Vasana: The Scent of Habit

This is what I get for watching Sadhguru videos in the AM. And I needed a break from fiction and marketing fiction, just a small one. 

Note, as I've said before, these sorts of blogs are me working these concepts out for myself to the end of practical application. I claim no academic scholarship. If it helps, cool, if not, well...

Karma, Vasana, Sanskara—The Ethereal Fragrance from your blooms. Remember when we were kids we started growing up and people said we were “blooming”? Vasana is the way your blooms smell. We know Karma is 90% made of habit, so what do bad habits smell like? Or good ones? This is how the Hindus explain the following. I’m using psychology (what little I know of it) to help my western mind adapt the concepts for practical use. Nothing wrong with a western (from America to Eastern Europe) mind. Better not be if you were born here, because you’re stuck with it. That's the Sanskara*. It also adds to the smell of your blooms. To wit: I’ll never stop having something of a Chicago attitude, and anyone foreign will always say upon meeting me, “Oh, you’re an American!” no matter what I do. Sanskara. Vasana, on the other hand, is what attracts life to you. Scent attracts the pollenating bees, right? Same thing.

Understanding Vasana begs meditation…oddly, more on karma than on itself.   

Do people have as hard of a time understanding karma as they pretend? Or are they just waiting to hear that they don’t have to do anything except wish really hard and all the bad stuff will go poof? Maybe make a fort with blankets and a couch and hide under it until the bad karma “just falls away”. That’s essentially what I did with meth and heroin. Others do it with social media. Yeah. It doesn’t work. Ostrich-ing will never be the answer, but it’s the only answer anyone wants. Maybe that would work if karma was the wolf at the door that people think it is. Those who have a hard habit karma to change will have to change it willfully and mostly alone. They will, or they’ll never attract the life they want to themselves.

I couldn’t when I was pin-cushioning myself, even if there are something like three successful people in the history of people who were able to pull that off, I’m not one of them. Maybe because junkies smell like ether and vinegar. Could be.

So…what to do? In this video on Vasana, Sadhguru is talking about “rewriting your software.” Teachers are always saying it that way, in terms of tech. Why is that supposed to make things easier to understand? That shit gets on my nerves. You change computer software by plugging a fucking USB in and clicking a few things. We can’t do that…yet, anyway. That being the case, why not just tell people to willfully change all the words in their head?

Random Thought Says: “Dad used to beat the—”

Willfully think: STOP. I don’t want thoughts like that. REDIRECT: In this room there are five things—computer, lamp, desk, bed, fan. Three of those things are on the desk and two are not.

You can do that anytime, anywhere, with any thought that you don’t want to have. It can be used for good, evil, or indifference, the choice is yours. Do enough of those redirects, I do ten or twelve of them a day to fight various deep structured thought patterns, and they get much easier, before too long you realize…holy shit…that black-tar nostalgia barely even happens anymore, and I feel all this weird inner peace.

It’s hard to do. In a nutshell, and in the most basic terms, the brain works like this: there is a route from scent to insula and from there to vagus nerve into the solar plexus where the root storm beings—that is to say, you might sully yourself from fear, or explode if you don’t hit something—is too strong. Sensory cues like smells and sights and sounds ignite this mental hardwiring to create every degree of noxious fear. And if you have the wrong sort of software—thinking—you get a haywire. The more the brain uses a pathway, the stronger it gets. That’s how habits work.

We can’t change Vasana unless we stop attending to the negative aspects of our past selves. That’s the only way to not fertilize our foul blooms if we have them. You know, if you want to look at it like that. Or—again, so simple—stop being a dick and those around you might stop feeling fucked, and you will stop attracting fuck ups into your life.

That deserves a big bdmtss.

Fuck. I didn't really cover the concepts very well. Why? It would take 10k words, and that's a lot. Maybe 20k since I'm always putting my own experience in, can't help it. Some gonzo roots in my writing. So, I'm sure to cover this again over time such as it is and as I am... 

If you read this and didn’t know to know any of it…thanks! I had to take a break from talking about the Nazis. Next time. The Bluecoats, even though the Redcoats are still far more worrisome. They're the sort who would start a fire so they could blame it on the other guy. I'm not saying they did, just that... 

OK for now. 

*Not the whole thing. If you were born in a mansion or a trailer is part of it too.