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Last Saturday night I got up for a pee and on the way back from the bathroom managed to bump my head into a wall, drawing blood and a raising a bruise that lasted a week. Immediately I started to grumble loudly enough to wake my partner who I then blamed for making it dark because she likes to keep the bedroom very dark whereas I would prefer to sleep with the curtains open. Obviously she wasn't very impressed by my accusations but we managed to get back to sleep and in the morning after reflection I thought that it couldn't really have been that dark and quite possibly I'd had my eyes shut.
My head did hurt a bit on Sunday but hasn't been a problem since, nevertheless it feels like it was the beginning of an-off centre week. On Sunday afternoon I went to visit Rob to organize a bit of business. Before leaving the house I said to my partner, 'Today is an important day in my life.' Preoccupied with her own concerns she failed to answer me.
The reason I'd been so portentous is that my business has been suffering through lack of suppliers; a situation worsened by my main supplier saying he will be taking a year off from January. A month ago Rob approached me offering to supply a regular (but not great) quantity of material at a price considerably below what I have been paying so by Sunday I was gagging to know what he would deliver.
Unfortunately, it was a bit of a disappointment because neither the quality nor the quantity were what I wanted and if the price hadn't been so low I would have had to say no and end the relationship straight away. As it was I accepted the deal.
By Sunday afternoon I was feeling a bit poorly and my stomach was grumbling and rumbling and expressing its unhappiness about something. Also I felt tired. Then on Monday when I woke up I discovered that my shoulder was hurting and that the pain was spreading over the right hand side of my chest making breathing uncomfortable and coughing agonising.
On Monday afternoon I drove out in the countryside to discuss some personal problems a friend of mine was having. We went for a walk while she unburdened herself. When I got back to the car, it wouldn't start so we had an hour and a half wait in the cold for help to arrive.
I could not sleep at all Monday night and on Tuesday I couldn't do anything or focus my mind at all.
On Wednesday morning, I felt slightly better although everything continued to hurt. Then a friend called Uma visited. She hasn't seen me for a long time and seems very fond of me. Without warning she threw down her bag and embraced me heartily. From then on the pain doubled and I felt as if my body was in trauma. Throughout the day there was nothing I could do to get comfortable and when I went to bed in the evening my body was burning and sweating while I felt cold and shaky.
At some point on Thursday afternoon, I felt really low. Until I banged my head, I'd been on a bit of a high, having kept both my Chi Kung and meditation together for an unusually long time. Within a few days it seemed that all that had been lost and been replaced by self-pity and heaviness. It was then that I remembered what I had been reading in my Shaivism about the three gunas.
The gunas are the three basic moods, sattva, rajas and tamas.
"Each individual's mood is always an embodiment of a different combination of the three gunas - each of which constitutes a fundementally different way of feeling ourselves and relating to the world." (Wilberg).
Tamas (black) is felt as dullness or darkness of mood, and as physical inertia, heaviness or lethargy.
Rajas (red) is felt as agitation, desire, impulse, intent and passion, and is expressed as physical tension, agitation and activity in all its forms.
Satva (white) is felt as pureness, radiance, calm clarity, balance and buoyant lightness of being.
According to Wilberg, Western Psychology is bi-polar and has no time for Tamasic states, considering them abnormal or depressive. The response is to fight them mentally and/or with the aid of medication to 'keep ourselves going' (Rajas) or to 'be positive' (Satva). As a result, says Wilberg, we end up either in even deeper and dark Tamasic states or in truly unhealthy Rajasic states of 'stress', 'anxiety' or manic hyperactivity.
"If we can not feel dull, heavy and fatigued (Tamas) how can we rest or enter into deep sleep - thus allowing us to process our experience in our dreams and to wake up feeling once again clear and bright (Sattva) and refreshed with renewed vitality and power of action (Rajas)?"
The Gunas have been mentioned in most of the indian philosophy books I have read yet until this day I hadn't ever paid the concepts any attention. They bored me. And yet I've been fascinated by mood. In his book, Tantric Mysticsm for Today's World, 231-239, Wilberg elucidates further on the gunas. I will finish with just a few extracts which are meaningful to me.
Tamas: ...Anatomically and medically it is associated with the bowels, abdomen and womb. Psychiatrically it is labelled as mild or severe depression. Sociologically it can find negative expression as the destructive potential of spiritual ignorance, generalised political apathy, the dullness of routinised work, lack of empathy and lifeless personal relationships. People search to compensate for Tamasic existence either through Rajas - hyperactivity and busyness, revelry in drugs and consumerism or mindless entertainment or through bland Sattvic states of spiritual harmony, peace and calm.
Each moment of each day we can identify the Guna or the combination of Gunas colouring our mood. None of the Gunas in themselves is a 'cause' of pain or pleasure, suffering or joy, limitation or liberation - these come about only through our relationship to the Gunas, and through their relationship with one another within us. It is important to be aware and affirm all our Gunic states as natural states of being. Only by being more aware of them can we both embrace and transcend them.
Oh Arjuna, Sattva attaches one to happiness, Rajas to action, and Tamas to ignorance. (Bhagavad Gita.)
So now it is 8 days since I banged my head. My shoulder and chest are still painful but not as much as they were. The business material turned out to be perfectly satisfactory and actually made me some money. And I said to my partner, 'Would you like some relationship advice that might help in any future relationships you may have?' 'What's that?' she said. 'Well just maybe if he or she every says to you, this is an important day in my life, it'd be better if you responded.'
'Yep,' she said, 'I think you're right.'
Oh Arjuna, Sattva attaches one to happiness, Rajas to action, and Tamas to ignorance. (Bhagavad Gita.)
So now it is 8 days since I banged my head. My shoulder and chest are still painful but not as much as they were. The business material turned out to be perfectly satisfactory and actually made me some money. And I said to my partner, 'Would you like some relationship advice that might help in any future relationships you may have?' 'What's that?' she said. 'Well just maybe if he or she every says to you, this is an important day in my life, it'd be better if you responded.'
'Yep,' she said, 'I think you're right.'
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