Sometimes I get asked the question “Why do I keep attracting people/situations like this into my life?”. Usually this question is posed when the asker of the question is confronted with something that is undesirable and/or challenging. Have you ever found yourself repeatedly living out familiar scenarios only to have the characters change? The familiar pattern of difficultly that pushes your buttons and sends you over the edge screaming, “Why does this always happen to me?”
We have repeated patterns of behavior, our inherent default program, that we step into time and time again. In the yoga framework these patterns or “brain ruts” are known as samskaras. It is thought that when we repeat the same choices we deepen these brain ruts. Over the years, these ruts become deeper and more established, until we recognize that we seek something to change. In order for the change to occur, we first need to be conscious of the behavior.
This is where our yogic path provides us with the many tools to begin to awaken to those beliefs and choices and allows us to ask the question, “Is this serving me? Is this supportive of who I am? Is this how I am choosing to be in the world?”. Things won’t change unless we choose them to do so. And this means that we have to pay attention to the sometimes very subtle cues that lead us into the same brain rut. We do have the power to create new samskaras by making consciously different choices.
More specifically we learn to pay attention to the quieter spaces in between all the noisy thoughts that crowd out intropsection. If we fill our days and nights with too many things to do or we clutter our minds with distractions of gossip, worry or attachment it makes it really difficult to recognize that our patterns, although familiar and falsely permanent, can be changed.
For example, take the driver who frequently displays road rage. They might be driving along and someone cuts them off or won’t let them in. Wham…it’s as if a switch has been flipped. They begin cursing, giving all others the clenched fist or “the bird” to help them feel vindicated. The “I’ll show them” attitude might feel righteous in the moment, but what if every time somebody cuts them off or won’t let them in, they react this way? Is that still serving them? Are they choosing to live their lives from a place of anger? And does it trickle into other scenarios so the person who has 16 items in the 15 item express lane triggers the same reaction?
Yoga teaches us to look at the lesson that lies within. It teaches us to ask the question, “Why do I react this way?” and “What is this teaching me?” For the road rager, the answer might be that the reaction is not about other drivers but by some unfulfilled need in another aspect of their lives. That they have issues around anger and that their practice is one of patience and compassion.
When we’re faced with greater challenges such as natural disaster, the death of someone close or tough economic times we can ask the same questions rather than stepping into the familiar of “Why me?” and ask, “Why not me? What am I meant to learn from all of this?”
OK grasshoppers…see what lessons are lying within you this week?
