critical piece of yourself is being  stripped away from you.

You are about to begin a new project at work.  It is a great opportunity and you are excited about it.  But nagging fear and insecurity disrupt your ability to focus on the project itself. 

You are offered a new project at work which is a great opportunity.  Your ego, rightfully it may seem, inflates.  In that state of inflation you inadvertently alienate a dear friend, a lover, or a colleague essential to the success of the project.

The person in the cubicle next to you at work has a tendency towards mild vulgarity.  Nothing far outside conventional boundaries, but you find yourself feeling squeamish in their presence, often going way out of your way to avoid making eye contact. 

As the years go by you experience despair about changes in your body.

You are given an opportunity for a great adventure: climbing a mountain, doing your first handstand or going on a first date with someone you really like.  You find that you are too overwhelmed with fear to fully participate.

Yoga is a success practice. The practices of yoga clear away the debris which keeps us from leading successful lives.  In my experience it is one of the world’s most consistently powerful tools for transformation.  It sometimes takes some time, but often happens quite quickly.   The success may not be visible or outwardly apparent to others, but consistent practices reliably bears the fruit of small inner victories.  Moment by moment the yoga practitioner acquires the skillful means to conquer the psychological afflictions  which keep them fettered and dis-empowered. Those small internal victories  are like bricks in a foundation for good living.

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, he summarizes the afflictions as:

Avidya (ignorance)  the experience of being submerged in and identified with the material.  Feeling worthy or unworthy based on what we own or the shape of our body is an example of being identified with the material.

Asmita (I am-ness)  the experience of seeing the world through mundane personal perception.  When our sense of being “right”  obscures the objective nature of a conflict, or when we become so strongly opinionated that we alienate others we are perceiving from a limited perspective.

Raga – Attachment – to call forth again and again a desire for an object which previously gave us pleasure. 

Dvesha –  Aversion – to repeatedly push away an object which previously caused us pain. 

Abinivesha – Fear of death – All fear emerges from the the fear of death. 

Afflictions is an ideal word, because you may notice that these painful  inner tendencies appear powerfully and abruptly at the most inconvenient times.   Sometimes they are experienced as torments, as though something external is hammering at us.

There is a beautiful story told about the Buddha’s awakening.  The Buddha, prior to his great awakening, was living in great austerity as a wondering sadhu or holy man.  One day when he  went to touch his belly he discovered that his body was so wasted away that he could touch his spine.  There was no flesh between the belly and spine.  At that moment he realized that he was off his path and that depriving himself to such an extreme was counterproductive to his mission to awaken.   The practices he’d been doing were not leading him to the truth he was seeking.   He walked away from those practices and committed to sitting under the bodhi tree until he awakened. “There must be a better way”.  During the night as he sat in meditation,  he was plagued by afflictions – ancient memories and profound self-reflections unfurled in his interior space.  At one point, Mara the demon, the ego himself, appeared, flinging sharp arrows at the peacefully sitting Buddha.  As those arrows neared the form of the Buddha, the sharp arrowheads transformed into flower blossoms, showering down upon him.     The Buddha understood that Mara the demon and the arrows he shot were not coming from outside of him, but were generated internally.  The practices of yoga, approached with consistency and awareness, empower us to manage our own minds, bodies and spirits, transforming the arrows of the afflictions into blossoms and blessings.

So, how do we do this?  Patanjali says that the kleshas, or afflictions, can be resolved through the committed effort to address them through discipline, self-awareness and letting go. 

The first step is to commit to a practice.  I suggest you begin with asana, or physical yoga postures.  Make the commitment manageable.  It is better to start with five minutes a day that you actually successfully complete than to make grand commitment of an hour which, in practice, is very difficult to do.   As you fulfill one level of commitment, expansion occurs fluidly on the strong foundation of commitment.  This is discipline in practice.

The second step is to develop awareness of the afflictions themselves.  One way to do this is to set any alarm to go off three, four or five times a day, and note the state of your mind when the alarm goes off. Are any of Patanjali’s affliction’s occurring when the alarm goes off? This is a practice which increases self-awareness.

