What we repeat runs deep — so deep that it can shape our subconscious. In the second shift of the Let Go to Flow series, we explore our subconscious patterns that can form our identity.  We’ll look at Eckhart Tolle’s teachings on presence and Daniel Kahneman’s research on fast thinking, and how they both point toward the same trap.  And, we’ll practice asking better questions to release what we’ve been carrying.

Shift 1 brings awareness to suffering. We stop avoiding the discomfort and begin meeting it head-on. We begin to see the pattern instead of reacting to the symptoms, and we realize that what we repeat can run deep.

Shift 2 asks us to learn from our suffering. When we disassociate with our suffering, we can explore the patterns we’ve repeated.  That raises our level of consciousness to reach another doorway.  Let’s dive into this together.

The Problem

Suffering can make a temporary experience feel permanent.

When we’re afraid, stressed, grieving, sick, or overwhelmed, the mind often rushes to invent meaning. Our subconscious doesn’t simply observe what’s happening. It perceives a threat to our comfort zone, and starts asking questions colored by fear.

A challenging posture becomes, “Why can’t I do this?”

A difficult season becomes, “Is my life falling apart?”

A physical change becomes, “Am I falling apart?”

A difficult emotion becomes, “Why do I feel this way?”

Over time, repeating these questions can lead to a conclusion buried deep in our subconscious: “This is just who I am.”

The subconscious ego craves identity, and uses mental shortcuts known as heuristics to fill in the blanks.

When a pattern repeats long enough it begins to feel familiar. Even suffering can become a comfort zone, because it’s known.

Seeing the pattern helps explain the identities we’ve learned to carry — the labels we’ve repeated so often they feel like who we are.

A pattern may explain what we’ve been carrying, but it doesn’t name who we are.

This is where suffering can become confusing. If the same thought, feeling, or reaction keeps returning, we may start to believe it must be true.

But repetition is not truth.

Repetition is conditioning.

What we repeat runs deep. Sometimes so deep, in fact, that suffering becomes part of our identity.

The Cost

When we live unconsciously, suffering often shapes our identity.

Not because suffering is good by itself. Not because life is trying to punish us. But because suffering reveals where we’re still identified with fear, control, resistance, or separation.

Eckhart Tolle teaches that much of human suffering comes from unconsciousness — old conditioning, reactive thought patterns, and the egoic sense of self. Yet the suffering created by unconsciousness can eventually become the pressure that wakes us up.

Daniel Kahneman gives us a useful way to understand the cognitive side of this. Kahneman, who received the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for integrating psychological research into economic science, especially around judgment and decision-making under uncertainty, helped popularize the distinction between fast and slow thinking.

In his work, System 1 describes the fast, automatic, intuitive mind. It moves quickly, recognizes patterns, and reacts before we’ve fully examined what’s happening. System 2 describes the slower, more deliberate mind. It can pause, evaluate, and choose — but it takes effort to engage. This matters because much of our reactive suffering begins in the fast mind.

The trigger fires. The story forms. The pattern reacts.  All of it can happen in an instant, without any level of awareness.

Kahneman also describes how the mind often answers an easier question in place of a harder one. Instead of staying with a difficult question like, “What is actually happening here?” the mind may quietly substitute, “What’s wrong with me?”  That matters because the substituted question often reinforces an identity.

The fast mind tends to trust what feels familiar. A thought pattern can begin to feel accurate simply because it comes easily — confirmation bias.  However, fluency is not truth. It’s just more familiar.

So when we’re not aware, we don’t just experience pain. We add to it. We interpret, predict, defend, blame, rehearse, and react. The fast mind runs the show, and we mistake its momentum for who we are.

This is how the mind turns a passing experience into a prison.

We mistake: “This is happening to me,” for “This is me.”  Realizing that misperception is critical to Shift 2.

When our subconscious identifies with the pattern, we lose access to the deeper awareness of it. The ego can attach itself to almost anything: appearance, success, failure, relationships, roles, possessions, pain, spirituality.

