I know this woman, very neatly pulled together, who always has a vertical crease down the front of her pullover shirt. And she has the habit of constantly checking this crease and smoothing down the front of her shirt.
Once, when I saw her putting her laundry away, I asked her why she folded her shirts in half, sleeve to sleeve, when the result would be a crease in the middle of the shirt. There was a ready answer: She explained that one of her childhood chores had been to fold the family laundry. Her father, a military man, was very domineering and very particular about how his clothes were folded. T-shirts needed to be folded (as my grandmother would have said) “just so”, with no wrinkles whatsoever. If he pulled a shirt out of the drawer and it had any wrinkles at all, he threw it back into the laundry for another go-through (and let her know about it).
So the first thing she did when she began to live on her own, was to fold her t-shirts her own way, and she has ever since.
You could say, “hooray for her, ” but consider the implication:
Because of her childhood power struggle with her dad, this woman, now nearing 40, is consigned to wearing a vertical crease down the middle of every shirt as a badge of defiance. Her style of folding isn’t proactive, but reactive. I’m sure that every time she looks into a mirror and automatically reaches to smooth her shirt, a hint of that childhood hurt tugs at her.
So whether she thinks so, or not, her father is still running part of her life, or at least her laundry.
We’ve all known people like this, who carry some hurt – big or small – and announce it at every opportunity. Often it’s followed with a phrase like “but I’m over that now,” or “that’s why I spent years in therapy,” or “that’s why I don’t live near my family”.
I once heard the minister of a large, liberal church comment on how many times he has heard people express appreciation for how warm and diverse his congregation is, saying things like “It’s important to me to be in an accepting environment.” He said this is often followed with another statement “because it’s so unlike the awful church in which I was raised.”
He was making the point that we can’t pretend to practice global acceptance and lovingkindness until we have made peace with our own roots. While t-shirts and bumper stickers like “Recovering Catholic” may provoke a giggle, I’m not sure it’s possible to label yourself a “Recovering Catholic,” or any other exclusionary title that implies derision, and support your yoga practice.
If you need to separate yourself from your past, I, personally, think it’s okay to describe yourself in more neutral terms such as a “former Catholic” or a “non-practicing Jew.” If part of your path is lovingkindness, called maitri in Sanskrit, or in Buddhism, metta, then you have to find a way to make peace with your past, even if it is through neutrality.
In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (1.33), the author says:
- matiri karuna mudita upekshanam sukha duhka punya apunya vishayanam bhavanatah chitta prasadanam
The translation from Sanskrit:
- In relationships, the mind becomes purified by cultivating feelings of friendliness towards those who are happy, compassion for those who are suffering, goodwill towards those who are virtuous, and indifference or neutrality towards those we perceive as wicked or evil.
Like my friend, each of us wears some kind of crease on the front of our shirt. We harbor some reaction, whether it’s in where we live, what we drive, how we work, or where we worship.
I think part of the work of the yogic path is to continually challenge ourselves to look for our own “reaction wrinkles” and make sure that we develop “right actions” in their stead. Regardless of our religion or philosophy, the above passage can be a toolkit for dealing with uncomfortable situations and developing a proactive response. In this way, we can practice maitri toward ourselves first, and then extend it to the rest of our community and world.
Namasté.
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