Our default settings suck.

Strong class this morning! Deep hamstring and hip holds. Thanks for coming out in the snow.

Anyway, a student asked me after class about the idea of pain. If I understood her correctly, citing "traditional" religion, she felt that pain was necessary for spiritual transformation. This gives me an opportunity to clarify.

It's weird, but I always think of freedom when I think of pain.

In yoga class, I refuse to call it pain. I call it sensation and emphasize that it is neutral, raw, meaningless. Everything that comes through our senses is meaningless, neutral, until we interpret it. Once we interpret it, it has meaning to us.* Usually we interpret by default without realizing we have a choice and without actually feeling the sensation.

Our default settings suck. They are controlled by the ego and are always some form of fear. So any strong sensation is instantly interpreted by the ego as "pain," which is the ego's default.

Even worse, it's the ego's interpretation from yesterday so we are reliving the past. Clearly we are not present. We absolutely are not experiencing the sensation as it is now. We have given up freedom of choice to the ego at the most basic level. Consider this fact: The ego would never let us really feel anything. This is why even pleasures seem to fade. We're not feeling anything, just reliving past associations which rapidly become dull, as does our whole life.

To really feel anything, we need to be present. In the light of presence, the ego is obliterated. So, under threat of obliteration and before we know it, the ego serves up yesterday's interpretation to save itself. (This goes on pretty much all the time. No wonder spiritual growth is described as waking up from a dream.)

Remember the story of Viktor Frankl: "Man's Search for Meaning?" Tortured in a concentration camp, he realized that he was still free to choose how to interpret everything that happened to him:

Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms- to choose one's attitudes in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's way. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity- even in the most difficult circumstances- to add a deeper meaning to his life.

If we could only make it the first of human freedoms.

We practice learning this freedom in the smallest, safest, simplest way. In vinyasa class when there's alot of sensation, I urge students to try and see it anew. This is the beginning. Practicing. We only need a moment. A gap before the ego rushes forward. To give a new interpretation. Be very interested in what you feel. I offer the feeling of healing, or coolness or just neutrality and letting it be whatever it is. It is urgent to really feel in the present. It's about freedom. Freedom to interpret every situation as it is not as you once did. This illuminates the slavery we submit ourselves to when we operate unquestioning at the ego level of consciousness.

Look, here's the answer: it still might be pain, but by quietly disregarding the ego's interpretation, we wake-up. We then decide what it is. We practice the first of human freedoms. Is pain necessary? Not if we can wake up this way.

The ego unravels from here. We get a glimpse of the ego system. And it doesn't like to be seen. (I think it's embarrassed at what a selfish jerk it is.) So the more you see it, the more it shrinks. The question is now: Who's doing the seeing? Who is watching the ego system? You have finally found yourself. It's a relief to know that we are not our childish ego.

It's truly astounding how much of our life, how much of each day is reliving yesterday. When you take the concept beyond just sensation you see how our relationships are so repetitive,
our lives have been dulled. We have no new experiences because by using past interpretations automatically, we're asleep at the wheel. And our relationships, jobs, level of success, level of consciousness never change because we continually rely on the ego's past interpretation of every circumstance. The ego, which does not exist in the present, likes it that way. By keeping us dulled by past interpretations, it casts its shadow over the present and extends itself into the future. (see ACIM)

As our ego shrinks, we sense another kind of awareness. For some it's in our heart. Maybe in your gut. The Course in Miracles calls it the Holy Spirit, our Internal Teacher. You could say that you have a lie detector in your heart. A bullshit meter inside you. But the problem is we've protected it in a steel box and we forgot about it. Or maybe we're afraid of it. Or maybe we're afraid of losing our identity, our selfish ego? Anyway, what's in the box is so tranquil and the ego is so very loud and persistent it takes a commitment to hear what's in there.

Sometimes when we're quiet we get a strong sense of It. An intuition. As we practice presence, mindful meditation, yoga, in and out of a class, we become more and more aware of It. Deepak Chopra describes It as contextual. It knows the context of you in the whole universe. The Course says that It sees the world with the eyes of love, showing and teaching only happiness, joy. Compare that Teacher to the ego who teaches pain, and shows fearful, afraid, selfish, petty view. So let's see- fear, pain, anger, attack...or happiness and joy?

*It happens as soon as we "name" it. Think of a name as a link to a whole "website" of prior associations. So we name strong sensation as "pain," without even realizing it all these prior associations rush forward. We automatically use these default settings to interpret everything we sense using various names to bring forward their "websites" of associations. We're actually never experiencing anything as it is now.