Inner World of Yoga – Day 24
The role of positive Samskaras is for us to enjoy and savor the memories of the experiences, like smelling lilacs in the Spring which brings a pleasant memory from childhood.
However, if a seemingly pleasant memory becomes a craving or obsession, it falls into the “negative” category.
Positive samkaras result from pleasant experiences and re-surface in pleasant experiences or as pleasant memories. Negative samskaras create discomfort and suffering. Samskaras work hand in hand with vasanas; with negative vasanas for example, creating negative samskaras and vice versa. It works the same for positive. The workings of samskaras and vasanas are evident as everything from preferences, opinions, predispositions, likes and dislikes, to patterns, habits and personal strengths and weaknesses.
Vasanas and samskaras cannot really be gotten rid of completely because they are part and parcel of our mind force which lets go of nothing. However, you can replace a negative samskara decision or behavior, or flatten a negative vasana, with a more positive one. Awareness of samskaras can arise with regular yoga practices and can sometimes even be loosened through somatic therapies. Deep seated samskaras are very stubborn and facilitating this kind of internal change is the basis of the work we do in spiritual retreats and individual counseling. When you succeed in replacing a negative decision with a positive one, it means you have stayed with re-experiencing the earliest similar incident that initially created the samskara until you become free of the accompanying shock and perception of loss.
What this means is: Whatever it was that repeatedly brought up a negative emotional charge for you is now completely GONE and your degree of sustainable happiness increases.
When this occurs, it means a major energy blockage has been released, your perception of the initial incident is changed forever, accompanied by acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude. Your entire outlook on life in some significant way will change at this instant. You will still be left with a pattern of behavior and habits, but you will now be able to see them and know what caused them, and thus be able to work on them, not just engage management techniques that obscure or hide them. In other words, you have realized real change.
