Day 10: God’s Grace and the Veils of Suffering (Kleshas)
Reflections on Patanjali’s Kleshas, Social Media, and the Journey Back to the Self
Yesterday, I taught one of my Yoga Sutra Study classes. Teaching Yoga Sutra Study classes online is one of my absolute favourite things to do.
Over eight months, I guide small groups of students through the depths of Patanjali’s Sutras. Eight months may sound like a long time, but in reality, it’s just the beginning of a lifetime of study.
I teach the Sutras through storytelling—sharing lessons from my life to make the philosophy relatable. In my advanced courses, we dive deeper into the Sanskrit and learn to chant the Sutras. The study becomes both an intellectual and emotional journey, and eventually, it transforms into a meditation.
Right now, one of my groups is studying the kleshas, outlined in Sutras 2.3–2.9. The kleshas are the root causes of human suffering—veils that obscure our true nature. There are five kleshas, and at the root of them all is avidya—spiritual ignorance.
Avidya is essentially forgetting who we are. When I was in a marriage that nearly caused me to end my life, I was in a state of depression - and that was avidya.
The starting point is Avidya. I explain to people that Avidya is spiritual ignorance, but it’s essentially forgetting who we are. It’s forgetting that we are of the spirit. When I was in my deepest depression, when I wanted to end my life, that was Avidya.
The above image is one that I show my students - a tree diagram where avidya is depicted as the trunk. It’s such a powerful image, as it illustrates how all other suffering stems from this fundamental disconnection.
The second klesha is asmita—the ego, or “I-ness.” Our sense of self can either inflate, making us feel overly important, or deflate, making us feel insignificant. Neither extreme is helpful. Both block us from channeling our gifts to the world.
Social media has been a huge source of asmita for me. When I’m online, I can feel inflated by likes and comments, believing my presence there is deeply important. But in other moments, like when I’m in unfamiliar environments—such as my recent trip to Costa Rica—I feel small and unimportant, questioning if I belong.
A great way I like to manage my Asmita, my Ego, and think about it, is to keep remembering a teaching I learned in India, this year.
When I visited Parmarth Niketan Ashram in Rishikesh last March, I met Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, who shared a profound teaching that stuck with me. She spoke about her guru, Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswati, and his refusal to accept compliments. He always says, “It’s by God’s Grace.” (You can order the book on Amazon here).
At first, I didn’t fully understand what that meant. But over time, it’s become clearer. When someone praises my voice or my teaching, I see now that those gifts aren’t “mine.” They’re tools that spirit has assigned me to support healing in the world. It’s not me; it’s God’s Grace moving through me.
Recently, I found the harmonium that will be mine. If you’ve been following my journey, you’ll know that I love Kirtan, and I’ve always wanted to sing and play a harmonium. But for some reason, I’ve played myself really small in this area, and not even really tried. When I played my harmonium for the first time, I cried. I thought, “Why have I waited ten years to chant Kirtan?” Diana, who is selling me the harmonium, said something so beautiful: “If God has gifted you this voice, then you are meant to use it.”
She meant the same thing. Our gifts are not really ours - they’re God’s Grace.
The next two kleshas—raga (desire) and dvesha (avoidance)—are deeply tied to addiction. We crave what brings us fleeting pleasure and avoid what causes discomfort. Social media became both for me: a craving for dopamine hits and an avoidance of loneliness.
Basically, we avoid the stuff we don’t want to deal with and we are drawn to the stuff we do want. I am avoiding feeling all this pain, which is why I remain on social media. I am avoiding feeling this loneliness, which is why I remain on social media. I am avoiding doing this work. Change is hard. I don’t want to have to open my eyes and see that I need to move, change my schedule, stop living the way I’m living, in order to be happy.
And secondly, we are craving. We crave the dopamine hit. We crave the sugar rush. We crave to be drunk. We crave to disconnect.
Judson Brewer’s The Craving Mind explains how habits form through cues and reinforcements—negative and positive. I realized this is essentially the same as ragaand dvesha. My old habit was to wake up and scroll Instagram first thing. Now, I don’t even unlock my phone in the morning. I’ve replaced that with a shortcut to Insight Timer, where I start my day with meditation. Slowly, I’m rewiring my brain, building a habit loop that nourishes me.
