Change: A Yogic Perspective

The theme of accepting change dominates many modern Yoga classes.  Still the mind, reduce distraction, find equanimity amidst the waves of fluctuation.  The need for balance is fueled by the ever present conversion of reality from the predictable to the unexpected, and though we know that “the only thing constant is change,” we seem to detest it, and often avoid it at great detriment to ourselves and others.  So when the common agreement is that change is inevitable, why is it so hard to embrace it? Perhaps it’s our approach.

Though we are living in times of great change, the popular sentiment is that this change is temporary, and stability awaits us on the other side.  Working with change in this way is a practice of endurance and survival with successful outcomes evidenced in stability.  In many ways, this approach makes “change” the battleground and constancy and predictability the victors.  And it doesn’t work. It is unachievable. We never quite arrive at the place of certainty for which we yearn. The idea that change is something to fix or correct and that security is success flies in the face of the cliches about our ever present companion. Yet, in the dominant culture of North America at least, we continue to fight for stability and safety and hope for the defeat of the enemy of the unfamiliar. We are exhausting our energy and spirit in attempts to control the agreement that nothing ever lasts, and in turn, losing our connection to the beautiful and unpredictable. We are forgetting that awe and wonder are worthy aims, that mystery is extraordinary, and that this life is a gift not to be blindly passed by.

We can witness the truth of change in our own faces, at least I do.  Always familiar but never the same.  Every day that I flow farther away from my youth and towards my maturity, the lines, the gray hairs, the shape and form of this familiar container of my body changes.  We see it in our kids as they grow, and in our aging parents.  We see it in the shifts of seasons, and the patterns of weather.  We see it in culture as we grip tightly to what we know, grasping for the never existing simplicity of the constant. Yoga does not teach us that the constant is even possible much less probable, but what is available to us is our own strength of adaptation, our ability to weather the storms and serenity of our lives, and the intelligence to bring our past lessons forward into dynamics that are sometimes new and unfamiliar and sometimes powerfully reflective of places we’ve been before.

Yoga tells us that there is a steadiness that we all have access to, and it is not dependent upon our external circumstances. There is a part inside each and every one of us that is unchanging and settled, and is available to us even when we are sailing on an ocean of unpredictability. Its nature is trust, not in the world, but in the knowledge that we are a part of a much bigger story.  A story that began long before our existence or that of our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents, and it is a story that will continue on without us for an untold time.  This story guarantees our demise, and it recognizes that the end of our individual story is an essential contribution to the continuation of the whole. When we remember this truth, our safety ceases to depend upon going on for infinity, and it is not secured by what we can control. We recognize that we are at once essential and insignificant, and that it is this very insignificance that sets us free.  We observe without adhering, we engage without requiring, and we conspire to feel whatever arises without demanding it to be any certain way. 

Yoga calls this Vairagya or detachment, and it is one of the most confounding and misunderstood teachings in Yoga.  It's not uncommon for students to defend attachment and all its trappings of certainty and control, all the while feeling that the energy invested into it is exhausting them to the point that joy feels inaccessible, and that which they try to keep continues to slip away. When we grip and hold, we strangle our life force, we block the flow.  When we control and demand, we rarely expand, and instead live in the intensity of our self imposed constriction.  Trying to avoid change is like trying to stop a train wreck, yet try we do, over and over again. What would happen if we let the train crash?  We would have impact, breaking apart, loss, intensity, pain, and also space, perspective, lessons, change, and even new possibilities.  The practice of Vairagya does not promise ease. In fact, it along with its companion Abhyasa, or practice, is considered the severe path of Yoga according to Patanjali, but it is a sure path to liberation, over and over again.  It acquaints us with the full spectrum of experience and invites us to participate.  It places us squarely inside each opportunity and obstacle and dares us to not hold too tightly to any outcome, and in doing so, it shows us the beauty that is always available sitting alongside the sorrow, the fear, and the worry.

Yoga says we can live joyfully without certainty, and perhaps, more joy is available to us when we are not bound to something that is not allowed to evolve or change.  We can learn how to access and grow the wellspring of stability that lives inside each and every one of us, though it might have been forgotten or buried beneath mountains of doubt, anxiety, or trauma.  And we can remember that our inability to access our inner center is not evidence that it doesn’t exist. Rather, it is simply a reminder of how far we’ve gone away from ourselves. We can create the space that we need to return home to our inner stability, and when we do, we may actually begin to welcome change.  We may feel certainty becomes restraining and diminishing, and feel more open to what is available in all of its myriad manifestations.  And we can forget, only to return to remembering over and over again.