{"id":76,"date":"2020-05-04T22:37:18","date_gmt":"2020-05-04T20:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/?p=76"},"modified":"2020-12-01T16:52:55","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T15:52:55","slug":"you-shouldnt-be-doing-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/?p=76","title":{"rendered":"If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you shouldn’t be doing it."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“Attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering.\u201d<\/em> – The Dalai Lama
It is maybe a bit strong, no?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yoga consists of eight limbs. First limb is a collection of yamas, ethical rules in Hinduism. Aparigrapha is one of them. This life lesson is definitely occupying most of my thoughts recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be translated to ‘non-attachment’, ‘non-clinging’, ‘non-hoarding’, \u2018non-greed\u2019 or \u2018non-possessiveness\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freedom from things or hoarding was quite easy to understand. We get attached to certain things or ideas. As long as they are around, available, we block our view from other potentially useful things in our lives. And then, when they don’t work anymore, we are struggling. Sometimes we are flooded by belongins that we posess and don’t really use. We probably don’t even need them. In reality, nothing really belongs to us, there are no pockets on our souls when we die. We can say the same about people. We don\u2019t own people. We can\u2019t control what others do or expect them to do what we want them to do. You still care about them. You would probably appreciate them even more, knowing that they won\u2019t be there forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Part of waking up is that you live your life as you see fit. And understand: that is <\/em>not selfish. The selfish thing is to demand that someone else live their life as YOU see fit. <\/em>That\u2019s selfish. It is not selfish to live your life as you see fit. The selfishness lies in demanding that someone else live their life to suit your tastes, or your pride, or your profit, or your pleasure. That is truly selfish. So I\u2019ll protect myself. I won\u2019t feel obligated to be with you; I won\u2019t feel obligated to say yes to you. If I find your company pleasant, then I\u2019ll enjoy it without clinging to it.\u201d<\/em> – Anthony de Mello<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But aparigrapha is more than that. It also is related to letting go of our expectations that life (or anything else) should play out the way we have assumed. It can be a realisation that things aren\u2019t always what they seem to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, I was unsure about all that. Isn\u2019t getting attached in the heart of being human? Expecting things to happen, having high hopes, getting disappointed, getting attached to people and wanting to keep them in our lives? But then we have to accept that all this is an illusion, they will eventually leave and disappointment or longing will be part of our experience. Here, non-attachment can still be seen as enjoying them in our present life. Just get rid of the expectation of things continuing forever – and find joy in the moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then aparigrapha manifests itself in our ego. Especially nowadays, we are so focused on doing, or on certain labels that we would like to have. Non-attachment works very well when it comes to not letting your ego get in the way. One famous actress was once asked how she deals with compliments. She responded “What you don\u2019t pick up, you don\u2019t have to put down.\u201d<\/em> I think that is the essence of non-attachment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your ego is an image, it’s who you believe yourself to be. And when reality doesn’t match up to the image, our body pays the price or we punish ourselves for it. Ego blinds us from reality and makes our decisions wrong. When we focus so much on productivity, on our labels, we don\u2019t let ourselves simply be. We resist life, we label things as good or bad. We label ourselves. In reality, the only thing that can be certain in life is change. It is at the core of our own nature. If we fight it, we will always lose, because we\u2019re fighting with ourselves. Our happiness can\u2019t be defined by anything outside of our own presence of awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am still confused. In my life everything has a purpose. My mind is trained to have at least slight control over my own actions and always aim towards a specific goal in everything I do. Yet, this exact training is leading me astray, preventing me from achieving my full potential, whatever that may be. Actual control is an illusion. Nobody has that power over anything or anyone. Grasping does nothing more than simply stresses me out. You should have seen some spectacular failures I was part of \ud83d\ude42 Even when we make ourselves breathe deeply on purpose, we\u2019re doing ourselves a disservice, if we compare it with letting the breath happen to us. All this stands in the way of being able to enjoy the way things are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krishna was quoted to say: \u2018Let your concern be with action alone, and never with the fruits of action. Do not let the results of action be your motive, and do not be attached to inaction\u2019<\/em>.

If you don’t enjoy what you are doing, you shouldn’t be doing it. Go with the flow and let yourself be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yoga consists of eight limbs. First limb is a collection of yamas, ethical rules in Hinduism. Aparigrapha is one of them. This life lesson is definitely occupying most of my thoughts recently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yoga","category-zdrowa-glowa","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11643,"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/11643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/showingupisthehardestpart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}