"Yoga practice is like an obstacle race; many obstructions are purposely put on the way for us to pass through. They are there to make us understand and express our own capacities. We all have that strength, but we don't seem to know it."
- Sri Swami Satchidananda
This morning, facing the blank page, I have to take it to the books.
This morning, in the words of John Patrick Shanley: "I have doubts. I have such doubts."
Not about you, dear readers. And not about the progressive march of Spring, and not about the tea in my cup and not about the breath in my body and not about my lovely husband and not about my sweet friends, so many of whom are walking these days into big life changes...but about other things. Things relating to practice (of all kinds). Things relating to future and money and art and the big P.: Purpose.
Upon opening this blank page this AM and staring, un-impassioned, into its depths, I could feel only the gnawing of doubt. Knowing that something had to be done, if I wasn't going to waste the next two hours hemming and hawing and sewing and clawing...I typed "doubt" and "yoga" into the magic 8 ball of Google.
I have doubted my entire life. When I was younger my doubt expressed itself in dozens of moves, dozens of half-fledged relationships, dozens of days spent agonizing about what I had done and should do and would, from now on, obviously have to do differently. In my adulthood, my doubt is less destructive. Nowadays you can find it in my dozens of half-read books, my dozens of half-finished scripts, and the dozens of days spent agonizing about what I have done and should do and will, from now on, obviously do differently.
(So, that part hasn't changed.)
I can now, after being the bedfellow of my own doubt for these many years, watch myself ride the roller coaster of it and it's aftermath with so much more (awful) clarity. And it looks like this: choose goal (big or small), progress down path toward goal, feel inspired, talk too much about how inspiring and how close said goal is, get nearly to goal...suddenly realize that goal maybe is not the goal I should be going after, after all...suddenly realize there is DIFFERENT goal which is much more important...kick myself for wasting all of this time on the wrong goal...throw progress toward former goal into the fire of a tearful meldown...and repeat.
There is, of course, a sutra about doubt.
(There is a sutra about everything.) It is one I'm familiar with...a series of sutras, actually...about the obstacles to practice and their remedy. These obstacles (of which doubt, samsaya, is one) are the universal distractions, the most common obstacles to the spiritual practice...but I'm going to venture a guess here and say that these are actually the most common obstacles to, um, everything.
"Disease, dullness, doubt, carelessness, laziness, sensuality, false perception, failure to reach firm ground and slipping from the ground gained--these distractions of the mind-stuff are the obstacles."
(Note: I think "sensuality" in this case, is about the tendency to dive into the more sensory pursuits in the face of all these other distractions. Sensory like television. Sensory like another slice of red velvet cake.)
What I love so much about this is the mention of both, "failure to reach firm ground" and "slipping from the ground gained"...I mean, come on! Seriously, Patanjali...I freaking love you. Slipping from the ground gained. Failure to reach that ground in the first place. Our job, then, is not just to establish a ground underneath our feet, it is to stay there, and to not let all these other things...this doubt, this competition, this fear, this boredom...to not let any of it knock us from the ground once gained.
I came across a really lovely little story (my favorite kind--about a mischievous guru) while doing my internet-ing about doubt. And it goes like this. A student was practicing with a guru, studying with him, for many years. But the student became frustrated and bored and doubtful of the whole experience...what was this thing he was working so hard at, anyhow? And one day the (mischievous) guru snuck up on the student while he was taking his bath, grabbed the student from behind and held his head under the water until he was nearly drowning. Just before the student was about to lose consciousness, the guru released his head and he came back to the surface sputtering, gasping for breath.
The guru just looked at the student and said, "you must be desperate for spiritual practice...like you are now desperate for air."
Um. Yes.
Doubt is like...doubt is like a reality star sunbathing on an air mattress while a swim race is taking place. Doubt is like wearing sunglasses indoors. Doubt is a whiny teenager. Can you imagine being underwater, close to running short of breath and just shrugging your shoulders...taking a few moments to decide whether or not you reeeeeeeeally want to be above the surface? No. In the absence of doubt, you do. You act. You get yourself to the surface of that water and you suck in some air, dang it.
So, why then, is it so easy to fall off the path? Why is it so easy to lose that ever loving ground and find yourself, breathless, once again under the waves.
Satchidananda's commentary on this is as awesome as always...he speaks about how we can take comfort in the fact that we are not alone in these distractions, that they are actually a part of the process of growth. "We seem to need to be challenged and tested," he says, "in order to understand our own capacities. In fact, that is the natural law. If a river just flows easily, the water in the river does not express its power. But once you put an obstacle to the flow by constructing a dam, then you can see its strength in the form of tremendous electrical power.
So, if you are doubting today, or just feel that you have lost sight of the ground, know this: you are not alone, AND, you do not have to let doubt drag you under. Fight your way back to the surface, take a big breath, and carry on. And, yes, I will do that too.
