2.3 PARTICULAR METHODS TO CHANGE MAJOR ATTITUDES.
Let us start with the particular methods to change the major ATTITUDE towards ONESELF. The most direct method is to address asmita itself either through practices of meditation or reprogramming the conscious mind. One of such meditation techniques is Atma Vichara which is tought by Advaita Vedanta school of Shaiva Kaula. This technique suggests concentration on "I" – thought or "I" –feeling – aham vritti – and after stable concentration on aham vritti is achived the chidakasha is to be dissolved into unlimited space and "I" is to be identified with this unlimited space of consciousness. This is a direct switch of self-identification from body, mind, actions to Brahman. It is a very powerful practice which represents the shortcut to liberation. However it is very difficult to practice especially for beginners. That is why many schools use the method of reprogramming the conscious mind. The concept that "I am not the body, I am soul which is always peaceful, calm, blissful" is introduced into the mind with corresponding feelings of peace, calm and bliss. And this formula with corresponding feelings should be repeated as often as possible during the day and especially in situations when our negative reactions are about to unfold fully. This mental and emotional formula becomes the inner source of peace and stability in everyday life plus slowly with continuous practice it is imprinted into subconscious and unconscious mind creating the substratum for liberation. This method is used among others by BrahmaKumarisUniversity, and the International Society of Krishna Consciousness and by other Vaishnava Maths as well. Swami Satyananda also stresses the necessity of switching self-identification off the body, actions and mind in many of his books. Code 6 of his Codes for Mental Reprogramming reads: "Don't identify yourself completely with your actions, your body or your mind. Though you are trying to change your mind, it is only part of your. It is not your consciousness – the witness that sees all events that occur in your life. Most of us identify ourselves completely with our minds and bodies. We ignore the consciousness that lies behind everything we do. As we purify our mind and body we will see and identify ourselves with this underlying consciousness"1 as we can see there is no special technique given. Swami Satyananda introduces switch of self-identification more like a practice of self-observance and as a natural result of body and mind purification.
There are also quite a number of indirect methods to change attitude towards oneself and attitudes which result from this main attitude. For example, one of the consequences of asmita is feeling of inner loneliness. In all Dvaita (I apply Dvaita and Advaita terms not only to Vedanta, but to other traditions all over the world also) bhakti traditions it is treated by the suggestion, faith and later on deep feeling and conviction that your God-Father of Mother who can be worshiped in any form, for example, Jesus Christ in Christianity, Allah in Islam, Ishta Devata in Hinduism, Yidam is Bhuddism, is always with you, taking care of you. You are with him / her, in his/her hands at every moment. It gives the feeling of intimate connection with everything around that is just a caring touch of your beloved God. Advaita traditions all over the world, like Advaita Vedanta, Bhuddism, Taoism, transcend feeling of inner loneliness in another way. The concept and experience that you are already everything, your true nature is identical to Supreme Consciousness, your are already Shiva, Buddha, Tao denies loneliness as a phenomenon. How can you be alone if you are everything and everywhere, if you are ultimate fullness and unity.
In the same way these two major streams of spiritual teachings, Dvaita and Advaita, orient searching for love, friendship, appreciation inside oneself rather than outside. If you belong to any Dvaita tradition, then you find full unfoldment of these feelings, emotions and relationships through intimate contact with your beloved God. One of wonderful examples from Advaita traditions in this respect is Taoist Inner Smile meditation which suggests letting universal energy of smile and love inside you, attuning your vibratory field with this energy and smiling to all of our inner organs one by one with care, gratitude and respect. This simple practice merges you fully into vibrations of love attuning your energies with this frequency which pervades all nature being the primordial frequency of creation. And this love and appreciation is to be found from inside as an unlimited source to which you can attune at any time.
In this connection the necessity of acceptance of your own negativity and release of auto-aggression is also to be mentioned. For bhaktas all the solutions are always found in resorting to their beloved God: tell God all your problems, open to him all your guilts, give him all your sorrows and He will forgive you and accept your in his loving embrace. Other methods mainly used in Advaita traditions like Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism and Tantra as well are drashta approach and technique of Antar Mauna Drashta, or Sakshi, is an inner observer, spectator who just observe from inside all thoughts, actions, emotions, reactions of oneself without being involved or disturbed. If one approaches his life from drashta point of view all inner and outer life of a person turns into the theatre and one's negativity as well as positivity is automatically accepted without any influence on the spectator. Antar Mauna, which in Buddhism is known as Vipassana, is closely connected with Drashta approach, but in this case Drashta is observing only mental activities. While practicing Antar Mauna we let any thoughts, especially negative thoughts, bubble up and just observing them and letting them go remembering that we are not these thoughts, we are drashta, spectator. In this way we release our negative samskaras and avoid auto-aggression through removing self-identification with our mental activities.
