Experiments in Non-Grasping

So, as indicated in my last post, Amma stays up very late hugging people. And since my first retreat, I have always stayed up until the very end. As a result, I end up being extremely tired, falling asleep during some of the talks and needing a lot of recovery time afterward. It occurred to me as I sat with her last Tuesday night, struggling to stay up, that the desire to stay until she leaves is due partly to the recognition of the preciousness of the chance to be with her and partly to the fear of missing something.

It seems to me that aparigraha has a lot to do with this kind of fear. A fear of not having enough, scarcity, missing something, not having what you need when you need it, etc. Aparigraha means non-grasping, non-greed, non-hoarding. And I realized that I had an opportunity to practice non-grasping, so I tried something different—on the first night of the retreat, I went to bed at 1:30am, the next night I stayed until nearly the end, but left before the program conclusion, and during Devi Bhava the following night, when Amma hugged people from about 8:30pm until 10:30am, I took a nap for about three hours in the middle. This was a pretty big deal for me. I was risking missing something and I was also letting go of my identity as Someone Who Stays Up Until the End (which, of course, I have always thought was “better” than going to bed early and shows how devoted and strong I am). The result of this experiment was . . . that it was all perfectly fine and I felt totally o.k. about my choice. I still needed quite a few extra hours of sleep when I got home, but was probably a little less depleted.

The funny thing about not wanting to miss something is that most of the time, when we do miss something, we don’t know what it was because we weren’t there. It really is such a delusional grasping to want to see, hear, experience everything. And how much of my life do I miss simply by not being present in the moment? Sometimes, someone tells us what we missed, which happened during to me during the Amma retreat. And I was able to respond with happiness for this person’s experience and reassure myself that I was o.k., my choice was o.k., it was not, actually, the end of the world.

So after sleeping in the day after I got home, I debated about what I wanted to/should do with the day. I pretty much knew I didn’t want to get involved in any work emailing, but thought about turning on the computer and doing other things, maybe just Facebook. And then I realized that I was again afraid of missing something! I hadn’t been on Facebook in almost a week—what if someone had posted something really interesting or funny? I managed to bring myself into reality. I only joined Facebook about two months ago—I was perfectly fine before that. My mind was just tricking me. So I didn’t turn on my computer at all that day. The result of this experiment was . . . I felt great. It felt like a much better way to take care of myself and life continued without any problems from not checking Facebook.

My conclusion from this week’s experiments is that Patanjali was right and non-grasping is a practice that helps bring us along toward a state of yoga. Grasping takes me away from peace and joy—non-grasping brings me closer.