Does reading other people's blog posts count as writing?
(Please don't answer that).
I am on a writing regiment. I have assigned myself a certain number of hours a day to write, and for the most part it has been swimmingly easy. On many days it goes by so quickly I think, well, shoot...I could double this. But on other days, (today, for instance), the allotted time feels like a pitch-y cavern laid out in front of me. One that I desperately want to avoid. And so, as my designated start time approaches I will suddenly find myself accomplishing a whole list of very necessary tasks that, no, can not be done at any other moment except this one. Ordering that face wash I've run out of. Checking my spam email for stray job offers, giant checks, missives from long-lost friends. Putting laundry in. Taking laundry out. Making a list of all the other very necessary tasks that I ought to get done at least that day, if not right this very minute.
And the time ticks by.
Procrastination, I believe they call this. (Who me? No...I'm just being productive in other ways.) In The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali he lists procrastination as one of the nine obstacles to practice. He doesn't call it procrastination, in the Sutras it's referred to as styana, or self-defeat. Self-defeat. As in, I have made an agreement with myself that I'm going to do this thing that I want to do, that's important to me, that makes me feel better in the doing of it, but I--the other I, the other half of this contracted pair--am going to go ahead and disobey that agreement, ruining the whole plan from the outset.
In the midst of procrastination, both of these I's are present. If they weren't, there would be no conflict, right? It wouldn't be an uncomfortable state. The problem with procrastination, this styana, this self-defeat, is that both the you who made the decision to take the action and the you who now doesn't want (for whatever reason) to take said action, are present. And they are duking it out.
This to me seems to be at the heart of all personal conflict. There is the you that wants what's best, and there is the you that doesn't want to comply, or doesn't think she's capable of complying, or doesn't think she's worthy of complying, and those two you's are at war. Even the term "self-defeat" implies that there is a SELF (a bigger self, a she-who-knows-best-eth) and then there is that which defeats the self. These two forces are not equal--there is truth, and then the destruction of it. There is me, and then all the crap I do to get in my way.
And what I love about this, and the philosophies of yoga at a whole, is that the basis of understanding, the hypothesis is that what is underneath, what rises up when we stop doing all of the stuff we do to get in our own way--is good. That the big Self, is good. And contains in her all of the truth that we're after and the growth we're seeking and all of it. And that there is not, then, some perfect action that we have to take, all we have to do is stop defeating her. Allow her to be. Stop procrastinating. And see what happens...