One more consequential reaction connected with asmita, or self-identification with one's body, mind and actions, is the reaction of offence which is usually very painful and causes a lot of suffering. The best way to avoid suffering of offence through changing attitude is to understand first that your suffering harms only you, but not the person who you think offended you. It's your mental peace that was disturbed, not his. The other good way is forgiveness, understanding that even if they really meant to harm or offend you, it was because their mental peace was disturbed, they suffered in their lives, their minds are conditioned in this negative way and they actually deserve compassion and forgiveness. All of people have the same pure true nature inside, but they don't know it, they are not in contact with it, with real bliss and happiness, their minds are clouded, they suffer because of that and do all sorts of bad and even horrible things trying to harm other people. Swami Satyananda's Codes for Mental Reprogramming include the following advice to change attitude in this respect. Code 10 reads: "Try to put yourself in other people's shoes. Instead of blindly reacting in ways that you are programmed, try to see the other person's point of view." Code 8 reads: "Remember that everyone has the potential to attain higher levels of awareness. A man's present attitude towards his environment or towards you is caused by mental programming. His present mode of living is temporary and will change and become more harmonious if and when he starts to understand himself and his mind. All of us have unrealized potential just waiting to be tapped. Try to see this potential in all people, no matter how difficult it maybe."2
Another problem with attitude towards oneself is attempt to copy someone else, to become someone else who from our point of view is much happier than we are. We try to copy his/her attributes believing that particularly these attributes make him/her happy, i.e. beauty, power, significance, etc. However this person may be not happy at all, but we think that he is. The approach to change this attitude is to cultivate understanding that everyone is unique, everyone is God's child, whatever you are is the best for you and for your future development, there is nothing good or bad in you, it's just a combination of transitory factors. Do not compare yourself with other people, do not judge yourself or other people on the basis of these comparisons. These judgments are mostly misleading. All people have different backgrounds, one is good in one activity, another is good in another one. Don't try to copy someone, try to discover and follow your own nature. This will make you happy. Otherwise it can happen that you will acquire all the attributes for happy life but you are still not happy with all of it, even more you don't really need all of it. Try to be yourself. Swami Satyananda has his Code 7 for Mental Reprogramming in this respect: "Try to be more open with people. Express your true feelings as much as possible. When we try to be what we are not, when we try to impress people and when we hide our inner feelings from others, we immediately experience mental tension and alienation. This tends to intensify our feelings of "me against the world". Remember also that even the most insensitive person can detect to a degree if you are trying to hide something, or if you have a guilty secret for he might be hiding or have hidden the same type of guilty secret"3
All the methods to change attitude towards oneself finally lead to selfless approach in life which is to be adopted by any yoga seeker. This approach is the culmination of other techniques and methods. However from my experience I could say that it should be introduced slowly with the preliminary preparation with other techniques which teach first to accept yourself fully otherwise selfless approach can be misinterpreted as disregarding your nature and fighting with your negativity that will just enlarge mental disbalance.
Now let us have a closer look at particular methods to change the major ATTITUDE towards PROCESS and VALUES of LIFE. The main aspect of this major attitude to be addressed is raga and dwesha, or attraction to outside objects and repulsion from them. Constant attempts to get pleasure from outside objects and to avoid objects that are not pleasant keep us in a vicious circle of experiencing pleasure and pain without getting into permanent state of happiness and stability which all of us crave for. The best treatment for this problem is cultivation of inner peace and stability by means of experiencing happiness from inside through the contact with our true nature. The methods for this can be any techniques to control our vital energy – pranayama in Indian yogic tradition, chi kung in Chinese Taoist tradition – that through balancing our pranayama kosha lead to balance of mental field and experience of inner peace, bliss and stability of our true nature. Any meditations which lead to calmness of mind are equally helpful. However the combination of a technique to control vital energy and a meditation afterwards is the most effective combination to unfold the state of inner happiness. But even more important is to sustain and remember this inner state throughout our daily activities, especially in demanding disbalancing situations. For example, one of important instructions for practitioners of Inner Smile meditation in the tradition of International Healing Tao is to practice the meditations as often as possible and to remember the state of inner smile as often as possible throughout the day.
