Moving Forward in the New Year

Welcome to Season 3 of SwamiJi the OG. It’s the beginning of a New Year and today I’ll discuss how to move forward into 2022 with a sense of purpose and potentiality.

I keep hearing so many people wishing each other a Happy New Year with a thin layer of hope but often with an undercurrent of dread, adding, “After all it can’t get any worse!” 

Yes, we are still immersed in the Covid pandemic, but rather than continually talking about things “getting back to normal” it’s time to realize that the concept of what is “normal” is always changing and the lessons we are meant to learn are essential to our progress and evolution as humans.

After all, what has been “normal” in the past would not be considered “normal” anymore. For example, at one time, bloodletting was a medical procedure that was normal, owning another human being was normal, child labor was normal, women existed only to please their mate and have babies was normal – I’m sure you can think of many less dramatic examples. Sending letters instead of emails? Phoning instead of texting or zooming, even just showing up to visit with someone in person? If you notice even these “antiquated” ideas of “normal” are still “normal” in some parts of the world!

It’s important to remember that normalcy has to do with our own culture, our own family, our own job – all of the world that exists around us and our perspective of that world determines our perception of “normal.”

What makes us believe a situation is normal or not normal? From a physical view, pain is abnormal. It makes us take notice that something is not right. It’s the body’s signal to reevaluate. Physical pain gets our attention. Energetically, overwhelming fatigue is abnormal. When we feel it, we take notice that we didn’t sleep well, or we have overextended our physical capacity in some way. Our inability to respond to our daily activities gets our attention. But when we feel mental distress, we are more inclined to look outside ourselves, our own patterns and behaviors, and try to find the answer by searching for what the world is doing to us. But in the same way as physical and energetic pain, when we feel mental distress, we should realize that we need to look at our patterns and behaviors because we have NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION! 

Instead, we are seeking comfort to release us from our discomfort. We are seeking to return to our comfort zone. Or at least how we remember our comfort zone. In our remembrance we are nostalgic for comfort, or at least the parts of our lives that didn’t trigger discomfort. Nostalgia is “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” We tend to almost romanticize our previous experiences. We look back with rose tinted glasses.

But what we remember as “normal” might not be what our neighbor was experiencing. What we are seeking is that return to comfort, and we seek feedback from others to confirm our perspective. Remember when we……(insert memory such as didn’t have to wear masks or keep social distance.)

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing wrong with seeking a certain level of comfort, but it’s important to realize that comfort can be like rocking ourselves to sleep. We can lose touch with our deeper needs. We can lose touch with the needs of others. And we can stop “growing” the capacity of resilience that we may need in the future.

My point is that life is constantly changing and in flux. The term in physics is entropy which can be applied to life. Entropy is simply a measure of random disorder and affects all aspects of our daily lives. Left unchecked random disorder increases over time. Energy disperses, and systems may dissolve into chaos. And when this happens, we may find that we are unprepared.

True growth as a human does not normally happen when one only exists in one’s comfort zone. It’s the challenges, the chaos that awakens us from our slumber and forces us to develop new ways of looking at life around us or succumb to disordered thinking processes. These thought processes may manifest as denial, anger, anxiety, depression, fear, envy – all emotions of the human condition that we suppress in our comfortable, “normal” life because we have been conditioned to respond to life around us in a patterned way. But this pattern has been disrupted!

In yoga we call these patterned responses samskaras and they are a result of our conditioning first as a child from our family, then from our schools, then from our peers, from our jobs, etc. We become conditioned to be able to respond in a way that we have found “works for us” at some level and over time it has become automatic. We don’t even have to think about it.

But in yoga we are asked to see our thoughts. To learn to recognize our patterns. To be able to move forward from a place of intention rather than automation. In yoga, we are asked to know our authentic self. Not the person who is relying on feedback that comes from wearing a variety of masks – the gender mask, the relationship mask such as mother, father, child, wife, husband, the employee or boss mask, etc. Think about it. How many masks do you wear in your life? Who are you…really? 

The process of coming to know your authentic self is a challenge. Most of us have come to rely on the comfort of being our masked self and have lost touch with our inner sense of being just who we truly are. 

The process of turning our focus from the world around us and bringing our awareness to our behaviors, our thoughts, our feelings and searching for the root cause that has supported these aspects of our being, is the path of yoga. 

I know that in our culture, most think of yoga as a physical practice to get in shape, but classical yoga asks more of you. It asks that you become a better version of who at all levels of being. This requires taking time to be still, to be aware, to witness the endless stream of thoughts and to reflect on the nature of the mind’s incessant manifestations. 

A good place to start is to find a comfortable sitting position and close your eyes. But not if you’re driving while listening! Then take a few slow, deep breaths and begin to watch whatever thoughts come up. Don’t judge. Imagine you are with a friend, and you are listening to what they are saying. Cultivate that level of detachment from your own thoughts. Just listen. Do this for a few minutes and then take another slow, deep breath and open your eyes. This is a good beginning. If possible do it a couple of times within the day. After all, we let the mind do its own thing without our awareness many, many hours each day, so why not spend a few minutes becoming aware?

If you would like a more guided practice, I would suggest looking back through previous episodes to the BONUS practice episode of Antar Mouna. This translates as Inner Silence, but as we know that’s pretty much out of reach. Instead, you will start the process of developing your awareness and begin to see who you might be. It will help you see the patterns and the conditioning that has brought you to where you are. Unless you can see where you are at this time, how will you change and adapt to the challenges of life? 

I began this “work” over 20 years ago. In the beginning, it was hard to be still and even harder to see all of the crap in my mind! OMG! But I persevered and experienced breakthroughs and insights right along with frustration and disappointment. With time, I’ve learned a lot about myself – my strengths, my weaknesses, my aims in life as well as my needs. And in doing so I am able to live my life with more contentment, acceptance and love.

It’s a new year. Time will pass. Why not make the most of it?