These patterns subtly run in the background of our mind, and our perceptions of the world begin to reinforce them.

Forced detachment doesn’t work. We can’t give our minds a “time out” and shame ourselves into liberation. We can’t perform our way into peace. We can’t build true stillness from another layer of self-judgment.

This is where Tolle takes us one step further than Kahneman.

The Correction: When the Student is Ready, The Teacher Appears

Underneath both the fast mind and the slow mind, there is a part of your consciousness that can watch the pattern trigger without being pulled into the line of fire.  The internal witness can observe that you are not the passing thought, not the difficult emotion, not the old story, and the pattern does not need to repeat.

The first shift was awareness of suffering. This second shift requires the conscious witness to serve as student, and suffering to serve as the teacher — your inner guru.

This correction is not to replace an old identity with a new one – witness, student, teacher, guru.  These too are labels.

Nor is the correction to deny suffering.

For suffering to shift to liberation, you learn to ask better questions.

The subconscious asks questions that presuppose their own answers. “Why can’t I do this?” already assumes incapacity. “Is my life falling apart?” already gestures toward collapse. The mind isn’t really inquiring. It’s looking for confirmation of an old pattern.

Conscious questions are different.

They guide exploration instead of confirming a destination. They invite awareness instead of judgment. They also create space for the question and the suffering to dissolve.  This is the art of letting go of suffering, and here are a few examples of the shift in practice:

These questions shift from interrogation charged with emotional judgement, to inquiry.

The search for verdict dissolves into the peace of presence.

Sol Hatha and Sol Vinyasa: Two Ways to See the Pattern

In class, discomfort will arise. Breath may shorten. The fast mind may say, “I can’t do this.” The body may ask for rest. The ego may compare. The old story may return.

But now you have another option.

You can notice the suffering without becoming the suffering.

You can feel the discomfort without letting it define your identity.

You can let the moment become your teacher instead of your identity.

You can see the outer world as a reflection of your inner world, without the judgement.

Sol Hot Yoga Studio is a place to observe the relationship between sensation, thought, and emotion — and to choose an appropriate response.

In Sol Hatha classes, the intuitive sequences allow you to observe the patterns. When you hold a posture, observe.  Is your mind pushing you to rush forward, or linger in transitions? In the rhythm of your breath, you may notice whether you’re forcing, resisting, comparing, or softening. Hatha enables you to stay present long enough to see what’s really happening to your inner stability and alignment.

Sol Vinyasa reveals the pattern differently. When you flow, your mind may compete to express the posture, compare the pace of your breath, or judge your transitions. The movement gives you a chance to interrupt the old rhythm by tuning into the flow of letting go. One inhale. One exhale. One movement. One transition. One new choice. Sol Vinyasa enables you to remain aware of your organic movements in the moment — the continuous natural rhythms of tension and release, squeeze and soak, effort and ease.

Both practices reveal your tendencies to suffer — to judge, to attach, to avoid — in different ways. As awareness grows, your consciousness stops feeding the false identity, mental heuristics, and biases.

Instead of identifying with suffering, your consciousness invites a teacher — when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Instead of pretending the pain doesn’t exist, you practice witnessing the causes of suffering with curiosity and without identity.

On Your Mat

In class, when the old patterns begin to emerge, pause inwardly.

Ask: “What pattern is being repeated right now?”

Then ask: “Can I notice this without becoming it?”

Then return to one simple anchor. Your breath. Your feet. Your posture. The present moment.

The conditions may still be challenging. The posture may still feel awkward. The mind may still be loud.

But now you’re not trapped inside the story.

You’re witnessing it.

You’re operating at a higher state of consciousness to choose an appropriate response, rather than reaction on impulse.

What you repeat runs deep. But what you witness can begin to release.

You let go to flow.

---

Continue the practice: → Shift 1: What You Resist Will Persist → Shift 3: Return to Loving Awareness ← Return to: Let Go to Flow