Swami Satyananda has his Code 3 for Mental Reprogramming to counteract attachment to the external: "Watch your habituated reactions to people around you and to your environment. Watch how your attachment to the external can result in so much discontentment. Try to reduce your need to find happiness in outside things. This does not mean that you should not follow external attractions for this would result in suppression which causes more harm than good. It means that you should carry on your life as it is now , but if you don't get what you want then accept it with a shrug of the shoulders, with a sense of detachment."4
Another way to counteract attachment and repulsion is to activate approach to life like a stream. Everything comes and goes in due time, nothing stays unchanged. External joy and pain also come and go, just like objects and situations which brought them. This approach is especially widely used in Taoism and Buddhism. In Indian yogic tradition drashta approach and development of awareness are helpful in this respect.
Acceptance of pain and letting it go seems to more difficult than to accept joy and let it go. Usually we avoid facing our pains, but attempts to ignore them lead only to keeping them deeper inside. If we do not face them, we can't let them go. One of good techniques in this respect is to be fully aware of the pain, to look into the pain face to face irrespectively how painful for us it is. Just facing the pain with 100% awareness; if tears and screams come, let them come; if convulsions of the body come, let them come. But don't shift your awareness from the pain. And in some time (may be 15 - 20 - 30 min, 1 hour or more, it depends on the depth of the pain) the pain starts to dissolve, we do not feel pain anymore: acceptance, peace and smile dawns. Our pain and own fear of pain is released.
Acceptance and letting go of what is coming your way is also stressed by Swami Satyananda. He explains how to facilitate this process in his Code 1 for Mental Reprogramming: "Make the effort to begin to accept other people fully. Try not to see them merely as objects to be used for your own gratification. Try to accept others as also acting in accordance with their mental conditioning. What you see in them is only an external manifestation of their mental program. In this way they are not different from yourself, except their program may be a little different. You are now aware of your dependence on your mental conditioning: perhaps they don't realize it yet. If you can accept others more they in turn will start to accept you. Laugh at yourself, at your behaviour and at your antics."5
One more way to transcend attachments and repulsions is to perceive life process as a play, or as a theatre and yourself as an actor playing a roll, or as a dream. All of these approaches remove significance from your outside involvements. All your attachments, repulsions, pains and joy become sham, not serious, not significant. In this way acceptance and letting go is natural and easy.
I have just discussed the methods to treat raga and dwesha that is the main aspect of attitude towards process and values of life. Now let us have a look at another important aspect of this major attitude that is our approach to negative, from our point of view, situations in our life. The main task in this respect is " Don't react negatively to negative situations" and in this way keep your peace of mind. Let us see which approaches help to fulfill this task. One of them is "Your cross is the best cross" or in other words whatever difficulties are coming your way they are specially designed for you to resolve your inner problems and transform yourself in the positive way. Swami Satyananda even recommends to look for difficult situations in this Code 9 for Mental Reprogramming: "Don't avoid difficult situations. Normally we shape our lives so that we interact with people we dislike as little as possible, we try to associate ourselves with people and situations, which tune in with our emotional programming. As such we continue to live in a way that reinforces and satisfies our prejudices. Treat difficult situations and enemies as the greatest teachers. It is they who can show us most clearly the way in which our mental program works. It is our enemies who bring to the surface our emotional conflicts and prejudices. Very few of us are really aware of programming and conditioning. When we recognize it then we can start to deal with it."6 Great Buddhist teachers recommended to see all people and objects around as Buddhas, enlightened beings who gathered here around specially to teach you and to facilitate the shortest way to enlightment. In the same way Swami Satyananda recommends to use help of all situations and interactions to discover your attachments and to work them out. His Code 4 for Mental Reprogramming reads: "Find out your greatest needs, attachments, desires, etc… A good method of discovering your attachments is to trace the cause of your present anger or your present unhappiness back to its source and there you will find the emotional and mental attitude that caused the disturbance. Particularly notice how you react with people whom you distinctively dislike or don't get on with. These persons will help you to recognize and to eventually remove your emotional hang-ups. View the whole world and everyone in it as being your teacher."7
Negative situations, bad luck or misfortune can be also interpreted as the best way to work out karmic debts. It is good to remember the saying of one of the most successful Chinese emperors who complained: "Luxury is following me everywhere! When am I going to pay my karmic debts?"
