by Darren Main
When we really listen to our sense organs and take them out of the hands of the ego, they will frequently lead us in the same direction as our spiritual vision. It is important to note that the sense organs and spiritual vision don’t always agree. For example, your spiritual vision may be telling you to fast while your sense organs are screaming, “Hunger!” In these cases I believe it is wise to yield to your spiritual vision.
I have heard this process compared to a court of law. In this court, the Sadguru is the defense attorney and the ego is the prosecutor. The ego takes the facts that the sense organs gather and mixes them up to confuse the jury, and the Sadguru calmly brings things back into focus when we give Her a chance to speak. That focus and clarity are what spiritual vision offers, and the practice of pratyahara gives the Great Teacher a chance to show you the evidence in a new way.
Craving and Aversion
Two birds of beautiful plumage, comrades inseparable, live on the selfsame tree. One bird eats the fruit of pleasure and pain; the other looks on without eating.
— Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4:6
Craving and aversion are the two basic ways in which the ego seeks to keep us in a mode of outward projection and thus prevent us from looking within. Although we seem to have a wide range of sensory desires, there are only these two. By splitting our sensory desires into many different sub-categories, the ego causes our sense projections to seem warranted and natural. But no matter how diverse the ego thinks your desires to be, they always come back to craving and aversion.
It is essential to understand our habitual tendency to crave certain things and avoid others if we truly want to reel the sense organs back in and regain control over the mind. The cleverly cloaked insanity of the ego becomes bitterly apparent when we take a close look at our desires, and we then take a major step towards undoing the ego’s most basic line of defense projection. In order to do this, however, we need to look closely at craving and aversion, the foundation of the ego’s projections.
In reality, craving and aversion are flip sides of the same coin, and this becomes more and more apparent as one becomes more skilled at practicing pratyahara. What is one man’s pleasure is another man’s pain, so to speak. Craving and aversion are defined only by a series of ego judgments, yet they seem to be quite different. Both have equal ability to keep us in delusion, and though they are really one and the same, it is helpful in the beginning to look at them separately.
Soon after I moved to San Francisco, a friend took me to the Folsom Street Fair. Every year, each of San Francisco’s diverse neighborhoods takes a Sunday afternoon to showcase the unique style and flavor of the neighborhood. The Folsom Street fair is known for its celebration of the leather and S&M [Sado-Masochism] communities; consequently it can be quite shocking for those whose sexual interests are more traditional.
I am far from a sexual prude myself, but I have never really understood the dynamics of pain in the context of sexuality. Although I had always tried not to judge the sexuality of others, S&M had always seemed like something that a person would do to fill some deep psychological void.
On this day, however, I was forced to look at my judgments. Everyone was dressed in leather and sporting whips, handcuffs and an assortment of other items with which to bind, beat and humiliate. My ego was going crazy. It seemed almost impossible not to go into judgment about what was happening all around me.
Then we stopped at a booth where a woman was tied to a post and a large man with a leather mask was flogging her. I flinched as the tassels snapped against her back, turning her skin a bright shade of pink. I was raised to believe that it was wrong to hit another person, and this was doubly true if that person was a girl. Watching this was extremely challenging. I wanted to call 911 or find some way to help this poor woman.
My lesson that day came when he untied her and she turned around. I had expected to see makeup running down her face from tears of pain. But what I saw was a woman who was extremely satisfied. For her, this experience seemed to be every bit as pleasurable as more traditional sex is for me.
It was in watching her that I started to realize that pleasure and pain are really all in the mind and are strongly influenced by the ego’s cravings and aversions. I’m still not turned on by the S&M experience, but it is no longer necessary for me to judge it. I now understand there is a fine line between pleasure and pain, and it is most often defined by the craving and aversion principle to which the ego adheres so closely.
While my ego tells me that tender touching and gentle kissing bring about pleasure, her ego was telling her that getting flogged was giving her a good time. My point in telling this story is to recognize that pleasure and pain are defined by the ego, and thus the way to transcend the ego is to step back. We need to stop chasing after sensations that the ego calls good, and to stop running away from the sensations that the ego calls bad.
When we allow the ego’s craving to rule the mind, we seek out pleasure as the ego defines it. As we have just noted, pleasure is something that is defined, for the most part on an individual basis. Of course our family and cultural experience will have a lot to do with how we define pleasure, but ultimately our individual egos define what we crave for and then send us out in an never-ending search.
Pleasure in and of itself is not a bad thing. Enjoying sensations on the level of the body is a wonderful part of being human. It is not until the ego latches on to a natural craving and uses it to distract us that it becomes a problem. Food for instance can be a very pleasurable part of being in the body, and having an appetite is a good thing, because it tells us when to eat. But when the ego warps that natural desire for food, it turns appetite into a craving that can never really be satisfied. This is why that hot fudge sundae feels so good going down, but quickly turns into a leash. When we chase after that pleasure without first finding contentment within, we deny ourselves the opportunity to really enjoy the food, but when we find contentment within, we can enjoy the sensual pleasures of life without being chained to them.
