"Cult of Positivity"

Over at the blog Recovering Yogi is an excellent post by Kimberly Johnson about the excessive positivity found in many yoga communities. It's also a problem in Buddhist sanghas, and other spiritual groups, and one I have written about before.

That secret code is the code of constant positivity within the yoga community.

In the yoga world, you are not supposed to disagree—even though everybody does—and you certainly are not supposed to be disagreeable. Of course, most people have strong opinions about which kind of yoga is better (their kind) and what the other schools don’t understand, because if they did, clearly they would convert to the right school. The right thing, in yoga, is always the thing that you do. But most people don’t express it openly. Better to feign peaceful coexistence and call it “acceptance.”

However, I have found both in myself and in my peers a lack of courage to engage in truthful dialogue around teaching philosophy and practice. I didn’t have the nerve to tell my friend that she was giving the same dharma talk in every class and it was getting old. No one had the nerve to tell the male teacher to stop serial-dating his students. There is this gaping hole of communication, as if egos are so fragile and every class so personal and precious that there is no room for dialogue.

The feelings of guilt and betrayal I felt when exposing my truth in my last Recovering Yogi article were the tiny echoes of a victim/abuser relationship, where the victim feels protective of the abuser, says things to defend the abuser, and is afraid to speak truthfully about the experience publicly.

What I like about Kimberly's post is that she show how a failure to disagree, debate, and offer criticism when appropriate actually weakens the whole project. When people choose to smooth over destructive behavior by teachers or fellow students, it makes it less likely that anyone in the community will benefit from the teachings and practices. When getting along is privileged over getting at the truth, everyone misses out.

I witnessed an interesting exchange a few weeks between a male yoga teacher and two female yoga students. The teacher was expressing caution around doing women inversions while on their period, and cited a long history of teachers agreeing on this point. One woman said "Almost all of those teachers were men. How long have women been practicing yoga?" This was followed by another woman who basically disagreed with the male teacher, citing potential health benefits and personal narratives of her students and friends. In fact, at one point during the discussion she said, point blank, "I'm just expressing my disagreement with you, is that ok?"

I didn't get the sense that the male teacher leading the class was comfortable with this kind of disagreement. Perhaps he worried about loosing control of the class. Perhaps, there was some bit of sexism going on. But I mostly think it was about maintaining that harmonious yoga environment which people tend to expect to be there. As someone who really appreciates debates and discussions of different views, even if I'm not directly involved, the way things played out was a disappointment, and it's something I have repeatedly experienced in spiritual community settings. Things start to get juicy and the "happy face" is held up by leaders and/or students to get things back to the safe "norm."

So, perhaps the next time a debate or disagreement appears in your sangha or yoga class, instead of being part of the effort to get rid of it, be a part of the effort to explore it, examine it, and respect it as part of the process.

Overriding the Desire for Social Acceptance

There is a strong desire running through most of us to both appear happy and healthy to others, and to actually be happy and healthy ourselves. When the latter is absent, often the pressure to put on appearances is heightened. Others worry, and you don't want others to worry. So you try to manage yourself and also others by sweeping all the shit under the rug. Pretty damned screwy.

It's vitally important to explore the rough edges that appear in your life. To not automatically default into a view that says feeling depressed or sad or upset means you're faulty, in need of therapy, or some other such story. It's true that some of us fall too deeply into despair or rage, for example, and need to go for intensive help of some sort. However, I believe in this modern world littered with psychologists and spiritual programs emphasizing psychology, it's really easy to embrace the story that you're in trouble, and need to "do therapy."

One of the symptoms of all of this is over-emphasizing "positive thinking and acting." I found two recent posts addressing this issue, which are worth a look.

The Dalai Grandma has been writing, among other things, about her experience with needing a kidney transplant. One of the reasons I'd recommend her blog is that she presents the whole situation honesty, and in detail. Sometimes, she's living in hopefulness and joy. Other times, she's cloudy and disconnected. And still other times, it's crankiness and frustration. In other words: reality.

I don't like to be told to look on the bright side, though of course there's a reason I undertook this kidney transplant, to live much better, much longer, once we're through this. But as for putting a spin on my experience, there is this experience, what it is, in total, though it's only that - experience. Today it's been unpleasant. Much of the day in bed trying to be warm, cold sweats, blurred vision, inability to concentrate, nose running. Immunosuppressants are very strong. My nurse told me to eat when I take them (3 times a day) and that cut down on stomach pain and belching. At least I'm not nauseated. (I know, that's thinking positive. And at least I haven't come down sick in some other way, and there are many ways. And I'm not "in rejection." In other words, this is working fine. A good recovery.)

It seems to me it's best when whatever one might call "positive" thinking comes out naturally, manifesting through one's experience, and not out of an attempt to please or pacify or avoid. And we don't need to be dangerously ill in order to experience a shift in perspective about something that we've suffered over in the past. But obviously, when such things come, the intensity is hard to ignore.

Emma over at the Chronic Meditator has some similar reflections in her latest post.

Here's what I'm exploring...

If I have a day when I feel miserable, bitter, and very ungrateful about being sick...should I feel a preference that this day not be that way? Should I feel a preference that I feel at ease and peaceful being sick? Or should I have no preferences ?

For me, this exploration is very rich. I'm suddenly allowing all these really difficult feelings to flow through my body - boredom, frustration, anxiety about the future, terror, emptiness, and despair. I know this all sounds really miserable, and not like 'good news' at all, but I have this strong feeling that allowing these feelings to flow is really my path.

I resonate with this sense of flow, and letting go of claiming or privileging one set of experiences over another. One of the challenges I have experienced with allowing this kind of flow, or paying attention to the flow, is that it shows you the instability of "yourself" and your identities. People ask you how you're doing and you aren't quite sure what to say. Who am I? becomes more central of a question, which probably means you're pointed in the right direction, but it also shifts how you interact with others - to the point, where some of the significant people in your life might struggle to relate to you, and you to them.

When faced with this awkward, unstable ground, I often, you often, all of us often choose some sort of bypass. Positive thinking is just one form. But the point is that instead of feeling awkward, unstable, and not terribly in knowing, we opt to do something that plugs us back into the socially accepted field. In other words, we opt to maintain social acceptance over discovering who we truly are.

This shouldn't be something we "get down" about. It's pretty hardwired into humans to do what we can to maintain some level of social acceptance. But I think awakening in this life requires some bucking of that, some willingness to override that collective impulse that drives us to turn away, disown, and even hate part of our experience.

p.s. The image is a nod to my sister, who loves Napoleon Dynamite. I didn't care for it much to be honest.