The Witness of Emotion: Shiva Sutra 3.33

There was an experiment done at the University of California at Los Angeles that asked four groups of people who are afraid of spiders to see how close they could let themselves get to a tarantula… [full text below]

The study postulated that normally the goal is to make people think differently about the spider so that it appears less threatening, so one group was instructed to say to itself, “The spider is in a cage and can’t hurt me, so I don’t need to be afraid.” Another group was instructed to say something that was irrelevant to the spider, the third group was simply exposed, not instructed to say anything at all, and the last group was told to say how they were feeling out loud to themselves as they approached the spider, such as “I’m scared of that huge, hairy tarantula.”

The study concluded that the group that labeled their fear of the spider performed far better than the other groups. They got closer, were less emotionally aroused, and their hands were sweating significantly less, concluding that recognizing and naming of emotions seemed to defang the fearful emotions.

I found the practice of this Sutra to be similar to the practice of naming emotions in this experiment,  at least in the beginning stages. In this Sutra we see the teaching that instead of identifying directly with our pains and pleasures, such as feeling “I am Joyful” or “I am Sad”, we can learn to recognize our experience as “I am experiencing Joy or sadness”.

“Such a yogī experiences the state of pleasure (sukha) and pain (duḥkha) with “this-consciousness,” not “I-consciousness.” For example, he does not experience joy thinking “I am joyous” and sadness thinking “I am sad.” Rather, he“experiences “this is sadness” and “this is joy,” just as an ordinary person experiences external objects in his daily life. He experiences “this-consciousness” not “I-consciousness,” thinking “this is a pot” or “this is a bottle.” So, this yogī experiences his joy and sadness just like an object, separate from his being.”

Emotions are powerful because they arise from samskaras.

This practice can help us release our attachment or aversion to the pleasure or pain in order that we are not lead around by them in the circle of samsara. As Patanjali says in his Yoga Sutras, “The seed of attachment is pleasure. The seed of aversion is pain…The enlightened practitioner realizes that the endless cycle of avoiding pain and seeking pleasure is a self-propagating result of our past impressions, and so both pain and pleasure must be subjected to the process of introspection and detachment.” (2.7,2.8,2.15).

When we are hooked by pain or pleasure, our energy keeps leading us back to those pains and pleasures. Later in that article about the tarantula study, the author noted that research has shown that “When we are afraid or stressed, our brain can only respond based off of previously stored patterns of behavior. But that is rarely the best possible reaction, unless you really are reacting in a life or death situation.” Meaning that it’s good to react on previously stored patterns when an emergency strikes, you hear a tree limb breaking and you run away from the sound without interpreting the situation.

Reacting to Samskaras only strengthens them.

The problem arises, though, when we respond to our daily life in such a patterned way. This is the nature of samsara, when actions are not based on awareness, but are merely based on previous actions, creating a loop of eventual suffering. One simple example is when you hear your favorite song on your playlist, and you really enjoy it, but imagine if that song played a second time, and then a third time, and then a fourth time— it would eventually make you feel aggravated. Or, on the other hand, if there’s something you’re worried about, and you just keep running the worry through your mind endlessly, it wears you out deeply.

So as yogis we can learn to observe our pains and pleasures with detachment and surrender in order to choose them, or not choose them, based on our growth. This is not a matter of stoicism, as this actual practice leads to immense joy. How can that be? I thought we were surrendering our joy? We are surrendering the temporary manifestations of joy as a means of accessing a deeper ‘supreme bliss’ which resides within us. As the Sutra reads, the yogi who uses their practice during the experience of pleasure and pain actually experiences Bliss.

“although in their daily lives they experience pleasure and pain, these experiences do not affect them at all. There is no apprehension that pain and pleasure will rise in them because the cause of the rise of pain and pleasure is individuality and they have destroyed individuality. They are apart from that and so, in the experience of pleasure and pain, they experience the real state of supreme beatitude, supreme bliss (ānanda), which is actually more than bliss. (Pratyabhijñā)”

Just as Babaji often recalls of his teacher Swami Rudrananda, when he bit into an ice cream cone, he used that experience to open his heart, and would enjoy his ice cream more than anyone. He literally tasted Bliss in that mildly joyful experience. Babaji also recently taught the practice froth Vijnana Bhairava which tells us ‘when encountering a long lost friend, and your heart bursts open, breathe into the source of that joy’, meaning, enjoy the embrace of a friend, but don’t stop there, keep going to its source in your heart. It’s good to do this in the moment of joy, because, as Babaji said later, that joy might eventually fade when you realize why the two of you parted ways so long ago.

I have found that the practice of naming emotions is a great way to get this practice started, but you can’t end there. By all means, name your emotion, that takes surrender and awareness in itself. I have been doing it and it helps you detach and feel the present. But as a yogi, you can breathe into that space you have created and keep that door open to the heart without much more interaction with your mind. Name the emotion again, see it objectively, and then breathe into that space. Use all of your tools to stay present, and to keep the wheels of your practice turning.