Turning Toward

So I am just about done with the sweater and I can feel the inclination to put it away and not think about it anymore.  If I were going to guess what will happen, I will try wearing it once or twice because I put all that work into it and then it will go in a drawer and I will try to put the whole thing out of my mind.  Some part of me labels it as a “mistake” and a “waste of time.”  And since I don’t like how I feel with those labels, I want to avoid the thing that makes me feel that way, which is the sweater.  I was thinking this post was going to be about svadhyaya (self-study), but maybe it is also about dvesha (aversion, avoidance).

It makes me think of when I get a parking ticket.  It’s always my strategy to just pay it immediately, so that I don’t have to think about it and nothing will remind me.  I do think that it is a good plan in that situation—I made a mistake, I know what it was, I won’t do it again, be done with it.  Something like a parking ticket is easy to ruminate over (“I can’t believe I did that,” “Such a waste of money,” etc.), just making myself feel bad without any real purpose.

But there is a difference between dropping something or letting it go and pushing it away.  Letting it go (like the parking ticket) means I am not attached, particularly I am not attaching that thing to my sense of myself.  I am at the point where I don’t feel like getting a parking ticket means anything about me (I used to fall for that sort of nonsense, but not anymore).  When I am actively pushing something away or avoiding it, it’s because I am attached, I think it means something about it me and I don’t like it.  In my case, that’s the sweater.

So, the problem is that pushing away the things that are troublesome to me guarantees that they will remain.  If I just put my sweater in the drawer without spending any time looking at what I could have done differently, what I need to learn more about or practice, what specifically I don’t like about it, then the likelihood that I will have another unsuccessful sweater experience is much higher.  Turning away from things that are difficult or unpleasant keeps them in place—my best opportunity for change is to turn toward them.  Interestingly, brain research has shown that meditators have a shift in prefrontal cortex function from right side (avoidance) to left side (approach), which is associated with decreasing depression, anxiety, etc.

In the end, there is no problem with putting my sweater in the drawer or even deciding that I will just stick to socks and scarves and fingerless mitts.  But not if it’s just because I feel like I can’t or am afraid to look at it.  I can turn toward the sweater (or the anger or the difficult relationship or the fear or “bad habit” or whatever is causing me suffering) and see what I can see, be open to what I might learn, take responsibility for my actions, do my self-study.  And then let it go.  I don’t need to keep replaying it and berating myself—what’s done is done.  Then I get to do that whole process again next time it comes up, which could be in the next few minutes or a couple months from now—things like that don’t generally change immediately.  But what does change immediately is that the moment I turn toward it, I am not suffering.  I am in a place of curiosity, openness and acceptance and whatever it is does not have power over me.  And then, like magic, it doesn’t actually matter what happens with it.