Blowing up my ego, one samskara at a time…

One of my favourite sayings goes something like this, “Its easy to be a good person when times are good but it’s being a good person when times are tough that really counts”. I’d like to add that I believe we are all good people all the time, only sometimes we perform actions that are not inline with a greater power or for the greater good.Recently I’ve been going through a challenging time, coming back to Israel after almost two months in Canada with my family, practicing with my teachers and feeling generally at home. Coming back to Israel is hard for me as I’m faced with the same set of challenges I’ve been dealing with for the last three years. Now I’m feeling more and more like I’m done, I don’t want to deal with it anymore, I want out. It has become clear to me that moving back to Toronto is not a question of IF, it’s a question of WHEN. Knowing this a whole new set of challenges are presenting themselves and I’m trying to navigate my way through what appears to be a few deeply ingrained negative Samskaras (unconscious conditioning).One of my first yoga teachers once told me that gaining new awareness is like realizing you’ve been hitting yourself in the head with a hammer over and over and over again. The minute you realize you’re doing this, you look at the hammer in your hand, you put it down and you don’t hit yourself again. I’d like to believe this is true and I think when you truly gain that new understanding and awareness it is. However, I think one of the problems in putting down the hammer is that our egos are so attached to our suffering that we prefer our suffering that is familiar out of fear of the unknown and as such breaking through our samskaras is challenging work and might require that we revisit something again and again until we truly understand all the damage we are causing to ourselves and the people we love.In dealing with my new challenges and in discussion with the amazing Zorik, I’ve come to realize that I have a very negative behaviour pattern that is not serving me or us and it is making my life in Israel harder than it needs to be. My ego is addicted to my suffering here, it so desperately wants to be right and to be acknowledged that life here is hard. I don’t speak the language very well and can’t follow even basic conversations, I don’t understand the militaristic and more aggressive culture, I’m far away from my family and often feel like I’m losing my independence as simple things I would have done for myself I can no longer do.What I’m starting to see is that my pattern of identifying as different, separate from the rest of society and somehow not fitting in is leading me to be miserable, to experience life as isolated and much harder than it needs to be. I start to feel like the only hope I have is if Zorik and I pick the date we will move to Canada. I’m sure most of us can imagine the pressure and tension this could put on our relationship and on Zorik as my partner and reason I live in Israel.The pattern that keeps repeating itself looks something like this, I get upset about something and can’t see the way out, I’m stuck in a corner and the walls are coming in on me and I become fixated on the one thing that will make this overwhelming suffocating feeling go away, in this case its moving to Canada, in the past its been a variety of different things, none of which are actually productive in rooting out the samskara as it keeps coming back.I’m starting to see that my ego identifies itself as someone different from everyone else, it is addicted to being right and to the suffering itself. What I’m hoping is that with this new awareness and despite all the challenges I face on a daily basis I will be able to approach each new situation with more ease, I will put down my hammer. If I make my goal inner peace, then it doesn’t matter if someone cuts me off while I’m biking or no one shows up for yoga practice, I can still have inner peace and that is a much more productive goal than suffering for the sake of suffering.Its an incredibly humbling experience to have someone look at you and see right through your ego’s bull shit to see the real you behind your ego’s defenses and need to be right. At the end of the day I’d rather be happy then be right and as such I will say, my ego is an ass hole, I’m wrong, but I’m committed to finding new healthier and more productive ways of dealing with the frustrations when they come, because they will, I am human after all.  Having said all this, it doesn’t mean I don’t still want to move to Canada, I do but moving to Canada won’t happen as a result of my ego’s identification with its own suffering, it will come from the genuine desire to live close to my family and to live in a society where my children will never have to serve in the army.Interested in learning more about Samskaras and how to break through negative ones check out this article by Bo Forbes from Yoga Journal http://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/1318