Elections and Abhinivesha, Addictions and Equanimity: A home practice: Wailea, HI: October 28, 2020
Abhinivesha right here, let me tell you Some days my regularly scheduled discipline is g o n e. and I opt to lounge poolside for hours, not doing much of anything.
With the US elections less that a week away, the whole world feels louder than ever. My only escape from the collective noise is the ocean, where I bike over at least once a day, jump in and hang underwater, below the crashing waves, to literally drown out the noise.
I’m pretty sure Biden/Harris will win, in a landslide, no less. But I have friends, not to mention the press, who believe it will be a hotly contested race.. I don’t have to dive much deeper into it to say, how can you not press the button for change? For starters and the most obvious, the coronavirus pandemic. I mean, we can’t literally bury our collective heads in the hopes it will just go away, can we?
Can we ? The shrill screams of noise have me questioning if I’m the crazy person here. Please, someone let me know if I’m over reacting, but this virus sure seems like a big ass deal.
Abhinnivesha, a mental trapping mapped by yogis and translated as addicion to the status quo, has never been more apparent. Every system of our lives is broken. It seems sheer lunacy to continue on this path, but then again, am I the crazy one here?
This mental trapping, one of the five kleshas, or veils of the mind blocking us from seeing clearly, is a doozy for sure. The sutras say, it “overwhelms even the wise”, Can half the population be addicted to letting life continue on, as is, status quo? Yes, abhinevesha is at play to be sure, hanging on to our system and afraid to change, even though it’s clearly not working.
Yet I can’t cast stones about any addiction, much less the ones of the mind. This is the work of a yogi. The human mind, the human life is complex beyond comprehension, and any quick-to-judge behavior on my part only causes me to cringe, panic even, from my seat on the mid left side of the aisle. Equanimity is suggested by sages, and it’s so hard to do. Hence my daily trips to hit the waves, literally washing off the heat.
On land, all I have to do it sit still and see within myself, this klesha, this veil covering my mind, is very much alive and well, in my own way. I fight internal change all the time. I even wrote a book about it, and am so addicted to my own feelings of unworthiness I haven’t even put it out for sale.
In a world where everything is unsteady, uncertain, unprecedented, so anit-abhinivesha-ish, the opposite also threatens my peace and stability; compounding my confusion about, well almost everything.. My exercise and diet discipline is waning, my business skills thrown out the door, and I haven’t given one thought to a reasonably attractive appearance. These things have held me steady for decades, yet trying to hold anything together just is too much. So I’m spending a fair share of afternoons vegging out on the couch watching The Office. Those days, when it’s too hot to lay outside by the pool, and too far to bike all of 2 minutes to the beach. You know, those days.
It’s all rather pathetic really. I mean, the world needs help, not to mention I need to get back to some kind of income producing work soon. I’ve got a huge amount of change that needs to happen in my own life. Any yet, I sit, addicted somewhat to disbelief of this massive worldwide disaster unfolding.
But every now and again, like this morning, I can see I’m abhinevesha-ing abhinevesha, and as sure as I must get up and vote, I must get out of my own way and embrace what’s sure to be a day that’s anything but status quo.
Health, Love, and Rock N Roll