Sexuality is another great example. The many forms of sex can be a source of great pleasure. It doesn’t matter if you are gay or straight, kinky or reserved. What matters is why you are seeking out sex. Many times people seek out sex to fill an emotional void or to create a distraction from some sort of pain. When we seek sex for such reasons as these, we tend to feel drained and depleted. This is also why sex can create such conflict within relationships.
Growing up, I spent a lot of time on my father’s farm. Every spring the animals would mate. There was no shame or guilt, and the animals didn’t spend all their free time chasing after sex. When the time is right, the animals mate, and when the time is not right, they go back to grazing. This is because animals don’t have over-inflated egos. They don’t have an agenda; they simply do what is natural.
If you take a moment to review your life, you will likely find many areas where your ego has sent you on wild tangents seeking out physical pleasure. If you are content within, then the sex, food and other physical experiences you seek can be a great affirmation of your innate wholeness. But when the ego turns that natural desire into a craving, it becomes perverted and serves to distract us from the knowledge of Atman.
Aversion is not much different. As we walk through life, there are multitudes of things that keep us running. On a physical level, we avoid many healthy foods, telling ourselves they are not tasty, or we may avoid ending a painful relationship because of the emotional challenges. Oftentimes people will stay in jobs that are unsatisfying because they are afraid, or they feel they need the security.
All these things are ways the ego uses the aversion principle in order to run the show. By keeping us running away from the uncomfortable, we often miss the lesson. When something makes us uncomfortable, it is generally because we need to look at it. This is why yoga encourages us to look at the uncomfortable sensation, rather than avoid it pain is the doorway out of pain.
Imagine you had chronic head
aches. You could spend your life taking aspirin and other painkillers. This would no doubt help to alleviate the pain, but it would deny you the opportunity to explore the situation in depth. Perhaps your headaches are stress related, or perhaps they are due to a more serious problem. Whatever the case, avoiding them will not solve the problem. Looking at the message they bring may well offer a solution.
Every time we find ourselves avoiding something, we are running away from who we are. We are subtly saying, “I will not be happy until this situation changes.” But even when the situation changes, we will begin looking again. Like the headache, pain on any level tells us that something is out of balance. By learning to sit with the uncomfortable, we have the opportunity to gain deep insights into the nature of our suffering.
My friend Michael called me the other day. He told me he was quitting his job because he was so unhappy. I was somewhat surprised because he had a good job that paid well. I asked him how he planned to pay the rent, and he said, “I have no idea, but that lump in my throat disappeared when I made my decision. I don’t know what’s next, but I know I made the right choice.”
You could hear the peace in his voice. He had spent years avoiding the fear of letting go of his job. That aversion was what had kept him so unhappy, but when he really sat with that fear, it disappeared. He no longer had to make excuses for the job he hated and was ready to move on to whatever his spirit had in store for him
This is how the ego uses craving and aversion. When the ego is running the show we are caught in an endless cycle of running away from that which the ego calls uncomfortable and chasing after that which the ego calls pleasurable. This ensures that we never stop for long enough to remember who we are, and simultaneously gives us the illusion that we are doing something to quell that nagging sense of dissatisfaction that haunts so many of our hours.
Learning to practice pratyahara, then, is the key to delving deeper into the mind and finding that inner peace about which we have been talking. Until we learn to reel the mind back in, that sense of peace will always be just out of reach, but once we do, the return to our ecstatic center is only a matter of time.
The Three Steps of Pratyahara
Attachment is that which dwells upon pleasure.
Aversion is that which dwells upon pain.
—Yoga Sutras 2:7-8
Step One
When a person starts a hatha yoga practice, one of the first things they do is begin to develop body awareness. This may seem like a strange thing to develop, since we live in our bodies all day long. But even though we have all lived in our bodies from birth, a surprising number of people are completely out of touch with the muscles and bones they call home.
Getting back in touch with the body is the first step in the practice of pratyahara. Until we arrive in the physical and bring it to conscious awareness, there is little that can be done to move beyond the physical and into the realm of the mind. For most of us, this process of deepening body awareness happens in three phases. First, we become aware of aches and pains in the body. Most of us come to a yoga practice because we have let our bodies fall victim to neglect. Stress, poor eating habits and a sedentary life all do untold damage to the body.
