Our Stories - meditating on Samskaras
A little while ago I felt myself so-o dragged along by one of my old, old stories. Before I knew it I was really feeling quite fearful, sure I was going to fail. And with the thoughts "I'll never be able to do this" going 'round and 'round in my head, a very vivid picture started to form in my mind. I could clearly imagine things coming to a pretty sticky end. :)
I'm sure you're familiar with that kind of scenario, but maybe in a different guise: you know, the kind of stories which run around in our heads, in the background, our mental chatter which tells us about who we are, what we need, what we steer clear of, what we can or can't do.
Call it a story, or call it a habit or a pattern. Or perhaps it shows up as an emotional or mental addiction. A situation triggers it: someone says or does something that pushes your buttons: a gesture or a word, and before you know it, you've reacted to a situation or person in the way you have always done. For some people these stories play out over and over and over again for their entire life.
In meditation (and in yoga) we call this 'habit energy' or samskaras and we learn to notice these patterns so we can change them if we feel we need to.
We all move through stories all day, every day. We all have stories, or samskaras. Every action we take creates future samskaras. Based on our experiences, happy or unhappy, either positive or negative samskaras will always exist for us. Those stories are what makes up our personality. It’s the way we relate to our own life and to the stories of those around us. What this means is that this meditation on samskaras - as it is with everything in meditation - is not to get rid of anything. It's not about whether or not we have stories or samskaras – it’s about the awareness of those stories and how they play out in our life, so we can edit it if we need to.
After this recent experience, I thought it would be interesting to share the steps we go through when we are dragged along or “we become one” with our samskaras:
Because our mind is dualistic, automatically our mind splits things into two: good or bad. When it's good, we like to keep it, when it's bad, we tend to turn away from it, such as with strong emotions when they arise.
However, when we sit still and look at strong emotions, we may recognise that the emotions alone are simply strong energy, and the energy itself is not a problem. The energy will move through us if we just leave it alone.
It’s the mental chatter surrounding this strong energy which causes the upset. We get distracted or derailed by our thoughts or associations with previous similar experiences. A situation arises, and the next thing you know, we become fearful or sad, or we experience anger. Perhaps we feel lonely, ashamed or guilty. The mental chatter with which we surround that emotion is what causes us to react in a certain way: this is what we mean by habit energy, or samskaras.
Pema Chodron talks about our emotions: "emotions are like the stone thrown into the water, without the rings. An emotion, without the story, is immediate, sharp, and raw. The direct experience of the emotion creates no ripples. But with the story line, the ripples get bigger and bigger and go out farther and farther, and actually turn into waves and hurricane-velocity winds."
Trungpa Rinpoche, a Buddhist monk, once explained our samskaras and emotions like this:
"Emotions are composed of energy which can be likened to water.
And our dualistic throught process, which could be likened to colour or paint.
When energy and thought are mixed together, they become vivid and colourful emotions.
Concept gives the energy a particular location, a sense of relationship, which makes emotions vivid and strong. Fundamentally, the reason emotions are uncomfortable, painful, frustrating is that our relationship to the emotions are not quite clear.”
If we use our meditation practice to turn inwards, pause and analyse the colourful painting we create, we may get a sense of our samskara, the strong energy which underpins our story. Perhaps we can even feel it in the body: A clenched stomach, a fast-beating heart, quicker breath.
If we can use our meditation training to separate the emotion energy from the mental chatter, sitting with just the energy, you may have a very interesting experience: the emotion loses its power completely: it's as if it just melts away. Your ego melts away. Then we may recognise that we don’t HAVE to react the way we do, or have done in the past.
For instance, if the automatic reaction is anger, instead of reacting in anger we could pause and consider whether anger is the appropriate response. We may decide it is the correct response. Or we may decide it isn't. Either way, it's a considered response rather than a reaction.
If we can gently sit with our samskaras for a while, we may find it possible to ask ourself some kind and intelligent questions: Where does this habit energy come from? Why is this reaction happening to me? What does this pattern have to tell me?
Of course, it's not always easy to sit with disturbing or uncomfortable stuff. Generally we tend to shy away from it because it is uncomfortable. We don't like it. We much prefer the easy stuff: the comfortable, the sweet, the orderly. However, sometimes, in order to move past something, we have to plough right through it. It takes courage to want to change. And it takes fearlessness to really sit with difficult things, to churn things up and spit them out. :)
Once we begin to understand how samskaras can affect us in our daily life, and how our underlying patterns and habit energy can cause us great discomfort and unpleasantness, we will usually find it much easier to sit with our difficult emotions. We learn to tolerate them and learn to experience or feel sensations such as sadness, anger, fear or embarrassment without sliding into our old habit energy and reacting in our old way.
If we can study our samskaras from a gentle, meditative space of light curiosity, a space of compassion, the process can be quite therapeutic, interesting and powerful.
Have a wonderful week.
Mx
_/\_
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