I dropped it

I dropped it, but it didn't drop me

Someone hung up on me, a long time ago. It hurt. I forgot about it.

A call I was on yesterday dropped when I needed urgently to speak to the person. Different person (my sweet Dad). Different time (25 years later). Different place (Driving). I suddenly got flustered, though, as if someone had actually, intentionally hung up on me. It didn’t make any sense, until it did. Life gave me an opportunity to grow, and I thanked it.

Emotional discomfort, you necessary evil on the way to liberation. Unless we feel you, and are exactly in the headspace to process you, we’re oblivious to your ongoing hostaging of our very potential. There’s the original event from my teens, someone hung up on me. The reaction, in this case, feeling shocked, dropped, rejected. The need behind that emotion, to be equally valued and honored in my relationships. And the ask, of myself, to not hang up on my own self when I was facing an inner difficultly. I brought some more resolution to this rejection beast, metabolizing a cycle that resurfaced, when I was able to see it clearly enough.

Every trigger normally establishes us more firmly in a holding pattern, by default. Until we ask: “Why am I like this?” I did that. The feelings I was having were the result of something quite old. And I took care of myself, reminded myself of my intrinsic value, and the duhkham readily passed, healing me a little more. Raising my self awareness, giving me an opportunity to know myself, especially the vulnerable parts of myself that may be shrouded in shame or blame.

The old hungry, angry, lonely, tired thing kicked in too, although Yoga’s insight is much more complete. If we are hungry, angry, lonely or tired, we may not respond from our best selves and need to stop, aka HALT. If our lifestyle is out of balance, our clarity is skewed, and we’ll think, behave in ways and say things we may regret. At a subtler level, I look to guna awareness. I’m if my guna-s are out of whack, old emotional patterns rise prominently, and I am much more likely to act on them.

Practice and non attachment go hand in hand. They render us more sensitive, so we catch ourselves and hold ourselves through sticky inner experiences. They get us over the hump of duhkham, emotional constriction. What holds us back may take up a lot of space in our day to day experience. It informs much of our behaviors. Yoga gives us the clarity we need to sort out the do-s and don’t-s of personal transformation. Practice is the do-s. Non-attachment is the don’t-s. Practice gives us the clarity to recognize unconscious and conscious ruminations that run our operating system. It builds the strength to cut the ties with such obstacles, to delink from them, so we may feel the freedom and lightness of a more yogic life.