Thoughts on Wishing, and How Should it Be?

Good vibes only? 

We’ve all seen them: the t-shirts and yoga tanks espousing a ‘good vibes only’ attitude. The implication: no one can bring us down. I have no time for your negativity. I’m my own bubble of happiness and pma (positive mental attitude). When we see them (in the best of times, and especially now), the cynics among us consider snarky holiday cards and witty comebacks. Those in deep suffering consider the difficulty they’re having getting out of bed, and good vibes only feels like a distant state. We hear that happiness and gratitude are muscles; we must exercise them. A useful analogy to a point, but it implies a kind of disciplining. It drops us into a discourse of no pain, no gain, at the least, and for many others, a spiral of shame and guilt when grief and discontentment are prevailing emotional experiences. What happens when that positive mental attitude is not available? 

I noticed this in myself recently. I could not find a positive thought. The kicker for me was the recent death of Rama Jyoti Vernon, a beloved yoga teacher to many. I had the great gift of studying with her, ever so briefly, a few years ago. Her wisdom and presence had recently come back into my teaching in a bigger way. She didn’t know it, but I had begun to devote more and more time to her teaching, and her writing had begun to exert a large influence on my own teaching (infusing my dharma talks, my sequencing choices, etc.). She died unexpectedly (for me), and I feel it as a deep loss. Contentment (santosha) is harder work right now, and I’m moved by Nicolai Bachman’s missive that contentment is not stagnant, precisely because of the fluidity of life. That point is more resonant than ever: if there’s anything common to people’s experiences in 2020, it is moving goalposts, shifting sands, unfirm ground. 

So I've been doing my study around these feelings, guided by one of the mantra practices I suggested last month. Following Judith Lasater's guidance, I've been asking: how should it be? This is a way of getting at my own expectations, my own wishes, my own inability to sit with the present.  As I ask the question in meditation, as things arise, I can gently (gently) express back to the void, my attachment to something other than what is.

The experience of death is perhaps the easiest place where we can ask this question. Hardly ever the easiest experience, but here, it is simple. If we ask, how should it be?, we can answer quite clearly: our loved one, our teacher, our beloved pet, our miscarried child...they should be with us. They should be alive. We may notice discontent, deep grief, sadness, an inability to find gratitude. And the true sense of cultivating the opposite: a positive mental attitude, gratitude, contentment, may be too far elusive. So we make the first step: we consider the opposite of the situation. They should be alive: this is what should be, what I expected, what I wanted. This is the thing, the situation, the person to which I was attached, to whose permanence I was deeply wedded. And Bachman reminds us that this noticing is the first step.

One of the beautiful gifts of the daily yoga practice is that we’re counselled to just notice (as we are in many other related mindfulness practices). Just noticing is practicing. Some days, that’s enough. Making a heartfelt inquiry into your own ‘shoulds’ takes you to your expectations, your attachments and aversions (raga, and dvesa): a particular holiday gathering; a loved one’s behavior; a relationship with your children; your job. How should it be? It can take us to thoughts about political life: there should be a social safety net; we should offer nationalized healthcare. Thoughts about the present: I should get along with my sister. And the past: I should not be so angry. And for a while, noticing is enough. It may be that we stop there--that noticing was the point.

With patient attentiveness, there may also arise a point of action: your next right step (here we notice questions of karma and dharma). You might simply ask a loved one for a little more space around your grief: communicating your unmet expectations as a deep source of your grief is a good way to ask people for more time to foster contentment and equanimity. “I just thought my mother would be here this Christmas.” Somewhere, most of us understand this experience of unmet expectations and attachments to things that ultimately are impermanent. I thought I would still have this job, etc. The teaching wouldn’t be such an integral part of so many religious and philosophical traditions if it were otherwise….

This ‘seeing’ the opposite is not what most commentators consider pratipaksha bhavanam, but it has been a helpful place to start when gratitude and contentment seem elusive. Georg Feuerstein notes that opposition is fundamental to each part of yoga’s eight-limbed path. This is a great read if you want to go more deeply into another way to extend this teaching from sutra 2.33.

Too many of us are waking up feeling beaten, stuck, stagnant, stymied. How should it be? What was I expecting? Practice the seeing. Stay gently with what you witness. Let this be your yoga practice for these difficult days, and may your yoga nourish you. 

Suggestions for further starting points: 

BKS Iyengar, Light on the Yoga Sutras (sutra 2.33 commentary, pp. 145-147).

Nischala Joy Devi, The Secret Power of Yoga (sutra 2.33 commentary, pp. 171-173).

Olga Kabel, “Pratipaksha bhavana: the most powerful tool of mind control and emotional regulation”

Pema Chodron, “Good Medicine: How to Turn Pain into Compassion with Tonglen Meditation”

Georg Feuerstein, “Cultivating the Opposite Thought: The Most Challenging Inversion in your Practice.”