August 15-19, 2024

“Just as doing yoga is playing the edge between control and surrender, there is also an interplay between transformation and resistance to change.” -Joel Kramer in Yoga as Self-Transformation, May/June 1980 Yoga Journal (p.2)

I feel the need to state the obvious. And, in doing so, possibly begin an idea I’ve had for years that I may regret: a blog entitled The Political Yogi.

Joel’s brilliant observation above that I have been sharing in classes this week summarizes the political landscape in one sentence—an impressive feat that he was, no doubt, not intending back in 1980.

In a sweeping overgeneralization, transformation and resistance to change defines the two-party political system that we are afflicted with. His statement is the so-called “culture war.” I call myself a Progressive, obviously on the side of transformation. Note I did not say Democrat. The Republican side is most obviously the political force leaning toward resistance to change and desiring a return to some previous, imagined status quo. But the Democrats have their own ways of resisting change—many evident ways and many more sneaky ways!

“Guys are not to marry guys and gals are not to marry gals!” Not to mention having sex with them! Miraculously, over time, the viewpoint against same-sex marriage—which had been nearly universal—gave way to even many Republicans being OK with it (for now). There was a time when that possibility was unimaginable. Some force—probably just honesty on the part of gay people, coupled with them feeling safe enough to come out of the closet, plus time—had this effect in the collective consciousness.

That sentiment against gay marriage—or gay anything!—remains dominant in much of the world population. But in time, it is inevitable that it will fall into disuse. That’s just one example illustrating that the force of transformation—that is, the force of Life and growth, the force of evolution—will overcome given enough time. Either that, or extinction will occur. If the tendency to resist change dominates for too long, it will simply suffocate itself.

UNC-CH professor Marc Hetherington has researched questions unrelated to politics that give clear indication of political leaning. He writes about this in his book with Jonathan Weiler, Prius or Pickup? How the Answers to Four Simple Questions Explain America’s Great Divide. If he had a broader viewpoint, though, he would notice that the “great political divide” exists across the entire planet. One set of those four questions is, “When you think about the values you want children to have, do these things include qualities like respect for elders, obedience, and good manners and behavior? Or would you prefer that children be independent, self-reliant, curious and considerate?”

Using Joel’s words, we could rephrase the questions as, “When you think about raising children, would you prefer them to be more in control and predictable or would you prefer to give them more freedom and possibilities in their growth?” Or “When you think about raising children, are you personally more invested in them doing what you want, or are you more willing to learn and be surprised by them while gently guiding them away from hurtful behavior?” Or “How comfortable are you with not knowing?” is probably the most direct and succinct question.

I don’t have to tell you and you don’t have to read the book to know what answers voters for each political party will give. It is important, however, to note that the predictability of those questions only works for the racial majority group and breaks down for racial minorities.

If we are going to tend toward transformation and growth, we must first be comfortable enough with not knowing. Not knowing is inherently scary and—without doubt—potentially life-threatening. There is good reason to avoid not knowing: you could die!

However, Joel also observed that ultimately “There’s no way to remain the way you are now: you either become more rigid and crystallized, or you break out of patterns and transform.” Either option leads to one of those two ends. So, to not choose purposeful transformation and growth is to—usually unconsciously—choose ever-increasing rigidity and crystallization. He is not talking about the “nice” crystallization that makes amazing quartz or amethyst crystals, but the crystallization and rigidity that many older people exhibit. (You might have a couple of people in mind while reading that).

Without making a choice toward transformation and breaking out of limiting patterns, the other force—the force of closing and defense—will proceed unabated, like a cancer, eventually strangling its host. However, Joel wisely reminds us that, “Individual entities, all of us, are systems with self-protective mechanisms that define boundaries and keep them intact.” Without that force, eventually there would just be chaos, which would not be conducive to Life (with a capital “L” meaning the Totality of Life); Life needs relatively stable environments in which to thrive.

The force resisting change is, not surprisingly, a necessary and helpful universal force; it is the force of inertia. Remember Newton’s First Law which is popularly stated as, “A body at rest tends to stay at rest; a body in motion tends to stay in motion.” (It takes much more energy to get started than to keep going, so I frequently say, “Keep going!”) Predictability and stability give safety and allow things to happen that could not happen in a more unpredictable environment. It is the reason that I chose to land in Chapel Hill in 1995 with the intention of not moving again; I had realized that repeatedly uprooting myself to another town limited how much I could grow.

