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"Thunderstorms of the Mind"
— by Connie Habash
It was a Wednesday evening, and I was grateful
to be in bed early for a change. Sleep never felt so good. The rain outside
was gently lulling me into relaxation.
I had drifted off to that stage of almost sleeping,
when a loud BOOOOM sent me bolt up right in bed and softly crying out AAH!
What is that? It continued for a few seconds, the walls and windows vibrating
with the power of the sound. I thought at first it might be an earthquake,
but realized that we had a thunderstorm underway - the loudest one I had ever
heard. And because I was asleep, I had not been prepared for the thunderclap
by the flash of lightning preceding it.
Thunderstorms are powerful forces of nature.
They are terrible and beautiful in their power. And they are a good reminder
of the path of awakening.
We all have times when we are in the darkness
of a storm. Or perhaps lulled into sleep - unconsciousness - by the monotony
or demands of our life. The storm clouds gather overhead, night falls, and
we can't see our way clearly. The rain is a blessing, yes, but we can't see
the life it gives because our minds or hearts
have a shadow over them; a veil that prevents us from seeing love and beauty
around us.
The flash of lightning is a moment of insight.
Suddenly, the whole terrain lights up around us. It can be rather shocking,
and the cold illumination of a lightning bolt can make things look stark and
unreal. Yet, we can see something that we needed to see, maybe for the first
time. It's the moment when we realize, geez, I do really have an addiction
problem, or I've got to get out of this job that's killing me. Or, just simply,
I've lost touch with myself, and something must be done to get back in tune
with my soul.
Sometimes, we forget for a moment, becoming
distracted. Maybe we were so asleep - as I was, literally - that we didn't
see that brief flash of insight. So a few seconds later, or a few years later,
along comes the thunder. BOOM! Shaking
you down to your toes. It's usually the thunder, not the lightning, that inspires
fear in people. You feel it in your whole body, not just in your ears.
This is the big wake up call - the one you
can't close your eyes to. If we were woken up by the flash of lightning, though,
we're prepared, and we know it's coming. And we might even enjoy the excitement
of waiting for it, and seeing how loud and how long. So when we're consciously
working on our path of personal growth, we relish those new insights and realizations.
They don't shock us, but spur us on and inspire. I used to love watching the
lightning as a child and then counting the seconds until the thunder sounded,
and listening to how each thunderclap
had a different volume and quality.
Then, after the storm: quiet. But a quiet that
is new, fresh, and has been charged with electricity, that new awareness.
The potential is here for full awakening - self-realization. This is stillness
of the mind. Nature becomes quiet and still for a while after the storm. There
is a memorable peace in these moments.
In yoga, we can find a reminder of this quality
in the Yoga Sutras, the aphorisms of yoga philosophy written by Patanjali
thousands of years ago. Patanjali wastes no time - in the second sutra, he
lays out the bottom line:
"Yogah Citta Vrtti Nirodhah"
Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of
the mind.
Those storms can remind us of that. The mind
blows, rains, makes noise - the thoughts are tossing about like a hurricane.
Sometimes, they are quite disturbing! And sometimes they are insightful.
But what we really want is to get beyond
all of that internal maelstrom and reach the stillness. The quiet. Because
that is when we experience our true, spiritual nature. That stillness and
quiet is Nirodhah. It's described as a restriction, a ceasing, a process of
ending.
I've heard Judith Lasater eloquently describe
Nirodhah as the "quiet at the end of a storm". Just as nature becomes
quiet, still, and reflective after all that tumult, our mind can also enter
into that state. After the great awakening of the lightning
and thunder, then the awakening of consciousness. The experience of Nirodhah.
The "Citta Vrttis", the fluctuations of the mind, stop, cease. That
is yoga (union) - bringing us into a state of union with the Infinite, because
our mind is no longer
distracting us from experiencing it.