The last of the Klesha is Abhinivesha, and that is fear of death. That fear is evolutionary, and keeps is safe. It’s what protects us from tigers and lions and pythons, and causes us to wear a helmet on bikes and a seatbelt in cars. But one of my students offered a powerful insight yesterday: maybe it’s also the fear of losing life as we know it. And I loved this insight. Because yes - we all have this evolutionary fear of dying - but that’s not what kept me on Instagram. My fear was losing life as I knew it - as Sober Yoga Girl - and not knowing who I was beyond that.
Something I wrote about in the Social Media Detox group, is that I have kept my Facebook account, and I’ve been logging into it for a very practical purpose - house-hunting for villas in Uluwatu. So I’ve logged in a couple times, but I haven’t doom-scrolled once (thank god!) I’ve broken that habit loop, and I go directly to the House for Sale Facebook Groups.
But no matter what, when you log in, you see the first post, even if you try to avoid it. The last two times I’ve logged in, I’ve had a really intense gut reaction to what I’ve seen. Two nights ago, I logged in and saw a really old friend’s granddad died. I thought to myself, man, I would never even know about this death had I not seen a Facebook post about it. I couldn’t even read the post, I had to flip away - that’s how strongly I felt it. The one I saw last night was another really old post of a friend getting engaged. I didn’t read the caption so I don’t know for sure if that’s what it was, but it was her and her partner and her hand in front of the camera, with a ring, so that’s what I think it was.
I thought about how we as human beings have just not evolved to process this intense range of emotions at this speed. You scroll and within seconds it’s a wedding announcement, a birth announcement, a death announcement, a grief announcement. A missing person who is a friend of a friend of a friend. There’s been wildfires in California and the woman you met in the Dominican Republic in 2006 has marked herself safe. It’s just too much. I realized that it’s not that I don’t want to hold people’s grief, it’s that I do want to hold it. And I can’t hold it if I’m seeing it whilst I scroll through 5,000 posts like this, sprinkled in with reels and ads. I would rather have fifteen really close friends call me and tell me about their grief, or their engagement, or their divorce, or their pregnancy, and me really have the capacity to hold that pain - to meet and greet it in presence - and not in 30 second hits.
One more thing the engagement post reminded me of that I wanted to share, was that for YEARS after I left my partner, I’d have complex PTSD symptoms when I saw people getting engaged or married on social media. I would get anxious for them. I wanted to help them escape. (If you’ve read my book you’ll know that I nearly killed myself because I didn’t know how to leave my marriage when I was twenty five). I had the self-awareness, even at that age of 25, that that reaction was about me - not about them. And then had to consciously remind myself, “Alexandra - not all engagements and marriages are stressful and scary and sad. Some people are really, genuinely happy about this change in their life.” But being the age that I am (in my twenties and thirties) people are getting engaged and married left right and center. It occurred to me last night that if a small group of friends knew that I felt that way, then they would announce their engagements and marriages to me with so much compassion and sensitivity - not a post in my face out of nowhere in the quiet moments where I’m lying in bed, about to start my day. I thought to myself, that must be how people feel when they’ve lost a child, or can’t do fertility treatments, or lost their dad and see all the fathers day posts, or are estranged from their mom and see all the mothers day posts. We just keep retraumatizing ourselves and not giving ourselves the space to heal.
It’s God’s Grace
The other night when I spoke on the phone to my mom she said that I am a great writer. I accepted the compliment at the time, but now what feels more natural to say is that it’s God’s Grace. I’ll keep practicing that response. It’s not me, and I’m not doing this for any selfish motive. This is my morning routine right now, and it’s how I collect all the emotions I’m processing right now and put them in one place before I enter the world for the day. But it’s not me that’s a great writer. Someone emailed me yesterday and said that I’m so wise, and again, I don’t feel it’s me that’s wise. I stand on the shoulders of all the many teachers who came before me, and I am teaching their teachings. I am passing this onwards. It’s not me, it’s God’s Grace.
In gratitude and service
Alexandra
P.S. Yesterday we got our first paid subscriber to The Daily Dharma. Thank you, Brenda! Whilst it is God’s Grace, if you’re enjoying the content, there is an option to pay to support my work, but only if you feel like it. I know lots of you already support me in other ways - the membership, the courses, the podcast, the magazine, etc - so please don’t feel any pressure.