The mistake that both “sides” in the political world make is ignoring the naturalness and necessity of the other. Each wants to have its own way while ignoring the other at best or just outright stampeding over the other; some on the “Right” are quite forthright in their destructive and antisocial views in this direction! However, neither is able to see and respond intelligently to the input of the “other.”

I put most of the blame for driving us toward that phenomenon on rigidity and crystallization. That force appears to benefit those who profit in any way from the status quo, or at least imagine they do. They can imagine that only because they think themselves separate and unaffected by the suffering they inflict on others. But isn’t that the case internally, too, where we stick with the known—the status quo—often for too long, because some part in here feels it as more “profitable” than the alternative? Why would we expect the external world to be any different than a reflection on the internal world?

We must not ever make the mistake that we are only for transformation and change or for stability and protection; everyone—EVERYONE—is “for” both, just in different contexts. These are both totally natural and universal forces. If you want to give these forces/qualities Yoga names, call them rajas for the force toward activity and change and tamas for the force toward stability and resistance to activity and change. The Yoga teachings tell us to overcome tamas—inertia—with rajas—activity and energy—which is not an end in itself; rajas is just to move us toward sattva—balance and harmony. And then we are to go beyond sattva as well.

Wanting to transform, grow and change without realizing that there is another force that naturally—and helpfully—opposes it will lead to life-threatening imbalance in the system. Wanting, or attempting to remain the same without acknowledging the natural drive toward freedom (for all!) will lead to a different form of life-threatening imbalance. Either force, taken to its extreme will cause death and extinction. They both will tend to cause injury and slow decline to many, including themselves. That being said, acknowledging and noticing the harm one is doing to oneself is very difficult to do and highly uncomfortable to see and experience! Most prefer the seemingly more “comfortable” and immediately gratifying practice of blaming the other.

Another way of putting it is that if we want the pendulum to stay on one side, we are fighting a losing battle. It will inevitably and eventually swing back. However, if we can balance the force toward change—the force naturally moving the pendulum in the opposite direction—with an appropriate amount of resistance to that swing, it would be like using our hand to slow down and potentially stop the swing, allowing it to find a place of rest and stillness—or at least less violent swinging and less agitating division.

There is the interesting phenomenon of our country’s two political parties being evenly matched in the general population, but it’s not 50/50; that is just what is reflected in the voting population. It’s actually about 32/32 with another (ignored and exploited) segment that is the remaining 36. The 32/32 relies on somehow pulling votes from that other 36—possibly an even higher number than that. That group, for whatever reason, find the “simple” either/or choice presented by the two-party system unappealing or unacceptable.

This other 36 may be a more complex group than just Dem/Rep; it may be harder to oversimplify them. But because the forces toward transformation or resistance to it are natural and universal forces, my suppositions likely will work for each individual in that group, but sweeping generalizations may be more difficult for the group as a whole. It seemed important to mention this group that may seem counter to the other more “simple” groups of the two dominant parties.

As an aside, one thing (of many) that both Republicans and Democrats have always agreed on is that they are both the parties of war-mongers; they have fairly strong agreement on that issue. Though there are occasionally slight differences in how these tendencies manifest, they agree wholeheartedly on the root question. (Hence I can’t identify as Democrat, as mentioned above.) They both exhibit strong tendency toward rigidity and protection.

According to the War Resisters League, in FY2025, 45 percent of the U.S. government budget will pay for past or current military expenses. This is not the doing of any one political party, though. Both parties also agree to do little to nothing about global warming and the national debt.

I share all this to bring the potential for intelligence and sanity in the political process, at least the one that we ourselves observe and engage in. If we can step back and see the external process as beautifully—and painfully, but accurately—reflecting our internal process as well as seeing that they exhibit completely natural forces, we may be able to get some peace in the process partly by not giving so much energy to holding unreasonable expectations.

If we see some people or ourselves wanting change, we can know that somehow and somewhere in the fabric of What Is—in themselves/ourselves as well as “externally” from us—there will be forces working against that. And if we see some people or ourselves trying to prevent change or trying to move back to some previous state of existence, then we can know that somewhere—in themselves/ourselves and in the external world also—exists the natural force toward freedom and Life, growth and change.

For those of us tending more toward the side of change and growth, if we can recognize that change is terrifying in some way(s)—more or less for different people—we might be able to have more compassion. Then, by the force of our understanding and compassion, we will cultivate in ourselves a stronger force to counter the fearful clinging to the known.