But, unlike a Thunderstorm, the state of Yoga
doesn't just "happen". It takes work. It takes the practice of becoming
more and more conscious and aware of our thoughts, words, and actions. This
is why we practice the asanas, or postures,
the pranayama (breathwork), meditation, and relaxation. They are all meant
to wake us up to our unlimited Self within, that is not held prisoner by our
restless and dissatisfied minds.
The physical poses wake us up to our own bodies.
What is this sensation in my outer hip? I've never felt that part of my body
before! And our bodies wake us up to our minds. As we struggle through Warrior
pose, our teacher having us remain
for a breath, and another, and two more, we discover our struggle - why am
I struggling inside so much? Why do I turn this practice into a battle? And
then the thunder comes - My God, my whole life is about struggling! I do this
in EVERYTHING in my life. We each have our own insights, as our bodies reveal
more than just stiffness, weakness, or imbalances in our muscles.
The poses prepare us for the more subtle practices
of pranayama and meditation. Pranayama reveals the efficiency of movement
of our life force, or prana, through the body and mind as revealed by our
breath. We can be quite surprised when something as simple as inhaling and
exhaling can break
a sweat on our forehead, or cause us to feel out of breath!
One may discover a difficulty taking in the
air fully, or an unwillingness to let go of our exhalation completely. Again,
the lightning strikes - what am I refusing to let go of in my life? We feel
the shake of the thunder when we start to notice it
happening outside of yoga class - how we clench and hold on to our stuff,
or our past, or financial security, and by clenching discover that we keep
ourselves bound and boxed up, limiting ourselves, keeping muscles, heart,
and mind tight.
It is in meditation that we may suddenly and
unexpectedly experience these inner thunderstorms, and spontaneously may receive
a taste of the quiet afterwards. Just when we thought that sitting would be
easy, we find out how difficult it is to be still. The body and mind resist
it. And we become curious-
why? What is there to fear by being still? The body has become so bound that
it is literally painful to be unmoving. Did all that moving around, all our
restlessness, really give us the freedom we sought?
The loud clap shakes our foundation as we realize
that true freedom cannot arise until we can truly be - BE, as we are,right
here, right now. Otherwise, we spend our lives running away from whatever
arises in the quiet moments of sitting.
The restlessness and discomfort in the body reflect the mind, as the storm
of thoughts whirls around and kicks up the leaves of our worries, frustrations,
anxieties, tensions. All of which distract us from our true selves, just like
the sounds of the storm can keep us awake at night. Meditation is powerful
and
sometimes downright difficult. That's why we spend so much time doing poses...
the mind does not relax until the body is in a relative state of ease.
But occasionally, we have that moment when we
surrender - we just let go of our attachment to the entire inner flux of mental
and emotional impressions, and there's a slight pause. A gap between the thoughts.
A moment of quiet. And we taste, if for a split second, Nirodhah - the quiet
after the storm. We may have a feeling of this at times at the end of Savasana;
when the body and mind have become so relaxed we haven't completely entered
that inner stillness, but we're a lot closer. We get a sense of what it would
be like if we could experience
the stillness that becomes a oneness with all of existence - Yoga, union.
When we are practicing consistently and with
concentration, little by little we awaken inside. So that when the flash of
lightning comes - the intuition, new awareness, or shift in our inner state
of consciousness - we are ready, and can take on the shaking of our foundation
in the thunder that follows. We have prepared ourselves for transformation.
And opened ourselves to the possibility of a new internal experience that
transcends the chatter of the mind, stepping into ultimate silence and deep
peace.
Don't be discouraged by your inner storms. They
happen to us all. Use them as your yoga practice. They are your vehicles to
seeing more clearly the blowing wind and the thrashing rain for what it is
- temporary thoughts, not your inherent condition. The storm always eventually
clears. Yet, we are beyond both the storm and the clear sky. We are unlimited
beings, whose true state is that of Oneness with all.
Someday, I intend to experience that quiet at
the end of the storm, to feel what Nirodhah is. But for now, I'm just trying
to stay awake for those flashes of lightning.
— ©2004 by Connie Habash