"O heart, what a wonderful bird you are.

Seeking divine heights,

Flapping your wings,

you smashed the pointed spears of your enemy.

The flowers flee from Autumn, but not you—

You are the fearless rose

that grows amidst the freezing wind.

Pouring down like the rain of heaven

you fell upon the rooftop of this world.

Then you ran in every direction

and escaped through the drain spout..."

 – excerpt from "Gone to the Unseen," a poem by Rumi.

Lately I've been thinking about fear—how we relate to it, and how it relates to joy.

The Yoga Sutras talk about fear through the concept Abhinivesha, "fear of death" or "clinging to life." Patanjali explains this sort of fear (one of the kleshas, or "veils," which clouds our vision) as preventing us from seeing truth.

स्वरसवाही विदुषोऽपि तथारूढोऽभिनिवेशः॥९॥

Sutra II.9 svarasavāhī viduṣo’pi tathārūḍho’bhiniveśaḥ

Clinging to life is instinctive and self-perpetuating, even for the wise.

– translation by Chip Hartranft

In some ways, I think of joy, too, as clinging to life. In fact, the Yoga Sutras categorize attachment to pleasant feelings as another veil over reality (YS II.7). So then the challenge proposed to us by yogic philosophy is to experience joy in the present moment without getting attached to it. For example, this might be noticing when I feel joy in random moments, instead of thinking to myself, "I need to feel joy again, how can I make joy happen again?" And really that attachment to joy comes from fear—fear that I'll never experience joy again, or that I'll experience it so rarely that life will become too unbearable—fear of death.

I don't think it's wrong to want to experience joy or to look forward to it—it is our nature. The error might be in seeking the artifice of joy, rather than working to create a life with opportunities for joy built in.

Kriya and Creativity

In Swami Vivikenanda's translation and commentary on the Yoga Sutras, he says, "The first step, the preliminary step, is called Kriya Yoga. Literally this means work, working towards Yoga."

Yoga Sutras II.1-3:

II.1: Mortification, study, and surrendering fruits of work to [the collective] are called Kriya Yoga.

II.2: [Kriya Yoga is for] the practice of [enlightenment] and minimizing the pain-bearing obstructions.

II.3: The pain-bearing obstructions are: ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion, and clinging to life.

(Although the basis of these interpretations are the translations by Swami Vivikenanda, I have made some slight modifications for clarity and emphasis, and I've changed references to "God" and "Lord" to "the collective" and "divine consciousness," as that is my current, personal interpretation of ishvara pranidhana. You can read multiple translations through Yoga Sutra Study.)

Here, the Sutras suggest that practicing yoga (in the sense of discipline, study, and action toward unity) is the salve for the pain of fear.

Vivikenanda goes on to say:

"...What is meant, therefore, by mortification? Holding the reins firmly while guiding this body and mind: not letting the body do anything it likes, but keeping them both in proper control. Study. What is meant by study in this case? Not study of novels, or fiction, or story books, but study of those books which teach the liberation of the soul. Then again this study does not mean controversial studies at all. The Yogi is supposed to have finished his period of controversy. He has had enough of all that, and has become satisfied. ...By 'surrendering the fruits of work to [the collective]' is to take to ourselves neither credit nor blame, but to give both up to the [divine consciousness], and be at peace."

– The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, translation and commentary by Swami Vivekananda

The Sutras are inherently prescriptive, and I believe part of their timelessness lies in our reimagining the text not so strictly. So what I get out of all this is: keep yourself on the ground and on the path toward unity and freedom. Keep studying, keep learning, not to enhance your ability to argue, but to strengthen your approach to your work in creating a more collective existence. Let go of fear, let go of attachments and desires for specific, positive outcomes—just keep working.

The "work" will be different for everyone, depending on our individual strengths, experiences, and passions. Sometimes the "work" can look a lot like play. The process of creating and building can be fun, hard, scary, joyful, frustrating, and so much more. And let's not have a narrow understanding of "creativity" either.

"...[P]ainters, the writers, the poets, probably consider themselves creative. We all seem to agree with that popular idea of a creative person. Many man-made things are most beautiful, the great cathedrals, temples and mosques; some of them are extraordinarily beautiful and we know nothing of the people who built them. But now, with us, anonymity is almost gone. With anonymity there is a different kind of creativity, not based on success, money.

Anonymity has great importance; in it there is a different quality; the personal motive, the personal attitude and personal opinion do not exist; there is a feeling of freedom from which there is action.

...

Is creativity something totally different, something which we can all have—not only the specialist, the professional, the talented and gifted? I think we can all have this extraordinary mind that is really free from the burdens which man has imposed upon himself. Out of that sane, rational, healthy mind, something totally different comes which may not necessarily be expressed as painting, literature or architecture."

– J. Krishnamurti

We are not separate

Fear is not only a self-imposed, internal force, but it exists as an entire structure that tamps down collective potential. This structure says joy should only be made available to some people or during specific circumstances—whether that view stems from the belief that joy is a commodity to profit from, or a reward given to the "hard-working," or an unwelcome distraction from more immediate matters.

However, many great thinkers have suggested joy as a tool of resistance. I've talked before about how I struggle to grapple with this applying this concept in my own life as a person of privilege. And maybe this piece is an update of sorts on where my thinking lies now, which is something like this:

Regardless of the privileges one holds, there is an undeniable system of fear which seeks to control us ALL, even those with the most privilege (in fact, those at the top really have the most to lose). We all have a role within this system and it is exactly the "clinging to life" described in the Yoga Sutras which causes the system to stay in place. If I work to destroy this system built on fear and oppression, and if I succeed, what happens to me and my family—our home, our income, our "belongings," our comfortable life? Do we give it all up, back to the original stewards of this land? Where do we go? 

Once I recognize this spiraling, I might think, "Oh, yes, there's Fear again." From there, three choices become clear to me: 

1. continue spiraling, and allow my fear to grow worse and worse into overwhelming depression,

2. ignore the fear and remain stagnant and complacent and compliant, or

3. recognize the fear as an obscuration of the bigger picture: joy and connection.

Choosing right* joy, then, is not in self-service; it is in service to the collective—rather than an extraction from it—and THAT is the resistance I think the-much-wiser-folks mean.

*by right joy I mean the self-sustaining kind, as opposed to destructive.

Lose control

At a recent sunset meditation, I noticed a participant had situated themselves away from the spectacle of the sunset. Instead, they were facing the darkening blue part of the sky, where night was creeping higher into the atmosphere. I compared their view to mine: a stark, black leafy silhouette against a pink and orange backlight. The foliage from their view was lit up and shining, reflecting the setting sun's golden light. We shared two sides of the same moment in time, two "opposing" yet related experiences, with an ever-changing spectrum of shade in between.

I think there is a path to joy through fear—the fear of failure, the unknown, and even loss. Because fear really is a strange kind of control, and when one controls so very little, giving up fear might seem like losing control. 

But fear and control keep us small—keep us worrying and guessing and calculating. We are meant to expand. When we walk the path toward joy, we, instead, imagine all that is possible and we create those possibilities. We choose to face worry and yet we keep strolling toward wonder; we meet anxiety and continue on toward awe; and, I think most importantly, we look beyond the silhouette of individual ego to view an infinite sky of collective consciousness.

~Taylor (she/her)