{"id":166,"date":"2013-05-17T09:07:41","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T16:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/?p=166"},"modified":"2013-05-17T09:07:41","modified_gmt":"2013-05-17T16:07:41","slug":"on-struggle-and-bliss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slowbloom.com\/blog\/2013\/05\/on-struggle-and-bliss\/","title":{"rendered":"On Struggle and Bliss"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mandala\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For the last two months my yoga teacher Rainey<\/a> was using the koshas<\/a> as the lens for our yoga practice. The idea is that there are five of these sheaths or layers, and the innermost one is the anandamayakosha<\/em>. Ananda is often translated as “bliss”, which I find very difficult to access. I will get back to this in a moment. Rainey likes to translate it as “unreasonable joy” – that is, joy that is unbounded, unconditional, without any cause. And even that is hard for me to get to. I’ve been working with the idea of satisfaction<\/em>, rather than bliss, joy, or happiness, because it’s much easier for me to be clear about whether or not I’m satisfied. And often, satisfaction brings contentment, which is a flavor of happiness\/joy\/bliss. I love that in French one says Je suis contente<\/i> to say, “I am happy.”<\/p>\n

That is the foundation. Rainey suggested at the beginning of a class what we might do to reveal that innermost kosha, so that it remained undiminished<\/em>. I have been working the last several weeks on noticing when I’m telling stories (which are often lies) about my own experience. I often skip feeling the emotion and go right into interpretation and storytelling, which ironically has the effect of keeping me in that feeling (and is often downright unpleasant). I realized that when I can let go of the story about the feeling and just experience the feeling, it dissolves rather quickly. Pema Chodron explains it this way:<\/p>\n

When you give your full attention to your knee or your back or your head\u2014whatever hurts\u2014and drop the good\/bad, right\/wrong story line and simply experience the pain directly for even a short time, then your ideas about the pain, and often the pain itself, will dissolve. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is the stories I tell myself that create the struggle (c.f. first paragraph on “bliss”). When Rainey said undiminished<\/em>, I heard in my mind undefined<\/em>. Can I just let my experience be, without telling any stories around it? And can I find that satisfying? And will that reveal that inner joy\/satisfaction\/bliss that much more?<\/p>\n

How about you?<\/p>\n

\"Share<\/a>