Another good approach not to react negatively to negative situations is to cultivate optimistic attitude. It means to see positive sides in any negative situation. It's always better to think that your glass is half full, than it is half empty. There are neither totally positive nor totally negative situations. All of them have their positive and negative sides. It is good to reprogram your mind to see mostly positive sides. Even your obvious failures always have their positive sides as through them we can learn and understand ourselves better. There is a good Russian proverb: "Whatever done is for good."
I have just discussed the methods how to treat negative situations in our life. And now I will discuss a few more approaches which help to change the major attitude towards the process and values of life in a positive way. One of these approaches is to live here and now. It means to live and enjoy the current moment fully; not waiting for the better future to come, not regretting the better past to be over, but being fully in this present moment appreciating what it is giving to us. Swami Satyananda in his Code 5 for Mental Reprogramming says: "Try to live in the now. Don't live in the past by worrying about what has already happened or by reliving pleasurable past experiences. Don't anticipate the future. Plans can be made, but see the planning as being part of the now, not as really being for the future. Try to live each moment, each present moment as fully as possible by giving your attention to the now. In this way you will start to live life to the fullest. When you do anything from taking a bath to eating food, or sweeping the floor to earning your living, try not to think of when it will be finished. Enjoy every action that you do at the time that you do it. Try to enjoy the fact that you exist and that an expression of your existence is in your every action."8
Another approach closely connected with the previous one is an attempt to avoid expectations. Expectation is not planning, it is a belief that the future events will happen is some particular way. In most cases our expectations turn to be wrong as we fail to take into consideration all the factors that may influence the cause of events. That is why it is better not to expect in order not to be frustrated with the outcome. It is always necessary to plan your future for better, but to remember that your plans can be and in most cases will be amended by life and note to be offended or frustrated with it.
One more approach to live every particular moment to its fullest and to do the most important things first is to remember that your death is not that much far away or to imagine that tomorrow you are going to die. This can seem too harsh, but this approach is very effective. This approach in especially stressed and used in the spiritual tradition of the native Americans who see a spiritual seeker as a strong worrier striving for spiritual power.
The last aspect of the major attitude towards the process and values of life, which I would like to mention, is the lethal disease syndrome. When a person knows that he is sick and his sickness can cause his death, the fear of death manifests to its full and in many cases this fear can cause more harm than the sickness itself. How to manage this fear? The answer is to let a sick person meet his true nature through different techniques of meditation, pratyahara, etc. This from one side will make him understand and experience that he is not only the body which is going to die and disintegrate, that inside him there is an eternal soul and he will never die. Even the process of dying can be beautiful if we see it as a way back to God, to the realms where there is no suffering, no pain, no sorrow. From the other side contact with our true nature can trigger mechanisms of self-healing as, how Deepak Chopra puts it, this contact is the contact with the realms where sickness does not exist, the realms of perfect health. Deepak Chopra, famous Aurvedic doctor, in his book "Perfect Health" gives many examples of spontaneous healing lethal diseases and highly recommends meditation, in particular transcendental meditation, for these patients.
Now let us discuss particular methods to change the major ATTITUDE towards the GOAL of LIFE. As we discussed above the goal of life seen by many people as expansion of their ego by means of the outer world can cause a lot of suffering if people fail to get those outside objects which they want or to inflate their ego by means of power and recognition. As we also discussed above the best goal for us (if we are not enlightened yet) is to devote our life to the process of self-realization which will go faster if we become renunciates or sannyasins. However most of people will for sure continue living in the world. For them it is possible to recommend the following. First, do not put double standards for personal achievements, try to keep up with lower achievements and be contented with any good result you get. Compare your progress with your previous performance, not with the performance of other people.
The values of karma yoga are also very important. Your performance will definitely improve if you devote all your actions, thoughts, feelings to God, if you offer every moment of your life to him. In this may every act becomes joyful because you are doing even hard work for him, not for yourself. In this way our everyday life will turn into karma yoga leading to selflessness, surrender and ultimately self-realization.
Another important aspect in attitude towards the goal of life is to find your way in life, to find the way, which goes through your heart. Try to do in life what you like and would like to do. Find the activity which brings you inner joy and satisfaction. Don't copy socially attractive patterns. A profession which is considered prestigious and fashionable now may not be the one for you, may be it will bring you a lot of money, but it will never be able to give you satisfaction and in this way your job will be your cross, not joy. Try to listen to your heart and make the right choice. And remember that it's never late to change your life and to start doing what you really want to do.
