“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do.” – Romans 7:15
Every time I read these lines, two feelings flood through me. The first and most obvious is regret accompanied by frustration – “Dang it. I’m still doing that.” The second is relief – for if this was central enough to St. Paul’s human experience that he wrote it down and mailed it off to his friends in Rome, and these friends thought it was so important that they saved it for us, then maybe (just maybe) my inability to break out of my old, unbeneficial ways of being is simply part of being human?
What is the thing you hate, yet still do?
For as long as I can remember, the thing I hate to do and still do is to hurry to get “it all” done. This scurrying is often accompanied by a sense of panic that there is not enough time, which serves only to add more fuel to the fire.
I know – from years and years of trying really hard to do things differently – that when I slow down, not only do I feel better, but I do whatever it is that needs to get done better. And way more importantly, while I do whatever it is that needs to get done, I treat the people I love the way they deserve to be treated, which is, incidentally, the way I want to treat them.
Samskaras are habits we slip into and get stuck
It turns out the ancient yogis also realized that we human beings have a nasty habit of developing habits that, while they may have been helpful at one point, have long since stopped being helpful and, instead, have become quite debilitating. They called these samskaras and defined them as grooves that our behavior slips into and gets stuck.
It might be helpful to think of these grooves as the grooves on a vinyl record that can only play one song. You and I, we’d like to be flexible enough to play any song at any time rather than the same old song, right? Right.
As is often the case, neuroscience is catching up to the yogis and is spending a great deal of time and energy studying plasticity. It turns out the human brain can learn and change and develop new “grooves” well into old age. In fact, with determination, we can keep growing and learning and changing until our very last breath – if (and this is a big if) we can resist the very human tendency to get stuck in our ways (samskaras) as we age.
Sometimes, habits are good for us – until they’re not
So why does this happen? Why do we get stuck in habits or ways of doing things that no longer serve us? In part, biology is to blame. One of the reasons we are so good at doing everything that we do is that our brains develop neuropathways so that we don’t have to think about every step along the way.
When this goes well, we get to zip through a great deal of what we’re doing (the stuff we’ve already learned how to do) on autopilot. This saves space and energy that frees our cognitive and creative efforts to focus on the new stuff we need to do. This goes sideways when we’ve outgrown our old ways.
Survival skills keep us alive until they begin to destroy us
Let’s return to my habit of hurrying. Once upon a time, I learned that if I hurried to get everything done, I would not get in trouble. This was a survival skill. Over the years, I became accustomed to a speedy pace of life and also to the accolades that periodically came my way for “how much” I could get done in a single day. Suddenly my survival skill felt like a superpower.
One day, when I was unwittingly teetering on the precipitous edge of burnout, a teacher said something along the lines of, “Survival skills keep us alive until they begin to destroy us,” and I burst into exhausted tears. I immediately realized that I do not want to hurry any longer. I do not want to rush. I do not want to be busy. I do not want to be always at the mercy of my schedule.
Not a quick fix, sadly
Over the past several years, and after many fits and starts, I have worked to rework my life. I have settled into a slower pace. I have gotten pretty good at maintaining space in my days and weeks. I have even gotten (fairly) comfortable with the idea of a to-do list not getting done by the end of the day, or the end of the week, or (maybe) ever.
Yet, to this day, I still wake up some days feeling like a runner on the starting line. I feel too rushed to lean down and pet my dog on the way out the door. I feel too harried to answer the phone when my daughter calls. I scan my calendar desperately looking for all the “extra” things I could cancel. Yep. I’m looking to eliminate the very things – a walk with a friend or an hour spent puttering in the garden – that I have learned sustain and energize me. Despite my best efforts, though I hate them, I still fall prey to my old, busy ways of being.
What are we to do?
Paul would suggest prayer. That this is beyond us. That all the willpower and hard work in the world will not get us there. The yogis are right there with him. We cannot white-knuckle our way to lasting change. In fact, the yogis say that instead of working at it, we need to slow down (or stop completely). It is only then that we will be able to see clearly our habitual, even unconscious behaviors.
And, when we do see them, are we to stamp them out? Nope. We’re simply meant to consider the opposite and gently invite ourselves to try something new.
How long is this going to take?
Rivers are another metaphorical groove often used to explain samskaras. We all know that water tends to flow the way water has always flowed. Yet, over time (millennia), rivers do change their course. As you and I work to change the way we’ve always lived, perhaps it would be helpful to emulate the patience and steadiness of a river as it seeks a new way to the sea.
Can we imagine allowing ourselves a lifetime to keep considering the “opposite,” beneficial behaviors we’d like to embrace? Can we imagine allowing ourselves a lifetime to practice new ways of being until they become habits of their own?
In the wise words of Glennon Doyle, “luckily a lifetime is exactly how long we have.”
The experience of samadhi comes by ceasing all effort …. In the resulting spontaneous stillness, one can see through one’s own unconscious to the underlying patterns and latent impressions from past actions and experiences (samskaras). These samskaras cause habitual, often unconscious behaviors that we are not even aware of when our mind is active. – Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 1.18
When the mind becomes attached to thoughts or desires, or entangled in samskaras, we are to bring to mind the opposite thoughts and emotions to change our brain’s patterning. This will create the proper attitude for practice (pratipaksa bhavanam). – Yoga Sutras of Patanjali 2.33