Dear Sundari,
Thank you for your reply to my last email, since then I have been continuing with karma yoga and self-inquiry, I have had phases of sattvic bliss, knowing who I am, and life has been effortless, but recently I am struggling to get out of victim thinking.
When I was a child I was sexually assaulted and I was raped 4 years ago which has left me with a back injury that will likely cause me pain for the rest of my life. I am trying to say this just stating the facts of what happened to this jiva. I used to drink and take drugs to medicate the pain, but I have been sober for 18 months now and I’m very grateful to Isvara for the sobriety and for a mostly peaceful mind. I follow a sattvic diet and practice yoga, meditate and see an osteopath all of which help with pain management but do not eliminate the pain altogether.
However, my back pain has been worse over the last few months and every time it hurts I have memories or flashbacks. I have been in therapy since I stopped drinking which has helped me to sit with the emotions and memories as Awareness. Yet I still spend so much of my time protecting myself from men, being touched or feeling unsafe.
In some ways I think this is good for inquiry because when I feel safe I am relaxed, and I can focus on The Self. But I also have the thought that if I continue setting these boundaries (even in my mind) I am enforcing this victim vasana. Yet the idea of living without them makes me feel sick. My stomach turns if I think about a man coming into my personal space uninvited.
I would like to know what you think is the best way to dismantle this victim vasana. It has taken a lot of time and effort to bring all the unconscious trauma out into the open, I can sit with it, witness it, until the point when I feel fear. Then I want to control, set boundaries, my body tenses and I feel sick. This is just a thought but when I’m ‘feeling’ that thought the tamas clouds my mind and the only way out I know is setting boundaries. Does this mean I am creating more karma because I am believing the victim story? How do I get out of this bind?
I read your satsang on fear and I found it very helpful. I understood very well the feeling that when this victim vasana takes over, I don’t have time to dismantle the fear thought. I also understood that this fear is self-validating. Yet when I feel it my body/mind is frozen. I forget all about Vedanta and self-inquiry and I want to feel safe again. I know I can’t get rid of the memories, but can I make them neutral? So my body/mind does not tense and therefore I have room to dismantle?
I hope that is enough information to give you an idea of my current situation. It’s hard to put into words the crux of the issue because the fear is tamasic and it makes it hard to explain.
Yours in gratitude,
Sundari: It’s good to hear from you again, thank you for sharing more of your story. Your email is to the point and dispassionate, and even though you are explaining very difficult life circumstances, you are not whining or complaining. The first thing to look at is who the ‘I’ refers to when you say “I” know I can’t get rid of the memories, but can I make them neutral?’ Your email shows that though you do objectify the jiva and what happened to her, you objectify her as a jiva, not as the Self. There is still identification with her and her karma. This is understandable as her karma was very traumatic.
You will probably never get rid of the memories or neutralize the karma if you are thinking as a jiva. The only way you can neutralize both is by objectifying them as the Self. Karma is just karma – it doesn’t mean anything other than the meaning we ascribe to it. This world appears very real but when we inquire into it from the nondual perspective, it disappears. So, what we experience in it, while very painful, is also, therefore, not real. However, that is hard to swallow when terrible things happen to us because we feel the pain so acutely.
Accepting the really tough hand that ‘fate’ gives us is extremely difficult. It requires restructuring how we see ourselves, and how we relate to our world, sometimes almost entirely because we are not the same person anymore. It is very easy to fall into the victim trap because it seems to offer protection. But protection from what? The only security possible in life is Self-knowledge; the only thing we need protection from is ignorance of our true nondual nature, and identification with our personal identity in all its tragedy or triumph. This is easier said than done when we have suffered, or are suffering.
Whether it is highly injurious actions such as you experienced, or apocalyptic events like the loss of life in the fire in Hawaii last week, or the tragic loss of loved ones, or even an illness, the mind, our thought/emotion processor, needs to rewire our neural circuits to accommodate a different identity from the one we were ‘before’. We have to say goodbye to it. But the mind is a very conservative instrument, it tries at all times to protect itself and function according to what it knows. And what it knows is only a very small aperture onto the field of experience – its own version of experience . Thus our ‘I’ sense, when governed by duality, meaning the ego identity, is very fragile and very limited. The world is a scary, unpredictable place. And yet, this de-identification with the ego-self is at the heart of freedom, the assimilation of the unlimited Self as our true identity.