In conclusion to the discussion of the approaches to change major attitudes it is necessary to say that our attitudes can't be changed overnight. It often happens, for example, that we had a deep meditation and experienced inner peace and bliss, but half an hour later we meet a person who we dislike and we fall into anger and aggressiveness again. It takes a lot of patience and determination to reprogram our mind. From one side it is necessary to be gentle and forgiving with yourself, and from the other side never stop trying to transform yourself. Sri Aurobindo said: "The power needed in yoga is the power to go through effort, difficulty or trouble without getting fatigued, depressed, discouraged or impatient and without breaking off the effort or giving up one's aim or resolution."9 Our major attitudes are very deeply rooted in unconscious mind and our conscious mind is full of ready-to-go mental programs, which work like an automatic process after pressing a certain button. Fighting with them will not be affective at all. You won't be able to restructure them fully even within a few years, but gradually and patiently you will be able to bring positive changes. And when you feel these changes in you life you will understand that they are worth making an effort.
There are also quite a number of indirect methods to change attitude towards oneself and attitudes which result from this main attitude. For example, one of the consequences of asmita is feeling of inner loneliness. In all Dvaita (I apply Dvaita and Advaita terms not only to Vedanta, but to other traditions all over the world also) bhakti traditions it is treated by the suggestion, faith and later on deep feeling and conviction that your God-Father of Mother who can be worshiped in any form, for example, Jesus Christ in Christianity, Allah in Islam, Ishta Devata in Hinduism, Yidam is Bhuddism, is always with you, taking care of you. You are with him / her, in his/her hands at every moment. It gives the feeling of intimate connection with everything around that is just a caring touch of your beloved God. Advaita traditions all over the world, like Advaita Vedanta, Bhuddism, Taoism, transcend feeling of inner loneliness in another way. The concept and experience that you are already everything, your true nature is identical to Supreme Consciousness, your are already Shiva, Buddha, Tao denies loneliness as a phenomenon. How can you be alone if you are everything and everywhere, if you are ultimate fullness and unity.
In the same way these two major streams of spiritual teachings, Dvaita and Advaita, orient searching for love, friendship, appreciation inside oneself rather than outside. If you belong to any Dvaita tradition, then you find full unfoldment of these feelings, emotions and relationships through intimate contact with your beloved God. One of wonderful examples from Advaita traditions in this respect is Taoist Inner Smile meditation which suggests letting universal energy of smile and love inside you, attuning your vibratory field with this energy and smiling to all of our inner organs one by one with care, gratitude and respect. This simple practice merges you fully into vibrations of love attuning your energies with this frequency which pervades all nature being the primordial frequency of creation. And this love and appreciation is to be found from inside as an unlimited source to which you can attune at any time.
In this connection the necessity of acceptance of your own negativity and release of auto-aggression is also to be mentioned. For bhaktas all the solutions are always found in resorting to their beloved God: tell God all your problems, open to him all your guilts, give him all your sorrows and He will forgive you and accept your in his loving embrace. Other methods mainly used in Advaita traditions like Advaita Vedanta, Buddhism and Tantra as well are drashta approach and technique of Antar Mauna Drashta, or Sakshi, is an inner observer, spectator who just observe from inside all thoughts, actions, emotions, reactions of oneself without being involved or disturbed. If one approaches his life from drashta point of view all inner and outer life of a person turns into the theatre and one's negativity as well as positivity is automatically accepted without any influence on the spectator. Antar Mauna, which in Buddhism is known as Vipassana, is closely connected with Drashta approach, but in this case Drashta is observing only mental activities. While practicing Antar Mauna we let any thoughts, especially negative thoughts, bubble up and just observing them and letting them go remembering that we are not these thoughts, we are drashta, spectator. In this way we release our negative samskaras and avoid auto-aggression through removing self-identification with our mental activities.
