Samskāras - those tricky habits and afflictions that keep us stuck

Let’s talk about samskāras, those tricky habits and afflictions that prevent us from making permanent positive change in our lives.

It is difficult isn’t it. You have seen the pattern. You know the changes you need to make. You have the intention. And it starts off really well. You try and make different choices, avoid the pitfalls. But before you know it, you’re back where you started all over again.

Life is sometimes like a game of snakes and ladders.

But, equally, we can make changes, so that the choices we make result in a different outcome and we experience greater inner freedom, less bound by what has happened previously - we take more ladders, less snakes.

It is important to remember though, that there are no mistakes. Often we give ourselves a really hard time for thinking we have messed up and/or failed, and we live with regret, wishing we had made different choices. But the realty is, we chose as we did, because of our level of consciousness and discernment at that time.

So we need to let ourselves off the hook and appreciate that - at least from a Tantric perspective - our perceived mistakes and failures become advantages when regarded as growth opportunities. However this is not to say that the process isn’t painful and it is understandable that we may wish to try and refine and improve our ability to make more beneficial choices from the outset and move more easily along our path.

So why is this so difficult?

Well our intellect and discernment (known as buddhi in yogic philosophy) - our ability to make more empowering and aligned choices - is impaired by samskarās, otherwise known as the subliminal impressions of past experiences.

Put simply, a samskāra is an impression, like a well worn track on a dirt road, where the wheels of the vehicles have made a very clear indentation from repeated use. Or a deep footprint in the sand at the beach.

With the first example, when it rains, the water will follow the same path and collect in the indentations along the path, it doesn’t drain off consistently along the track. In the second example, when the tide comes in and the water flows over the footprints, it will flow differently than if the sand was perfectly smooth.

And so it is that when the energy of the world flows through your mind - when life happens - it is affected by the deep impressions of past experiences (the tracks and footprints) that are lodged there, and this will have an effect on your experience of life in any one moment.

This is the reason we each experience the same situation differently, because it all depends on what has happened to us previously and the nature of our dirt tracks or footprints.

Caution is therefore required, because based on our past experiences, we formulate projections and make assumptions that are more often than not misaligned with the reality of the present moment. That is to say, we don’t see reality clearly because it is tainted by what has happened to us previously - we add bias and create stories that are not actually based on what is really and truly happening. In fact we can create such crazy stories that we can send ourselves quite mad in our misperception of reality.

You see, our brains are really good at pattern matching, too good at times, because even a very superficial resemblance of the current situation to a past situation will cause us to unconsciously assume that the present is like the past in most of its details.

This act of unconsciously projecting the past onto the present is the main reason that we taint our perspective of reality, that we don’t see clearly the present moment, and are unable then of making good choices - we slide down the snake rather than climbing up the ladder.

Thus, the presence of samskāras impairs the natural ability of the buddhi (capacity of intellect and discernment) to discern what is beneficial for is and what is not.

And just to make it clear, this is the reason that we don’t always make choices which are in our best interests. Because we don’t see the situation clearly and accurately, we often react, based on past experience and the trauma and discomfort we have felt previously, and are keen to avoid again.

And the trouble is, the more we keep on making the same unhelpful choices, the deeper the track or footprints become, and the more we keep getting stuck.

As Christopher Wallis writes, “The spiritual path is very much about developing clear vision and cultivating the ability to see things as they really are. In classical yoga philosophy, the practices of yoga (especially meditation) have the primary purpose of dissolving the samskāras, these impressions, in order to bring about this clear vision, and the clear discernment that results from it”.

Imagine a dirty mirror. When, through yoga, the mirror of the mind becomes clear - our buddhi is clear, our ability to see things actually as they are, without being tainted by past experiences and impressions (samskāras) - it can perfectly reflect the light of our divine self.

Thus, the more we practice yoga, the more accurate our intuition and discernment becomes.

This is because when we come up against our patterns, we might find a tiny pause, and start to notice them for what they are, before we get caught up in them. We might call this ‘being triggered’.

We all get triggered at times. Something happens and suddenly you don’t feel so good. Your mind has recognised a pattern. This is what the mind does. It tries to keep us safe. So it is constantly scanning for signs of unsafely. It is keen to avoid what has happened previously.

Some have lived in households where communication and emotional intelligence has been poor and life has been lived through volatility and attempting to read people’s moods and emotional states, to avoid confrontation and aggressive outbursts. This can lead to hyper vigilance. It can also cause us to see things which don’t exist.

Furthermore, some have suffered trauma to the extent that the mind can be hyper vigilant, and cause an underlying feeling of anxious fairly much all the time. The mind is constantly scanning for trouble, for a repetition of the causative factor to the trauma whether that be violence, injury, accident, bullying the loss of someone loved and/or betrayal etc.