Difficult circumstances, as hard as they may be, offer us an extreme opportunity for turning the mind inwards, towards the Self. But this is no easy process, and it can take years to come out of it, if one ever fully does. How to make sense of what seems so cruel and senseless? Why do bad things happen? Some people buckle under superficially challenging life circumstances, while others grow stronger despite very difficult ones. It all depends on the quality of our mind, how much it is covered by ignorance and therefore, the types of thoughts/feelings we harbor and allow to define us. This will determine whether our mind is our friend or greatest enemy.
Some people suffering PTSD are helped by psychological counselling and medication to get a handle on their lives. Others seem to be beyond help, and their lives are irrevocably devastated. Some people, when given a terrible blow such as a chronic or terminal illness, win through to a new appreciation for how precious life is, and thrive despite it. There are many therapies on offer, but to gain control of the mind we need a means of knowledge to understand it and the world it lives in. A tool-kit as it were, to apply that knowledge to our life. You are certainly very fortunate to have found Vedanta, there is no better tool-kit, one that never fails if understood and correctly applied. It gives us the answer to everything in mithya, our field of experience.
The first tool in our Vedanta kit is karma yoga, and I am glad to hear you are applying it. It is our first line of defense, especially when we have challenging prarabdha karma playing out, such as you have. Because karma yoga is for negating the doer—the one who thinks it is responsible for doing (and often, what was done to it)—it also opens the doorway to forgiveness. It makes it possible to see that nobody is really doing anything, we are all victims of ignorance, even those who harmed us. Karma yoga is the only way to face our karma and to ‘defang’ our fear demons.
Forgiveness is not about saying tough karma isn’t tough, or adharmic actions are not adharmic; it just sheds a whole new light on what drives us and how we relate to what happens to us. In situations such as yours, even the abuser is abused by his/her abuse. There will always be those who find a new identity in trauma, and fight to preserve it. The point is, do you want to be abused by being a victim? I know you don’t. It is the position of least effectiveness in any situation, so forego membership to that club at all costs! Ultimately, it comes down to making a choice. You can give into the drama of the karma, and live in high anxiety, stress and fear, or you can negate it all with Self-knowledge.
The memory of the painful events is ‘frozen’ in the Subtle body, the mind, and it has formed a deep and painful samskara – the lens – through which you are experiencing your life. Through this lens, everyone is suspect, especially ‘men’. It’s good that you are having body work done, but the ‘stuckness’ is in the mind, which pervades the body. Self-inquiry is looking at everything we think, feel and do in the light of the nondual teachings – and what we are trying to gain. If you are applying the nondual teachings correctly, self-inquiry will soon make it clear that there is no-one to blame, nothing to gain in this world, and there is nothing to lose. We cannot be damaged or diminished by anything or anyone, man or woman. These are just superimposed identities on the nondual and genderless Self.
Life is a zero-sum game, but the good news is that you are already what you are trying to gain. The problem, then, is ridding the mind of the pressure of its likes and dislikes, fears and desires so that it is clear enough to assimilate Self-knowledge. It does not take much to register that when you are in the grip of this pain/fear samskara (complex of vasanas) you are not able to relate appropriately to your environment or manage the mind because it is controlled by this samskara. And it’s obvious from what you say that you do not want this samskara to have that much power over you.
By all means, set boundaries, that is a healthy thing for anyone to do. At this stage of self-inquiry, a relationship with anyone would probably be distracting anyway, if full Self-actualization is your aim (moksa). Concentrate on your sadhana, forget about whether you should or should not let anyone into your private space. But ask yourself: What is private space anyway, when all is the Self? You need to understand how Isvara works in your life and in Life. This is an intelligent universe, and nothing happens by accident. Isvara simply delivers to us the karma that we came here to neutralize. There are no mistakes. And, Vedanta makes it possible to accomplish that. We are not what happens to us. You are only a victim if you fall for those voices of diminishment/anxiety/fear. Don’t listen to them, they are not your friend, and they do not speak the truth about you.