One more consequential reaction connected with asmita, or self-identification with one's body, mind and actions, is the reaction of offence which is usually very painful and causes a lot of suffering. The best way to avoid suffering of offence through changing attitude is to understand first that your suffering harms only you, but not the person who you think offended you. It's your mental peace that was disturbed, not his. The other good way is forgiveness, understanding that even if they really meant to harm or offend you, it was because their mental peace was disturbed, they suffered in their lives, their minds are conditioned in this negative way and they actually deserve compassion and forgiveness. All of people have the same pure true nature inside, but they don't know it, they are not in contact with it, with real bliss and happiness, their minds are clouded, they suffer because of that and do all sorts of bad and even horrible things trying to harm other people. Swami Satyananda's Codes for Mental Reprogramming include the following advice to change attitude in this respect. Code 10 reads: "Try to put yourself in other people's shoes. Instead of blindly reacting in ways that you are programmed, try to see the other person's point of view." Code 8 reads: "Remember that everyone has the potential to attain higher levels of awareness. A man's present attitude towards his environment or towards you is caused by mental programming. His present mode of living is temporary and will change and become more harmonious if and when he starts to understand himself and his mind. All of us have unrealized potential just waiting to be tapped. Try to see this potential in all people, no matter how difficult it maybe."2
Another problem with attitude towards oneself is attempt to copy someone else, to become someone else who from our point of view is much happier than we are. We try to copy his/her attributes believing that particularly these attributes make him/her happy, i.e. beauty, power, significance, etc. However this person may be not happy at all, but we think that he is. The approach to change this attitude is to cultivate understanding that everyone is unique, everyone is God's child, whatever you are is the best for you and for your future development, there is nothing good or bad in you, it's just a combination of transitory factors. Do not compare yourself with other people, do not judge yourself or other people on the basis of these comparisons. These judgments are mostly misleading. All people have different backgrounds, one is good in one activity, another is good in another one. Don't try to copy someone, try to discover and follow your own nature. This will make you happy. Otherwise it can happen that you will acquire all the attributes for happy life but you are still not happy with all of it, even more you don't really need all of it. Try to be yourself. Swami Satyananda has his Code 7 for Mental Reprogramming in this respect: "Try to be more open with people. Express your true feelings as much as possible. When we try to be what we are not, when we try to impress people and when we hide our inner feelings from others, we immediately experience mental tension and alienation. This tends to intensify our feelings of "me against the world". Remember also that even the most insensitive person can detect to a degree if you are trying to hide something, or if you have a guilty secret for he might be hiding or have hidden the same type of guilty secret"3
All the methods to change attitude towards oneself finally lead to selfless approach in life which is to be adopted by any yoga seeker. This approach is the culmination of other techniques and methods. However from my experience I could say that it should be introduced slowly with the preliminary preparation with other techniques which teach first to accept yourself fully otherwise selfless approach can be misinterpreted as disregarding your nature and fighting with your negativity that will just enlarge mental disbalance.
Now let us have a closer look at particular methods to change the major ATTITUDE towards PROCESS and VALUES of LIFE. The main aspect of this major attitude to be addressed is raga and dwesha, or attraction to outside objects and repulsion from them. Constant attempts to get pleasure from outside objects and to avoid objects that are not pleasant keep us in a vicious circle of experiencing pleasure and pain without getting into permanent state of happiness and stability which all of us crave for. The best treatment for this problem is cultivation of inner peace and stability by means of experiencing happiness from inside through the contact with our true nature. The methods for this can be any techniques to control our vital energy – pranayama in Indian yogic tradition, chi kung in Chinese Taoist tradition – that through balancing our pranayama kosha lead to balance of mental field and experience of inner peace, bliss and stability of our true nature. Any meditations which lead to calmness of mind are equally helpful. However the combination of a technique to control vital energy and a meditation afterwards is the most effective combination to unfold the state of inner happiness. But even more important is to sustain and remember this inner state throughout our daily activities, especially in demanding disbalancing situations. For example, one of important instructions for practitioners of Inner Smile meditation in the tradition of International Healing Tao is to practice the meditations as often as possible and to remember the state of inner smile as often as possible throughout the day.
Swami Satyananda has his Code 3 for Mental Reprogramming to counteract attachment to the external: "Watch your habituated reactions to people around you and to your environment. Watch how your attachment to the external can result in so much discontentment. Try to reduce your need to find happiness in outside things. This does not mean that you should not follow external attractions for this would result in suppression which causes more harm than good. It means that you should carry on your life as it is now , but if you don't get what you want then accept it with a shrug of the shoulders, with a sense of detachment."4
Another way to counteract attachment and repulsion is to activate approach to life like a stream. Everything comes and goes in due time, nothing stays unchanged. External joy and pain also come and go, just like objects and situations which brought them. This approach is especially widely used in Taoism and Buddhism. In Indian yogic tradition drashta approach and development of awareness are helpful in this respect.
Acceptance of pain and letting it go seems to more difficult than to accept joy and let it go. Usually we avoid facing our pains, but attempts to ignore them lead only to keeping them deeper inside. If we do not face them, we can't let them go. One of good techniques in this respect is to be fully aware of the pain, to look into the pain face to face irrespectively how painful for us it is. Just facing the pain with 100% awareness; if tears and screams come, let them come; if convulsions of the body come, let them come. But don't shift your awareness from the pain. And in some time (may be 15 - 20 - 30 min, 1 hour or more, it depends on the depth of the pain) the pain starts to dissolve, we do not feel pain anymore: acceptance, peace and smile dawns. Our pain and own fear of pain is released.
