EPISODE 54: ON ATTITUDE

A few weeks ago I was musing on mood. Mood is ‘A frame of mind or state of feelings.’ Last week, as I demonstrated, I was mostly in a poor mood. At the end of my piece, I quoted Harry Palmer on discouragement. This is also from Harry:

‘An indication of a successful session is that the student relaxedly pours out of the rom and doesn’t have much to say for a while. The student is okay where he or she is, and this appreciation causes the disappearance of more and more levels of self-definition.

An indication of a problem session is that the student finishes more hyperactive and or agitated than he or she began. They are stressed and often seek relief by compulsively creating. Creation is an effort to relieve stress.’

As if often the case, Harry has it right. In some moods you just feel a relaxed flow and in others tension predominates and the internal dialogue becomes tetchy and disgruntled. Of course we all know about moods. The question is, what to do about them, if anything? Now I am in a better mood, it seems obvious to me that this mood is preferable in that it feels more expanded and lighter. It reminds me that I can feel like this.

Is it pure chance that I’m in a better mood?

Harry’s observations on Discouragement appealed to me because I recognised both the ‘seriousness’ I had sunk into and the symptoms of being in a creation called ‘discouraged’ which I acted out by being withdrawn and, as it were, wearing a pair of dark glasses from where I was peering out into the world.

Did I follow Harry’s advice and take 5 positive actions to counterbalance each opportunity to be downcast? No.

What I did do was to go for a couple of walks in which I consciously did my ‘feel-it’ exercises. Almost immediately the act of throwing my attention out onto the forms around me, shifted my experience of self. I realized then that for the past week or so, maybe much longer, I have almost totally internalized my attention I’ve been locked in my own feeling and failed to genuinely put my attention on them. When I can do that, I know that in most cases, I then literally lighten up and begin to feel more empowered, less self-defined. What I need to do to is practise this so it becomes second nature. If I’d prepared myself properly, (and not got stoned), I’m sure the Totnes thing would have gone considerably better.

My great friend John Ryan used to read the most marvellous enlightenment books and then practise their teachings on his acquaintances. I don’t mean this meanly when applied to John for he would genuinely apply himself to any disciplines that might serve him. I’m more likely to read a book and then think all my friends need to do whatever it is in the book, whether I actually do it myself or not. The Avatar stuff, however, is what I do do when I’m stuck in my functioning.

Why does it work so well? 

I wish I hadn’t asked that because I don’t really know the answer. It begins with the moving of attention. You can put your attention on a car, on a tree, on the sky, on a pain in the body; it might not stay there, might slip back to a problem or concern, but it is you who moves that attention. In a similar way, doing these exercises slowly leads you into the point of view of a creator.

***

At which point I was interrupted and lost my thread for two days. This is what happens when a large child comes to visit a small home. Obviously it is a pleasure to have the youngest home for a weekend but once I’ve handed over my room for the duration, I lose my centre and find it quite impossible to do anything. On the other hand we watched a football match together and because we share the same allegiance we were emotionally bound as the team went from winning to losing to winning.

The very modern obsession with football as a legitimate form of emotional expression is a curious one. The nine rasas, emotional expressions, in Indian thought are said to be: shringara (erotic love), karuna (compassion), adbhuta (awe, wonderment), shant (peace, equanimity), hasya (laughter, mirth), veer (valour, heroism), bhaya (fear), vibhatsa (disgust) and raudra (anger, fury).  My reader will know from previous mentions that Abhinavagupta and the Indian aesthetes were keen on theatre and that the purpose of drama is to have you identify with and then transcend these emotions. A football game provides the same journey and the same opportunity.

(Incidentally, should anyone doubt the erotic element they just need to listen to some of the early commentaries on Lionel Messi which seemed to frequently mention his bottom or ponder on the fact that soccer in denial about homosexuality and yet it is legitimate for men to have posters of their male loved ones on the wall.)

If we examine our lives of only the past month or so, we will find how vulnerable we are to emotional imbalances. Because we are mostly unaware or at best superficially aware of our emotional lives, we tend to allow one or two rasas to dominate us. For instance, hasya if we are the light-hearted sort, or raudra if we are hotheaded and easy to take offence. We continue to affirm this imbalance through our behaviour, which becomes lopsided in favour of our rasa of choice and it gradually becomes our chosen response to life situations. Hence we become a certain ‘kind’ of person. This emotional conditioning keeps us from experiencing life in all its fullness, and we remain tied to limited views of our selves, unable to even grasp the vastness of our true potential, let alone actualise it. (Swati Chopra.)

Here we have it. Emotional states colouring our days. Emotional states are states of mind. We may treat them as separate from mind, as chaotic random arisings in the body to which we are victim, or can we embrace and acknowledge them as a choice and then we can choose differently.

Perhaps.

This characteristic of having a dominant rasa with which we approach life can be called bhav. My predilection is to be lighthearted, to have a humourous bhav. On the other hand if there is work to be done my bhav is reluctant. According to the Indian philosophies the highest bhav is that of being, well, what to call it, source, pure consciousness, god,…

As put by Swami Atmaswarupananda:

It is this bhav—that feels that it is the Lord that is doing our yoga, that everything is the Lord—that can make any yoga successful. It can be an individual yoga or integral yoga. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is the bhav with which we do our practice: That which is doing the yoga is nothing except the Lord Himself, because there is nothing except the Lord. Even the feeling that there is separation is nothing except the Lord. It is this understanding that will lead us towards our goal and make our present yoga successful.