Untrashable

 

Pain points out where our attachments are hidden.  It is a perfect indicator of the limitations that are our selfish expectations.  That is why, to the yogi, pain is a teacher - a stern one, yet one that has nothing but the liberation of its students at heart.
Inside the Yoga Sutras, J. Carrera

We hold the keys to our own inner peace.
The Secret Power of Yoga , Nichala Joy Devi

All of the spiritual traditions teach that at our core what we are made of is "untrashable" by the violence that maybe inflicted upon us.  Whether by poverty or racism, incest, neglect or hate, the trauma done to us cannot touch this (w)holy core within.

In yoga philosophy, this inner core is the abode of Purusha (the soul) which is also know as the Seer.  Purusha is the part of consciousness that can know and experience ourselves and world without distortion.  It is pure present awareness.  Nothing has the power to defame, desecrate, wound, or harm this inner wisdom.  Like the breath, it is given to us in all its fullness by Divine grace  - it is not something we create, generate, or can have more of if we are "good".  It is what the substance of our aliveness  - our conscious awareness - is made of even though, most of the time, we are lost to its existence.  In our forgetting, we come to believe that the substance of who we are is dependent on what we do, think, or sense, what we or others "make of ourselves"in the world.

When we come to believe that our self-worth is dependent on what we do in world or what happens to us, we can succumb distorted thinking which tells us that any violence that has been done to us defines us.  As the psychologist and Contempaltive Teacher James Finley says, "We can come to believe that what has happened to us in the past has the power to name who we are."  But this is only because we forget that at our core we are by Divine right "untrashable".

A poet image of this came to me the other day as I was walking by the lake in the woods.  It is as if deep inside us there is a precious and pure lake, cool, blue/black, still and infinite in depth and circumference.  The violence that is done to us sends forth ripples onto this lake.  But they do not stick nor change the texture, the color, the coolness, or natural stillness of the lake.  The ripples touch us but they spread and dissipate leaving only what is pure, still, and (w)holly its own.   We are abundantly able to let these ripples pass through us leaving us untouched.  They do not name us, they cannot tarnish what is pure and God given, they have no power to desecrate what is precious within us.

When there is pain that sticks or lingers it is because we have lost touched with our inner preciousness.  Yoga can help us to find this preciousness, the inner pure stillpoint.  With practice we can come to live more and more fully connected to its healing presence.