CRAP: Conflicted Responses Arising from Pain & Yoga Philosophy

Daily, I take my dog Lila (pronounced Leela) on walks to the field next door to where I live. I've been noticing more and more how many people don’t pick up their dog’s poo. There are so many reasons why someone might not pick it up. Once I'm in the field, it's my responsibility to stay mindful of my steps, I could complain all I want, but that won't clean the park and will only make my park visits less enjoyable. If you don't watch your steps, you can easily get crap on your shoes, and you’d end up carrying that mess wherever you go.

I could be writing about all the beauty around me, all the life within me and all the ways in which we are blessed, it would be much easier, but if we are to experience well-being, contentment, and ease, we must also look at what gets in the way of experiencing these. Our complaints may live on for years, but unless we do something about them, nothing will ever change. Once we learn about the causes of affliction, we are more able to recognise them when they show up in our lives and hence, change them. In yoga philosophy, these causes of affliction are known as Kleshas, a Sanskrit word meaning distress, grief, trouble and is at the root of our human suffering.

For the purpose of this post, I will use the word CRAP as an acronym for Conflicted Responses Arising from Pain. After reading several books on trauma and acknowledging the imprints of traumatic experiences, I recognise that to some extent, all of us have had a degree of trauma, whether we are conscious of it or not, and our past experiences create our current responses. To experience the light, we must befriend the shadows and the dark, as well as the flowers and the poo around us, ignoring/bypassing them doesn't remove their existence.

The Yoga sutras of Patanjali list 5 Kleshas which are:

• Avidya (ignorance): The root cause of all afflictions. Avidya refers to not knowing who we truly are and how interconnected we all are. Avidya makes us see things from a narrow lens rather than a kaleidoscope and believing that what we see is all there is.

Ignorance can be reflected in people who don’t pick up their dog shit, they may not consider how it affects others and possibly themselves so they continue the habit. Similarly, the CRAP in our environment can take the form of hurtful words, feelings, thoughts, and actions that spill out in moments of little awareness. Just as the poo spreads in the field, CRAP has the power to ripple outward. This might manifest as stress or anger accumulated at work, triggering an explosive reaction at home, against a spouse, child or family member, who then passes that tension to someone else. An angry person may think the world outside is making them angry, they might tell themselves a story they really believe in to find reassurance to their anger, but if anger is erupting often, it is not just the world, anger is within themselves.

I often need to remind myself that there's more to what meets the eye, and my own perceptions of reality. I love the way Deborah Adele puts it in a question, "What are you not seeing because you're seeing what you're seeing?."

• Asmita (ego, sense of I-ness): This refers to all the labels we believe ourselves to be; identifying heavily with (mental and physical) form, or an identity based solely on the external or what 'lives' in our minds in a way that disconnects us from the unified field in which we co-exist. Do you notice how everything that connects you to a certain group of people, can at the same time divide you from another?

  
  

  When we are unaware of our CRAP, we operate from the egoic mind and all we care about is "I, me and mine", forgetting about the inner dimension that makes us all a team; where what benefits one, benefits all, and what affects one, affects the whole, it's a domino effect. If I step on poo, I will spread it wherever I go in one way or another. If we want to end the mess out there, let's start with ourselves first.

  
  

• Raga (attachment, seeking to feel good): Raga is wanting things to be a certain way and doing everything in our power to ensure we don't get "too" uncomfortable. We want people to behave as we think they should, like me believing people should pick up their dog's litter. Our mind loves creating narratives and in my mind, the world would be so much better if people did, right? But the world isn't there to make me feel good (all the time), it's there to help me awaken. Picking up the poo is effort and not a priority because it requires extra work, and since it doesn't affect "me" directly, they're happy leaving it behind, or maybe they leave it behind as compost?, we don't know!

  
  

"Better indeed is knowledge than mechanical practice. Better than knowledge is meditation. But better still is surrender of attachment to results, because there follows immediate peace.” - Eknath Easwaran

• Dvesha (Aversion, seeking to avoid feeling bad): It is so natural to want to feel good and avoid feeling discomfort, pain, and unpleasant experiences. Of course we will all do what's in our control in order to diminish unpleasantness, but if that's all we do, we will spend the rest of our lives escaping what we don't want to feel, but sooner or later, it will catch up with us. Something that may sound contradictory is to lean onto the discomfort, doing the (inner) work which asks us to acknowledge our conflicted responses arising from pain, noticing our triggers and rather than immediately reacting, pausing to look deeper, recognising the source of our CRAP.

  
  

Doing this allows us to see our aversions clearly so that our life doesn't become a constant endeavour of trying to control absolutely everything in order to enhance pleasure and diminish pain. It is easier to try and make others change rather than changing ourselves, we may blame, criticise and judge others until the end of times, but until we address and clean up our own internal mess, we will only perpetuate the cycle. In this case, I can learn from the CRAP I've been exposed to, and even if it's not necessarily mine, I can pick it up, put it in the bin benefitting the next person walking that way, or I can be completely unaware, step on it, complain, carry it wherever I go and apologise as I go along.

• Abhinivesha (Fear of death, loss or change): The underlying fear of natural (yet at times painful) aspects of life. This is a hard one, we all want to live and our loves ones to be around for as long as possible, but the reality is that we are all subjected to dying, loss and change. Yogic and Hindu philosophy see the body as perishable, subjected to illness, aging and decay, but the soul as eternal and imperishable.

  Our actions will speak for us when we are gone, what if by picking up the CRAP I find on my path will alleviate someone else's path? There is a reason each of us is where we are, and we can't possibly help everyone, but we can help someone. I trust that the way in which we benefit others, however small, never dies. Who knows what's on the other side of this veil, but whilst living, I want to make the most of this miraculous gift of life by learning, growing and encouraging all to own their CRAP =)

“The body is not me; it is only the jacket which I wear. When this jacket is torn and tattered, the time has come for me to throw it away and put on a new jacket. Sri Krishna asks, “What is there to grieve about? What is so tragic about putting on a new jacket? Do you want to keep an old jacket that lets in cold air, makes you uncomfortable, and can no longer be used to serve others?” ― Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita 

The image I shared was inspired by a photo a student of mine shared from a post he saw on social media which I then reworded slightly. No credits to me for that one =)