A reflection on turning impediments into fortune
“So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.”
I’ve heard that vinyl records have enjoyed a resurgence of late. If you remember them at all, you might recall that they have grooves. Vinyls tend to work until these grooves become scratched or broken such that the result is an endless loop across the same recorded section…over and over again.
We as humans have similar grooves, too. And we also tend to work until these grooves result in repeated patterns of behavior, difficult to resist, that no longer serve us yet which we relive…over and over again…keeping us “stuck” or frozen in the past.
In yoga, we know these grooves to be samskaras—sam, meaning complete or joined together, and karas, meaning actions or causes. Very roughly, samskaras result from action (karma), which leads to these generalized patterns and individual impressions, which, in turn, then lead to more action. A cycle is born; rinse and repeat. We relive this cycle of similar experiences, both unconscious and subconscious…over and over again…in an endless loop until we learn to break free from its grasp.
We break free by first recognizing that these patterns exist, then by understanding the underlying why behind what we do and finally by “just” choosing differently next time.
That’s all.
While it might be that simple, it’s anything but that easy. And for anyone who believes in reincarnation, these samskaras follow us throughout our many lives until we eventually form a healthier approach to these patterns. In other words, there’s no escape from these grooves—not even death!—but by addressing them. They won’t just go away; they don’t just become unscratched or unbroken on their own.
And it’s hard. We humans are creatures of habit; we gravitate to what we know, regardless of whether positive or negative, as to do otherwise is uncomfortable, unsettling, even scary. To do something different would require us to break from our identities, beliefs and other systems that we’ve constructed over our lifetimes, challenging oftentimes our very core.
Someone near and dear to me often comments when someone asks him how he’s doing that he’s “still chipping away at the marble”, paraphrasing Michelangelo’s quote:
“The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.”
So, too, with us; our transformation already lies inside each of us, waiting; we just need to chip away at our own marble.
I certainly have been face-to-face with many a samskara thus far in 2020. The Universe has been deliberate, shall I say, in ensuring that I no longer get to run away from them and rather that I finally have to address a few of them. She has provided me with my block of marble, my chisel, my hammer and sometimes even my mallet and stepped away so that I might do the work to free myself from those behaviours that have kept me a prisoner of my own doing.
Yoga and its inclusion of moving, breathing and sitting assists us in generating insight into our samskaras through awareness of our body, breath and mind. But our practice must be intentional—it cannot be a passive undertaking, and it must be embraced in earnestness. Through yoga, we can learn to get “unstuck” from these grooves, thus breaking through in forward progress.
Other self-care and well-being practices can also assist in our journey to cultivate awareness of and compassion for our associated beliefs and thought patterns as we work to refine and redirect our “stuck”.
For me, this will forever be a lifetime of work. But I am making progress; I am experiencing breakthroughs. I am learning to share my empathy and warmth while still being firm and deliberate. I am practicing being vulnerable and honest while learning to establish and uphold boundaries. I hope to find a balance between self-sustaining independence and attached dependency, as relationships require both.
I don’t know where I go from here, but I know that it’s in the direction of forward. The old way of operating is over. It has no place in my future. I will emerge from the rubble of 2020 with greater perspective and an overall healthier approach. As the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, here’s to our impediments becoming “great, good fortune” for us all.