Take a stand in Awareness as Awareness every single time these toxic thoughts arise in the mind and practice the opposite thought; chanting knowledge based identity mantras really helps to shut off involuntary thoughts. Just do it. What price freedom? If you don’t have one, start a devotional practice of gratitude; set up an altar where you show up every day to give thanks, no matter what. An altar can be anything, just a place to focus and be. Make it a practice to remind yourself that there are always those who have it tougher than we have. Count your blessings. Life is benign despite the bad things that happen. It is not God or Isvara that causes them, but ignorance of Isvara/Awareness. Hand over your fear and pain to Isvara on the altar of karma yoga. You don’t have to carry it. Let Isvara do it.
A good definition of karma yoga is an attitude of gratitude, a loving consecration of one’s thoughts, feelings and actions based on the understanding that life is a great gift that requires reciprocation, no matter how tough the going gets. Gratitude counts most when things are not going our way. We must remember that we have the freedom of choosing and performing actions and whatever result comes is in accordance not only with the laws governing the action, but what works best for the whole field of experience. Isvara always takes the needs of the Total into account first. This attitude of taking the result as it is, maintaining equanimity of the mind both in success and failure, is karma yoga.
Failure to appreciate this fact results in low self-esteem, the feeling that “I am a failure, I am worthless, or I am a victim.” It robs us of self-confidence, and we start to shrink away from life, fearful of what it might bring or take away from us. We live in a prison of our own making. The solution to low self-esteem/victimhood is first to see the negative thoughts as mere imposters, like squatters in the mind, taking up the precious real estate of your peace of mind. They do not come from you and they do not belong to you. They are known to you. So, they cannot be you. You are the knower of the thoughts, which means, they are not real. Real is defined as that which is always present and never changes, which only ever applies to you, the Self/Awareness. Throw the imposters out by taking a stand in Awareness.
Thoughts and emotions tend to morph into actions very quickly unmanaged; but they produce likes and dislikes (vasanas) only if the result is looked upon as a success or failure. When the result is looked upon as a function and by the grace of the invariable laws of action that govern the whole field of life, no new likes and dislikes are created. With this attitude towards results, actions born of likes and dislikes become the means of eliminating the very likes and dislikes themselves.
Freedom from bondage to wanting a particular result is the understanding that one’s knowledge of all the variables in the field that produce results is and always will be limited. We can never judge an outcome as good or bad because we simply will never know what is going on from the big picture point of view. Some people who survive terrible, unimaginable karma, say that they are so grateful for it because their lives have changed so much in positive ways. Who knows why things happen the way they do? On the subject of karma, why we are dealt the hands we are, can never be known. The same is true of the results of one’s actions. So why waste mental energy trying to figure it out? It’s a waste of time. When dealt a tough hand, it is human to go through the stages of healing, such as denial, anger, grief, bargaining, and acceptance. But karma yoga can take you to acceptance much faster, if you apply it.
Remember that karma yoga is not about what you do or don’t do. It never fails because it is an attitude you take towards action, not the action itself. Karma yoga means fully dedicating your every thought, word, and actions before they are performed, on a moment to moment basis, to Isvara. It is performing one’s duty, cultivating the right attitude toward life, thus conforming to the pattern and harmony of creation and you become alive to the beauty of the cosmic order.
It takes skill to perform action with the right attitude, which is doing what is to be done, whether you like it or not. Strong emotions are very difficult to contain. As I said to you before, when we get swept away by our fears and desires, we feel as though we do not have the time to do inquiry. But if we do, likes and dislikes, how we feel about the situation, does not come into play. And if they do, we ignore them as irrelevant. Your likes and dislikes often prompt you to perform an action which is not conducive to peace of mind so a karma yogi refrains from performing it because it is not proper for them. So, performing actions in harmony with the natural order (dharmic actions) and avoiding actions that disturb the order (adharmic actions) is karma yoga.
Karma yoga is keeping our attention on the motivation behind our actions, the thoughts and emotions attached to it, and adjusting our attitude when it is found to be vasana producing or enhancing. But when rajas is strong, dispassion and discrimination go out the window; the mind cannot observe itself. It is projected out to the world, caught up in the future driven by the thought that things ‘should’ or need to be different. So the mind acts to correct the situation, usually in negative ways, to get what it wants or avoid what it doesn’t, instead of correcting its thinking. When tamas predominates, the mind is too dull to discriminate; it is prone to denial and avoidance. Rajas and tamas always work together. Where you find projection (rajas) you will find denial (tamas).