Acceptance and letting go of what is coming your way is also stressed by Swami Satyananda. He explains how to facilitate this process in his Code 1 for Mental Reprogramming: "Make the effort to begin to accept other people fully. Try not to see them merely as objects to be used for your own gratification. Try to accept others as also acting in accordance with their mental conditioning. What you see in them is only an external manifestation of their mental program. In this way they are not different from yourself, except their program may be a little different. You are now aware of your dependence on your mental conditioning: perhaps they don't realize it yet. If you can accept others more they in turn will start to accept you. Laugh at yourself, at your behaviour and at your antics."5
One more way to transcend attachments and repulsions is to perceive life process as a play, or as a theatre and yourself as an actor playing a roll, or as a dream. All of these approaches remove significance from your outside involvements. All your attachments, repulsions, pains and joy become sham, not serious, not significant. In this way acceptance and letting go is natural and easy.
I have just discussed the methods to treat raga and dwesha that is the main aspect of attitude towards process and values of life. Now let us have a look at another important aspect of this major attitude that is our approach to negative, from our point of view, situations in our life. The main task in this respect is " Don't react negatively to negative situations" and in this way keep your peace of mind. Let us see which approaches help to fulfill this task. One of them is "Your cross is the best cross" or in other words whatever difficulties are coming your way they are specially designed for you to resolve your inner problems and transform yourself in the positive way. Swami Satyananda even recommends to look for difficult situations in this Code 9 for Mental Reprogramming: "Don't avoid difficult situations. Normally we shape our lives so that we interact with people we dislike as little as possible, we try to associate ourselves with people and situations, which tune in with our emotional programming. As such we continue to live in a way that reinforces and satisfies our prejudices. Treat difficult situations and enemies as the greatest teachers. It is they who can show us most clearly the way in which our mental program works. It is our enemies who bring to the surface our emotional conflicts and prejudices. Very few of us are really aware of programming and conditioning. When we recognize it then we can start to deal with it."6 Great Buddhist teachers recommended to see all people and objects around as Buddhas, enlightened beings who gathered here around specially to teach you and to facilitate the shortest way to enlightment. In the same way Swami Satyananda recommends to use help of all situations and interactions to discover your attachments and to work them out. His Code 4 for Mental Reprogramming reads: "Find out your greatest needs, attachments, desires, etc… A good method of discovering your attachments is to trace the cause of your present anger or your present unhappiness back to its source and there you will find the emotional and mental attitude that caused the disturbance. Particularly notice how you react with people whom you distinctively dislike or don't get on with. These persons will help you to recognize and to eventually remove your emotional hang-ups. View the whole world and everyone in it as being your teacher."7
Negative situations, bad luck or misfortune can be also interpreted as the best way to work out karmic debts. It is good to remember the saying of one of the most successful Chinese emperors who complained: "Luxury is following me everywhere! When am I going to pay my karmic debts?"
Another good approach not to react negatively to negative situations is to cultivate optimistic attitude. It means to see positive sides in any negative situation. It's always better to think that your glass is half full, than it is half empty. There are neither totally positive nor totally negative situations. All of them have their positive and negative sides. It is good to reprogram your mind to see mostly positive sides. Even your obvious failures always have their positive sides as through them we can learn and understand ourselves better. There is a good Russian proverb: "Whatever done is for good."
I have just discussed the methods how to treat negative situations in our life. And now I will discuss a few more approaches which help to change the major attitude towards the process and values of life in a positive way. One of these approaches is to live here and now. It means to live and enjoy the current moment fully; not waiting for the better future to come, not regretting the better past to be over, but being fully in this present moment appreciating what it is giving to us. Swami Satyananda in his Code 5 for Mental Reprogramming says: "Try to live in the now. Don't live in the past by worrying about what has already happened or by reliving pleasurable past experiences. Don't anticipate the future. Plans can be made, but see the planning as being part of the now, not as really being for the future. Try to live each moment, each present moment as fully as possible by giving your attention to the now. In this way you will start to live life to the fullest. When you do anything from taking a bath to eating food, or sweeping the floor to earning your living, try not to think of when it will be finished. Enjoy every action that you do at the time that you do it. Try to enjoy the fact that you exist and that an expression of your existence is in your every action."8
Another approach closely connected with the previous one is an attempt to avoid expectations. Expectation is not planning, it is a belief that the future events will happen is some particular way. In most cases our expectations turn to be wrong as we fail to take into consideration all the factors that may influence the cause of events. That is why it is better not to expect in order not to be frustrated with the outcome. It is always necessary to plan your future for better, but to remember that your plans can be and in most cases will be amended by life and note to be offended or frustrated with it.