Third, begin to discern if the triggers for the afflictions that you note in the alarm exercise are things you can change, or things you cannot change.  For the things that you can change, as part of the discipline process, take one step a day to change them.  For example, conflict about weight can be resolved by committing to one small painless adjustment.  As the shelter in place extended, I found myself putting on weight. I changed my grain portion from a third of a cup to a fourth of a cup, for every meal (I eat many whole grains).  I didn’t expect a difference, but it occurred, and I never felt hungry.  For things you cannot change practice just being spacious and not judging the situation, moment by moment.

Before you know it, you’ll notice that the affliction have less ability to disrupt you, and that you have more power to move forward in your life.

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तपः स्वाध्यायेश्वरप्रणिधानानि क्रियायोग:

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, an ancient yogic text compiled some 2000 years ago,  by sage Patanjali, enumerates specific actions  or practices which support the process of aligning with our true nature or what is sometimes called the “Higher self”. Aligning  with that true nature will always lead us to greater clarity, wisdom and empowerment.  Asana, or the physical yoga postures which we practice, are a small piece of that, and actually the positions themselves are influenced by the level of clarity which we have created through the practices which work on the mind and reveal the heart. Patanjali’s text is a compendium of theory, methods and results organized to foster depth and simplicity.  Each sutra or line is directed towards a single focus.  One key grouping of practices is identified in PYS – Sutra

2.1.  The sutra reads:

तपः स्वाध्यायेश्वरप्रणिधानानि क्रियायोगः ॥१॥

tapaḥ svādhyāy-eśvarapraṇidhānāni kriyā-yogaḥ ॥1॥

We know that these three apparently unrelated practices are related to one another because they are placed together in the text.  I reflect on them as a triangle.  A shift in one element of the triad will influence the other two.  A translation always reflects the experience and world view  of the translator.    For me, tapah (intensity, fire, desire) expresses as a strictly disciplined and heart felt mode of nurturing an intention which benefits both ourselves and others.    Sometimes this refers to an offering oneself and historically is associated with yogi’s placing themselves into penance or suffering to bring them closer to the divine.  My experience of yoga is more balanced.  Right now, we are all practicing tapah.  It’s April 2020 and the whole world is in lockdown in the wake of the corona virus.  While we can stay home with the intention to stay healthy, from the yogic perspective your overall result will be better if you stay home because you want everyone else to be healthy!  This is a reflection of tapasya…to give up something for love of the whole.  As the teaching in the Bhagavad Gita goes, no effort made in this way will ever be wasted.  Does it mean we will be rich and contented?  Not necessarily, but the deeper levels of fulfillment which are opened up through yogic practice nourish us in unique and powerful ways which add tremendous value to a life.  We could say giving up a little opens the door to a life well-lived.

Svadyaya, the second point of the triad, refers to the many modes of (S)(s)elf study.  The yogin comes to know their individual conditioning and personality  – the so called “small” self – through observation and analysis.  Through meditation, study of sacred texts and other yogic practices the yogin comes in contact with a larger experience of their consciousness.  This contrast fosters comparative study of our personality and our spirit, which yields discernment.  Discernment is a key to acting with wisdom in our lives, to sift through the subtle possibilities of our moment by moment decisions in order that we might always choose the most valuable option. 

The final point of this triad is ishvara pranidhanani which is translated as surrender or cultivating the willingness and receptivity to come into alignment with our higher self through attention , intention and action.  Practiced together, these three practices form the basis of the entire yoga practice  – and create a ground of taking actions which will bring us out of confusion and into clarity. 

In this moment, the world is shutdown in response to the threat of the corona virus.  That shutdown in itself forces us into a position of surrendering our personal will, making sacrifices for the larger whole and being present to ourselves in a new way. 

For many people this is precarious and unsettling.  Feelings we’ve been suppressing for decades may come bubbling up to the surface.  That is a result of the clarifying nature of this kind of restriction.  The yoga practice prescribes this as things to take on willingly, with discipline and intention so that we might use the moments of restriction to wake up rather than dig deeper into the murky sea of emotions and imaginings which govern us in ways which are frequently not to our advantage. 