Then life happens and we get triggered. The water collects in the track or turns murky over the footprint. Then we don’t feel so good. So we do what we always do. It is a path well travelled, a track and foot print well trodden. We react to the situation based on our usual patterning.

It is this that we need to change. But it takes work. And life will keep triggering us until we get it. This is the reason we sometimes feel like we are playing a game of snakes and ladders. We feel we are making good progress, then something happens and we react the way we have always done and we are back where we started all over again. Or just as worse - we feel stuck.

This is the reason that we keep ending up in the same dissatisfying jobs and relationships, that we keep stumbling up against the same old mindset of not liking ourselves and feeling insecure, and the reason we keep eating all the foods we know we shouldn’t, or drinking too much wine, or whatever it is that we do, have always done, that we keep repeating our old patterns in all different situations over and over again.

Until we don’t. Until we work with our samskāras to positively change them. But before we can do that we have to know what they are = to understand the foundation of our triggers - to be able to recognise them and choose differently.

Incidentally, we cannot fill in the tracks or the footprints, but we can make new tracks and new footprints that take us in a more conscious and positive direction. This is the bit that requires effort.

Sometimes people think great yoga masters can read minds and have other psychic abilities, but the reality is that they just see life much more clearly than most - they have less obstructions in their ability to see reality as it actually is, untainted by past impressions.

Thus someone with a purified buddhi free of samskāras, can always see the most beneficial course of action in any given situation, giving s/he power to change situations.

So the key, other than getting on our mat and practising yoga, is to figure out our samskāras, our patterns, and to work with them.

For example, many of us have a fear around rejection and abandonment, and thus any time we feel even slightly rejected, we get triggered, and this might cause us to close down, retreat, or the opposite, get loud, shout out and defend ourselves in some way. This behaviour isn’t always helpful. It can close our hearts and create suffering - causing us to ironically reject a part of ourselves.

Furthermore, many have suffered the break down of a relationship because of betrayal, so in each relationship that follows we are constantly seeking signs of betrayal and seeing it even when it doesn’t exist, to the extent that we drive our partner away with our need to control and our hyper vigilance because of not wanting to feel the pain of betrayal again - but we create pain for ourselves anyway.

Others are constantly worried about what others think about them and over personalise everything, so that they are hyper vigilant to other people’s facial expressions, moods and communication, assuming that because someone looks at them ‘funny’ or doesn’t return a smile, then there is an issue - their inherent insecurity causes them to feel anxious and on edge, worried if they have offended the other person or even worse, being aggressive towards them, when the reality is, the other person is just busy getting on with their day and didn’t notice that anyone else.

In another example, someone doesn’t respond to an email in a timely fashion and we immediately personalise this and create a story about the other person’s rudeness or become anxious, worried we have done something to upset them, or we may even feel rejected/abandonned by them. This, when the message has gone to the person’s junk box and they have no idea we emailed them in the first place!

Yet another example might be that we are due to join an online session and our WIFI goes down. It is beyond our control and this triggers a feeling of helplessness and also a concern about what the other people might think of us. We get stressed and angry and lash out at our nearest and dearest and become even angrier at ourself. In reality there is literally nothing we can do to change the situation but this feeling of helplessness and reputational concern causes us to create our own suffering as our imagination runs wild - the irony is, we judge ourself more than anyone else is judging us, about something quite beyond our control!

All these examples hopefully highlight how brilliant us humans are at projecting and creating situations in our head that are not real, and creating all these false stories about reality. It is this that creates our suffering and it is this that we can change through our spiritual practice and by working with our pattens and tendencies.

So next time you get triggered, try not to react as you have done previously, creating the same old story in your head. Instead take a few deep breaths and thank your mind for trying to keep you safe. Then tap into buddhi (intellect and discernment), and make a different choice of how to be, rather than just reacting unconsciously as you have done a million times previously.

It may well take you to a place of vulnerability, but it is a place worth visiting - this is how we open to greater love in our life and deeper connection to our true Self beyond the ego. You can work with the sankalpa (resolve or intention), such as “I open to greater love and intimacy” , in your Yoga Nidra practice and see what happens, see how it begins to change things, when you open up to vulnerability and allowing things to be different.

I’m running a series called Opening to Self Love, which will include a Yoga Nidra and various other Tantric practices to try to positively change some of the samskāras, which are not helpful in your life. To find out more, click here.

But otherwise just keep working with the samskāras, to free yourself from them, unsticking yourself in the process, seeing reality more clearly and enjoying more love, energy and freedom.

Love Emma x