Sameness of mind (a sattvic value) towards success and failure with respect to action is another definition of karma yoga. When a result is looked upon as a success, attachment arises and when it is looked upon as failure, aversion arises. In fact, there is no such thing as success and failure. Every result is in accordance with the laws of action. Laws are not made by anybody; they are made by the dharma field or Isvara, so they can never go wrong. Every result is the right result. The more you appreciate the laws, the more you are in harmony with the things around you and you can find your place in the scheme of things.
Additionally, action never really fails; it only produces results. A given expectation may be said to have failed, but the one with the expectation has not failed. That I have failed or that the action has failed is the wrong conclusion – only the expectation is the problem. Nobody fails. It is only a matter of wrong judgment because we are not omniscient, and cannot have the knowledge of all the factors that shape our karma, or the results of the actions. Only Isvara has all knowledge of these factors.
The other powerful tool at your disposal for mind control is guna management. Understanding the gunas and how the three energies, sattva (peace/clarity), rajas (desire/action) and tamas (dullness/denial), work to condition our mind is the key to understanding Isvara, and what is happening not only in ‘your’ mind but in your environment, of which the mind is an extension. To gain a sufficiently dispassionate acceptance of our karma so that we can live in peace with it, and ‘reinvent’ ourselves, takes courage. But it can be done with the right knowledge. And , very importantly, by going easy on ourselves.
Nobody makes themselves the way they are. It may be true that we bring upon ourselves a lot of unpleasant karma with our flawed values, discrimination and faulty decision making. But we are not to blame, ignorance is. There is much about the jiva we must love and accept as it is. We all come in stamped a certain way, molded by our karma, and our personality most likely will never change that much. We have all been through the mill in some way. With Self-knowledge, what changes is how we relate to our karma. The pain/victim vasana combat will end, you’ll see. One day you will notice that it is just gone, and you never saw it leave.
These are the fetus in the womb samskaras and they come out only at Isvara’s behest. We may feel like we must keep up the good fight in the boxing ring with them, and it’s true, vigilant application of the knowledge is required because these samskaras do cut you off at the knees if they get the chance. However, nothing you ‘do’ can get rid of them. Nothing. Except look them directly in the eye through the lens of Self-knowledge, faithfully sticking to your sadhana and living a beautiful knowledge-based life despite the fact that the jiva is convinced it is damaged, or in some way incapacitated.
Please put up a post-it reminder to Self: I am not what happens to me. I am never not the Self. Moksa is not about perfecting the jiva, only understanding what it is and negating its conceptual identity. The essence of the jiva is Me, the Self. Dare to identify with the Self so that you are totally OK with being as you are as a jiva. And when that fear/anxiety or victim vasana pops up like an unwelcome cork in the ocean of samsara, say ‘Oh, No, not you again’. Whack it with Self-knowledge, instantly. Eternal vigilance and application of the teachings is the price of freedom.
There is no easy way to dissolve past hurts, or smooth difficult karma, other than applying the knowledge day by day, thought by thought. Don’t get disheartened, you are doing really well. Dispassionate self-honesty is a non-negotiable requirement if you truly want freedom from suffering. Pat yourself on the back for not giving in to despair or self-pity. You have come a long way! You are the Self, you will prevail over anything this life can throw at you.
Carol: Thank you so much for this response. I keep reading it and finding more and more helpful information. I have had a few ‘episodes’ since getting this email and I have made an effort to take a stand in Awareness and see that the memories are just waves in the ocean. They do not change me. I remain the same. I think I have found this difficult in the past because I expected I would feel better. But I still experience the sickness, tension and ‘dirty feeling’ but it does eventually pass. I have to accept that it feels unpleasant. Perhaps I wanted a magic pill to take it away. I know from other vasanas that no longer trouble me, that it will eventually go, as you said I didn’t even notice them leave. It gives me great confidence when you say this one will go also. Perhaps what I have been lacking is the determination to keep going when I don’t seem to ‘get better’, and I didn’t really believe it could change.
Sundari: Good for you, keep it up! It is natural to want a magic pill to take away the pain. Nobody wants to suffer. But there is a gift in the suffering, and it has brought you to Vedanta.
Carol: I like what you said about loving the jiva. This seems very important, instead of playing the victim, just love her and the time it is taking to move through this vasana. It’s all happening as it needs to so why not love her as she is! I don’t need to be in a relationship and boundaries are healthy for professional relationships so there is nothing to worry about. Phew!