After years of letting the ego run the body, many of us show up on the yoga mat feeling like dilapidated old buildings that are no longer safe to enter. So when we do enter the body with full awareness, what we find can be quite alarming. Our awareness is frequently accompanied by depression, because the amount of damage done to the body can be overwhelming. Luckily, the body is quite resilient, and healing can progress quite quickly.
Once we arrive in the body and sit in a state of overwhelm for a bit, we begin the next phase—prioritizing needs. Perhaps we will start with small steps like taking vitamin supplements or eating a bit better. Eventually we listen to the body more and more until the bigger things like smoking and drinking are dismissed. For most people this process comes about quickly, because it is impossible to be consciously in the body while living in denial of its needs without feeling divided.
When I first started taking yoga, I was a two pack-a-day smoker. I didn’t quit after my first class, but it was not long before I really started to feel the negative effects of smoking on a conscious level. The increase in body awareness made it more and more difficult to ignore what smoking was doing to my body. In time I did quit, and I credit my decision to quit largely to the increased body awareness I had started to develop in yoga.
Once we clean up our lifestyles and undo some of the basic damage that years of neglect and abuse have left behind, we enter into a stage of conscious dialog with the body. The body knows what it needs, and during this level of body awareness, we enter into the practice of listening to the messages of the body on a moment-to-moment basis. In so doing, we are always making subtle adjustments to our behavior so that the body can be fully supported.
Step Two
The second step in the practice of pratyahara is going into the sensation. In the first step we became aware of the sensations of the body, and we raised our body awareness. In this next step we willfully and consciously bring the mind into the sensation. In doing this we begin to look at the nature and origin of the sensation and what is behind it.
We have this natural tendency to crave certain sensations and avoid others. Thus, we exploit that which the ego deems as good, and avoid at all costs that which the ego deems bad. This prevents us from going beyond the ego's judgments.
When we are on the yoga mat, we intentionally put ourselves in poses that are uncomfortable. These poses, when practiced with the proper instruction and a degree of mindfulness, are very safe. Yet, even though they are safe, the ego will go crazy with judgments.
Of course, some poses will come easily and others will be more difficult, but, when it comes to pratyahara, one’s level of skill in any given pose is not the issue. The key to practicing pratyahara at this level is in finding an edge. The edge is that place in a pose where things are intense, but not so intense that one is risking injury. It is this edge that triggers the ego’s craving and aversion response.
As the ego starts its usual routine of looking for ways to make the pose more comfortable or for ways to avoid it all together, we can begin to practice pratyahara more fully. It is here you have a choice. You can obey the ego and allow it to continue to be the master, or you can sit in the pose and enter the doorway of sensation.
Behind all the drama that the ego kicks up around yoga poses there is liberation from that drama. The ego is like the wizard in The Wizard of Oz in that it loves to have us pay attention to the smoke and flames, rather than look behind the curtain. When we go into the sensation, we get to pull back the curtain and see exactly what is behind it.
When I first began yoga, there was one pose, the locust (shalabhasana) that I disliked above all others. I was convinced that Ellie, my teacher, knew this and would do it every time I was in class, just to be mean. What was interesting was that whenever Ellie would instruct us to take that pose, my bladder would magically fill and I would have to go to the bathroom. It never occurred to me that it was my ego, looking for a way to avoid that pose. Because I was unaware of the reason for my full bladder, I would conveniently excuse myself each time she called for that pose. Eventually I started to catch on, and began to stay for the pose. It wasn’t easy at first and I still struggle with it, but by staying with the sensation, I have found that it has become much easier and I have been able to work through layers of fear that I didn’t even know were there.
One thing I often say to my students is, “Look for the smile behind the sensation.” To find liberation from the cravings and aversions of the ego, we must go through them. The way we do this is by finding the uncomfortable, sitting with it, and breathing into it.
This works just as well in life as it does on the yoga mat. My friend Sue has struggled with compulsive overeating for many years. At her heaviest, she was 345 pounds. She came to me for private yoga sessi
ons for awhile and eventually accepted my offer to show her a yoga-based diet that would help improve her health and lose some weight. As I outlined what she would need to do, she started to shut down and get depressed.
“I can’t do this. The cravings will be too great,” she said. I asked her to calm down and take a few breaths. I then explained that she needed not only to change her diet, but also change her mind. I told her, “The problem you have is not with the food. The problem is in the cravings that you keep giving in to. There is something behind that craving that your ego doesn’t want you to see. And the only way you’re going to be able to look at it is by going through the cravings without giving in to them.”
Sue agreed to try. I told her that she needed to combine her new diet with a daily practice of gentle yoga and meditation, and that she needed to pray and meditate before each meal. She still struggles with her diet and the cravings associated with food, but to date she has lost more than 100 pounds and she continues to lose. More important than the weight loss, she is happy again and making great strides in her personal growth and spiritual practice.