One more approach to live every particular moment to its fullest and to do the most important things first is to remember that your death is not that much far away or to imagine that tomorrow you are going to die. This can seem too harsh, but this approach is very effective. This approach in especially stressed and used in the spiritual tradition of the native Americans who see a spiritual seeker as a strong worrier striving for spiritual power.
The last aspect of the major attitude towards the process and values of life, which I would like to mention, is the lethal disease syndrome. When a person knows that he is sick and his sickness can cause his death, the fear of death manifests to its full and in many cases this fear can cause more harm than the sickness itself. How to manage this fear? The answer is to let a sick person meet his true nature through different techniques of meditation, pratyahara, etc. This from one side will make him understand and experience that he is not only the body which is going to die and disintegrate, that inside him there is an eternal soul and he will never die. Even the process of dying can be beautiful if we see it as a way back to God, to the realms where there is no suffering, no pain, no sorrow. From the other side contact with our true nature can trigger mechanisms of self-healing as, how Deepak Chopra puts it, this contact is the contact with the realms where sickness does not exist, the realms of perfect health. Deepak Chopra, famous Aurvedic doctor, in his book "Perfect Health" gives many examples of spontaneous healing lethal diseases and highly recommends meditation, in particular transcendental meditation, for these patients.
Now let us discuss particular methods to change the major ATTITUDE towards the GOAL of LIFE. As we discussed above the goal of life seen by many people as expansion of their ego by means of the outer world can cause a lot of suffering if people fail to get those outside objects which they want or to inflate their ego by means of power and recognition. As we also discussed above the best goal for us (if we are not enlightened yet) is to devote our life to the process of self-realization which will go faster if we become renunciates or sannyasins. However most of people will for sure continue living in the world. For them it is possible to recommend the following. First, do not put double standards for personal achievements, try to keep up with lower achievements and be contented with any good result you get. Compare your progress with your previous performance, not with the performance of other people.
The values of karma yoga are also very important. Your performance will definitely improve if you devote all your actions, thoughts, feelings to God, if you offer every moment of your life to him. In this may every act becomes joyful because you are doing even hard work for him, not for yourself. In this way our everyday life will turn into karma yoga leading to selflessness, surrender and ultimately self-realization.
Another important aspect in attitude towards the goal of life is to find your way in life, to find the way, which goes through your heart. Try to do in life what you like and would like to do. Find the activity which brings you inner joy and satisfaction. Don't copy socially attractive patterns. A profession which is considered prestigious and fashionable now may not be the one for you, may be it will bring you a lot of money, but it will never be able to give you satisfaction and in this way your job will be your cross, not joy. Try to listen to your heart and make the right choice. And remember that it's never late to change your life and to start doing what you really want to do.
In conclusion to the discussion of the approaches to change major attitudes it is necessary to say that our attitudes can't be changed overnight. It often happens, for example, that we had a deep meditation and experienced inner peace and bliss, but half an hour later we meet a person who we dislike and we fall into anger and aggressiveness again. It takes a lot of patience and determination to reprogram our mind. From one side it is necessary to be gentle and forgiving with yourself, and from the other side never stop trying to transform yourself. Sri Aurobindo said: "The power needed in yoga is the power to go through effort, difficulty or trouble without getting fatigued, depressed, discouraged or impatient and without breaking off the effort or giving up one's aim or resolution."9 Our major attitudes are very deeply rooted in unconscious mind and our conscious mind is full of ready-to-go mental programs, which work like an automatic process after pressing a certain button. Fighting with them will not be affective at all. You won't be able to restructure them fully even within a few years, but gradually and patiently you will be able to bring positive changes. And when you feel these changes in you life you will understand that they are worth making an effort.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya," p.49.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati,"A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya," p.50.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "A Systematic Course in the Aincient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya", p. 49.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "A Systematic Course in the Aincient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya", p. 49.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya", p.49.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya", p. 50.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya", p. 49.
- Swami Satyananda Saraswati, "A Systematic Course in the Ancient Tantric Techniques of Yoga and Kriya", p. 49.
- Sri Aurobindo, "Growing Within", p.57.
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