By choosing to consciously and deliberately embrace this period of time as an opportunity to grow and transform into a new way of being we take that perception that we are victims of the virus, the government or the others we are in the household with, and we turn it into an inwardly empowering victory.  These inner victories are the seeds of powerful practice and the opportunity to create them through tapah, svadyaya and ishwara pranidhanani is present in every moment.

How to practice:

1.  Use your capacity to self-reflect as you go through your day.  Where do feelings of conflict arise?  Does the conflict emerge from some habitual way of being which is no longer functional?  Is there something (an expectation of your spouse, a craving to run out to the store for chocolate, a tendency to blame or take the easy way out) that you can respond to by taking a hard step or giving something up (tapah)?  What happens if you softening around the situation to receive what is already present, rather than what you might be wanting (ishwara pranidhanani)?  What happens if you stop and take a breath and turn inward?
   
   
2. On your yoga mat, what is it which surfaces a tangle of mind chatter or emotion?  Sometimes it’s a scary posture, sometimes it’s child’s pose.  Sometimes we can spend a great deal of time fluctuating around getting on the mat, or attending to the 10,000 other demands for our attention.  Once again, the triad is useful.  If you can’t get a moment of peace to practice, you can surrender into that experience, accepting it.   Getting up very early to practice is a common tapah which many mothers I know practice. Can you let go of doing a posture you are compulsively drawn to, or engage that posture which scares you a little?

TADA DRASHTUH SVARUPE-‘VASTHANAM .

(तदा द्रष्टुः स्वरूपेऽवस्थानम् )॥३॥

Then one stands in their true nature

Patanjali was a sage who lived about 2000 years ago.  He compiled a text about yoga known as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.  His text provides an overview of the yoga practices which were done at that time, together with very clear statements about the results one obtains as one becomes established in the practices.  As an overview, Patanjali tells us that yoga is a means by which we liberate ourselves from the fluctuations of the mind and become established in our true nature.  Historically, the experience of yoga, couched as it is in mysticism and esoteric techniques, has been depicted as a state of complete disconnection from the physical realm.  Ancient yogis would attain samadhi  or union and become more and more deeply absorbed in that state.  Others would gather around them to feel the energy…the resonance of their brain waves.  Those who attained that state were able to access levels of wisdom unattainable to those anchored in the material world by obligations.  This state of deep absorption has value.   But the times we live in call for high degrees of awareness, mastery and effective engagement.  While Patanjali’s text directs us towards the path of meditation, many of the techniques  explained in the text can be used to enhance our capacity to stay centered in the world around us.

This sutra, the third sutra in the text, references a state of mind, samadhi.  When samadhi occurs the sutra states, one resides in the true nature.  We are never actually separated from our true nature – but we seldom make our home.  That true nature is obscured by the fluctuations of the mind – the beliefs, thoughts, opinions, memories we have accumulated over lifetimes.  The state of union or yoga is not a state outside of ourselves  that we acquire.  It’s a buried treasure.

Perhaps you experience yourself as “not good enough”.  Too fat, too skinny, too old, too young.  We are just never enough!!  That internal dialogue, those fluctuations of the mind, are running like the constant hum of cars driving by on a busy street.  This constant noise obscures the inner peace within which we come to know ourselves as perfect, whole and complete. The experience of our wholeness is a restoration of a true understanding of ourselves in all our extraordinary beauty.

A practice:

1.  Upon waking, make a commitment that five times a day you will remember the sutra, and whenever possible that you will note every time that dialogue of self-deprecation begins.   When you catch yourself in self-deprecation, stop, and silently say to your “my true nature is good (beautiful, wise, knowing, abundant – whatever attribute you believe you are lacking)”. 

• The practice is a way to begin unplugging from external sources of information and tuning in to your own inner wisdom.  For this reason, I recommend that you not use your phone or computer to remember the sutra.  It’s easy for our minds to reach out and become absorbed in our phones (or computers or televisions), and this exercise builds our capacity to shift gears from external to internal.

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Happy treasure hunting!

© NUllmann not for copying or redistribution