Sundari: Absolutely!
Carol: I also really appreciated the advice about karma yoga. I have previously just done prayers and consecration of my actions in the morning and then gratitude before bed. Maybe some surrendering in the day if things don’t go my way! This is great but I see now it’s not enough. Since reading your email, I have been trying to do it through the day, with every new job or task. It’s very different and I found it makes action lighter, or I don’t feel it’s ‘me’ doing it; half the things I do on autopilot so it’s hard to change this rhythm. Now I see it’s not me doing it anyway. All this has made me laugh and I’m determined to keep at it. So thank you for explaining it to me so clearly. I have read all James’ books but it’s easy to think you are understanding but it needs constant application.
I have also been working more on gratitude and I can see that if I hadn’t been raped (that was my hitting bottom), I might never have stopped drinking, I might not have got into yoga, or found James’ book. So really the worst thing that happened might be the best. It’s finding that gratitude and changing the story. It helps.
Sundari: There is always a bigger picture at play in our lives linked to our main purpose in being here, which is to realize the Self. Isvara uses whatever means necessary to achieve that end, and suffering is the most common. It is a benign universe, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.
Carol: I was feeling lost before I sent that email and now I’m clear, determined and passionate about Vedanta again. I am going on retreat for a week studying scripture so that will of course help.
Sundari: I am very happy for you. Self-knowledge does not give us immunity against what seems like terrible, outrageous karma. But when Self-knowledge obtains, we can never be ‘lost’ again. As I said above and you so rightly have seen, there is a gift in everything that ‘happens’ to us. Isvara does not make mistakes in facilitating our karma. I have great compassion for what the jiva must go through to win freedom from bondage to the Causal body (ignorance), it is no joke. True self-inquiry is tough because it requires that Self-knowledge transforms all our emotional trauma and agitation into devotion to the Self. Never give in or give up, you are on the Vedanta bus and you don’t have to worry where you are going or what is the purpose of life. You have ‘arrived’ because you are, and always have been, the Self. There is nowhere to go. Just. Now. ‘Here’. All Ways and Always.
Rest assured, if you leave your jiva life story on the altar of karma yoga and entrust it to Isvara, without losing hope or becoming despondent when it seems there is no change in status, the knowledge WILL work to remove the pressure of fear vasanas. It has to because there is nothing more powerful than Self-knowledge. You absolutely can trust it. Although it seems to ‘take time’, nothing ever changes you, the non-experiencing witness of the jiva. Though freedom is not about perfecting the jiva, it is about giving it a good, happy life without worry or fear.
Remember that freedom from and for the jiva does not specifically mean the jiva changes or how you experience as a jiva changes – that is not the aim of self-inquiry because all experience is in mithya. All that changes is how and why you contact objects; i.e., how you relate to your field of experience, or life. Satya and mithya are not in the same order of reality and never meet. If you can remember that at all times, you will start to develop non-dual vision. Everything the jiva experiences, no matter how real, happy, or painful it seems, never ever touches you, the Self. The Self never ‘becomes’ the jiva, even though its essence is Jivatman, the Self. Duality is a superimposition onto non-duality and not real. You need nothing other than Self-knowledge to be happy.
However, the jiva’s character and how it experiences life does indirectly change quite drastically once Self-knowledge starts to work on the mind, neutralizing all anxiety, fear, and binding vasanas. All worry disappears when you truly realize that you cannot be the jiva and the Self, that the jiva is merely a conceptual entity, with a dependent existence on you, the Self. When you know without a doubt that as the Self you are ever free of the jiva construct, that’s moksa. And the jiva starts to live as the best version of itself; all the hard edges get levelled off by Self-knowledge.
When karma yoga and Self-knowledge become your default approach to everything, life becomes very light, unencumbered, and filled with light. You can be joyous, despite difficult jiva karma because you no longer have the existential angst of trying to ‘do your life’. Isvara knows much better than the jiva does what is best for you and will give you what you need, one way or the other. It is futile to resist and soul-destroying to be bound to the doer/ego. Let the jiva story burn in the fire of Self-knowledge. It is not yours, anyway. Life is beautiful then, you can see the order and intelligence at work and you know you have nothing to lose or gain because you are the eternal unchanging fullness that gives meaning to everything.
With much love
Sundari
