One of the primary obstacles to meditation I mentioned the other day is 'complications of daily life'. Overcoming this obstacle is about ridding your life of undesirable company. At times it may not seem like it, but you do in fact get to choose your friends. People who lie, steal, are greedy, or indulge in gossip have no place in the life of a spiritual person. It sounds simple - you don't want negative people in your life - but it can be challenging to get out from under the influence of this type of person. So what's the secret? Detachment.
Yoga Sutra II.7 tells us that pleasure leads to emotional attachment. At some point these people have done something that made you feel good; it could be something simple like bringing you coffee, or something complicated like winning your heart. These positive feelings led to an emotional attachment. Now, their actions or words are bringing you down but you feel like you owe them something. You don't want to hurt their feelings or create more drama so you do nothing. Sutra II.17 teaches us that the remedy to this pain lies in dissociation. I understand that you may not be able to physically remove yourself from the negative people in your life (coworkers, family, etc.), but if you start to focus on yourself, on your own inner peace, you will find that mentally and emotionally removing yourself from their influence becomes easy. And, once you see the improvement in your own life, you will learn to avoid future attachments that lead to negativity.
Note: Undesirable company isn't exclusive to people. Anything that brings about negative thoughts is considered undesirable company: raucous surroundings, books and songs that create discontent, movies and television programs centering on violence. These distractions draw the mind outward rather than focusing it inward.
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