Thursday, May 10, 2018

Psychological Processing of Kashaya- the old hurtful impressions



Kashaya is the term, I use  for indicating old impressions which come up when we are meditating or even in our daily life, which totally hijacking  our wisdom,  put us in a trance of unworthiness , incompleteness, insecurity, fearfulness etc. You cannot avoid kashaya.  It is better to learn how to handle it. Kashaya is actually useful because we can use it to understand what our old out-dated beliefs which no longer serve us are. Kashaya  gives us an opportunity to understand the layers of old beliefs that have the potential to rob us of our wisdom and put us in the old trance of unworthiness and insecurity.  
Since it hijacks our wisdom, it is not possible to have sakshi bhava towards it.  Shastra recommends ignoring it using sakshi bhava,  however unless you are an advanced sadhaka,  you will not find it possible to do that.
Is there a way out?
Yes there is.
Our first assumption for this method to work, is that one is a student of Vedanta, who has had a insight into one’s truth being self-evident, self-revealing, ever-existing consciousness, that is free of one’s mental world. It is not difficult to have this insight if one has been doing pranayama or japa meditation, or any kind of meditation for that matter,  for a while. During pranayama, if one does it consciously, one’s mind becomes very quiet and one finds that the self-evident consciousness one is very much present there. So because of shraddha in Shastra and using  anvaya and vyatireka logic one can come to the conclusion that the self-evident consciousness one is, is always present and it is not dependent upon the condition of the mind. In fact we should use our moments of quietness to firm up this understanding. That is why the practices that enable us to enjoy a quiet mind are useful and important.
When an incident of kashaya  coming up happens, then one wants be able to practice the sacred pause, so that one does not get overwhelmed. How to do that? Any states of mind in which you are feeling you are unworthy and insecure is a result of kashaya -  so as soon as you feel this sense of something not being okay with me, some sense of unworthiness, insecurity, a critical inner voice, feelings of anxiety, anger, shame, fear, hurt and guilt,  it means kashaya has emerged. Recognize it as kashaya  maybe by just whispering to yourself ‘this is kashaya’. Immediately you BREATHE slowly several times and saying to yourself  ‘Time to pause’.
We are not interested in doing anything to make the difficult painful state to go away. We simply recognize it as kashaya  and allow it to be there. There is no attempt to avoid it or fix it or make it go away by doing something. Letting it be there does not mean that we believe in whatever it is saying to us. It is just acknowledging without denial, that these feelings are there. So simply allowing it to be there, we take up the next step.
We allow our cognitive mind to investigate and enquire more into it with interest and gentle care, with a natural curiosity to know the truth.  This naturally demands more focussed attention towards this experience. We can use the following questions to help us :- How am I experiencing this feeling in my body? What is my belief behind this? This is a vulnerable area of my psyche. What is it telling me. What does it most need?
 The kashaya  will be felt in your body somewhere perhaps in the throat, heart, belly as irritation or tightness, or a sinking feeling in your stomach, or restlessness or constriction or even pain. So just pay attention to where in your body you are feeling it.
It is very important  when investigating, that your attitude is  non-judgmental and kind, because that creates a safety net whereby you can honestly connect with your feelings.

Now you can understand your suffering. And let the natural outcome of your understanding that you are suffering, be compassion towards yourself and not demeaning self-criticism or dismissing it as mithya. Compassionately try to sense what that wounded, hurt, frightened part of psyche needs at that time. Don’t think as Vedantins do, that all this is mithya, and so why should I appease it? If it was truly mithya for you, it would not hijack your wisdom.

Now having understood one’s suffering offer a gesture of your care that would address this need of the wounded psyche. Nourish that wounded  psyche. Maybe you need to offer a message of reassurance that you are there to hold and comfort the suffering psyche, even as one would comfort a child in pain. Maybe you need to offer to be there in companionship or love. Maybe a gesture of forgiveness. You will need to discover which gesture of kindness will comfort the wounded psyche. It could be just a whisper. Thich Naht Hanh offers a whisper of comfort such as “Darling I care about your suffering”.  Or it could be ‘I love you’ or ‘I am here for you’ or ‘It’s not your fault’.

It is very healing to additionally gently place a hand on the heart or cheek. What is particularly helpful is  visualizing  the heart center filling up with warm, radiant light.  You can even visualise  your Guru or a loved family member or friend sending you love. Even the smallest gesture of offering love will nourish your psyche.

What happens as a result of this kind of psychological processing, is that there is a space now. In that space you can go to the next level of investigation, to understand the conclusions or beliefs behind the feelings. Possible conclusions centered on ‘I’ may come up, like “I am not lovable”, “I am not worthy”, “I am a failure”, “I am insecure”, “I am not safe”. At the level of your own individuality, you need to be able to dismiss each of these, cognitively. For this you may need to take help of a wiser person.

It is only after this that you are ready to see the kashaya as mithya ­ - in fact as you repeat this process several times, you will find these conclusions no longer affect you the way they did before – now they have become mithya for you and you will be able to appreciate your self to be self-evident, self-revealing consciousness that is invariable in every experience and unaffected by them. Not only that you will recognize that everything here is in the all-pervading consciousness that you are – so nothing is really separate from you.
Om Tat Sat.

.... This article is inspired by Tara Brach's talks on RAIN of Self-Compassions