Dvesa: aversion
“Do not allow past experiences to be imprinted on your mind. Perform asanas each time with a fresh mind and a fresh approach.” B.K.S. Iyengar, “Iyengar, His Life and Work,” p. 499
“Aversion, dvesa, after all, is the flip side of the same coin as attachment. When we resist or resent something, it is because of a remembrance that this thing caused us pain in the past.” Edwin Bryant, “Yoga Sutrays of Patanjali.” p.190
The first few times I was taught setubandha in class we did it over some low benches in the Parker room at the Ann Arbor Y. I really thought my upper back would break. I most certainly wasn’t eager to practice that pose for years. Gradually of course I got more movement in my back and learned how to do the pose and the resistance to practicing it dissolved. But over and over through the years I have had to learn the same lesson, that I avoid, often by means of ignoring a condition the necessity of coming to terms with an issue, a blockage, the need to change.
“Aversion (dvesa) is the opposite side of attachment (raga). It is a repulsion that leads to enmity and hate, like the same poles of two magnets pushing away from each other. Again it is based on superficialities. My essence cannot hate your essence, because they are the same. I may deplore your behavior, does that mean I should hate my open soul, hate the divinity within? Of course not. I should correct my behavior. Again it is ignorance (avidya) that plays the puppet master and sows confusion. If we conflate what people do with who they are in their deepest origin, we lock ourselves into an adversarial and aggressive crouch, an unending conflict.” B.K.S. Iyengar, “Light on Life.” p 195
“I was sad all day, and why not. There I was, books piled on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words falling off my tongue.
The robins had been a long time singing, and now it was beginning to rain.
What are we sure of? Happiness isn’t a town on a map, or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work ongoing. Which is not likely to be the trifling around with a poem.
Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard were full of lively fragrance.
You have had days like this, no doubt. And wasn’t it wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a moment!
As for myself. I swung the door open. And there was the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life. Mary Oliver, “Work, Sometimes” from “New & Selected Poems, Vol 2,” p.6
I find myself confronting this klesa as if it were my special affliction these days. I know it is not, but I am afraid I am growing rather attached to the idea. Ah yes, I think, I’m procrastinating again, avoiding what I need to be doing and spend some time thinking about it instead of acting. I’m learning to overcome it little by little, using what pranayama has taught me, and what I learned from a recent episode with a severe vertigo. Watch each part of one breath at a time and that way it goes by and time proceeds. Or in the case of procrastinating, begin in very small increments, finish one before contemplating the next, take pleasure in the process (or at least measure the process as you go) and proceed in that manner. In that way the insurmountable becomes surmountable. When I am trying to build up stamina I don’t think about how long I want to eventually stay, but I focus on the quality of each moment. If I want to deepen a pose I focus on the parts that resist and work to understand the resistance and look for places I can create a balance rather on focusing on a picture of the entire pose. In this way the parts become the whole.
In theory this works and I am slowly trying to make it my ‘go to’ habit instead of procrastination being the habit.
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