Kleshas are basically the patterns that drive us nuts in our life.  They’re the automatic things we do, the well-worn patterns and grooves we wear into our life.  They’re usually unconscious.  They usually don’t help the situation but dammit they’re familiar so we keep doing them and use them to justify our opinion that ‘people are always x’, or ‘y always happens to me’.

The best way to find your kleshas?  Take a look at your intimate relationship - past or present.  This is where they *really* come up.  Find the thing that drives you and your lover-buns nuts. 

The key here is that you don’t think it’s you.  Because they’re unconscious, find the issue that you think is *them*.  Think of the issue that makes you say to yourself - if they weren’t so x (dumb, anal, sloppy) I could be a heck of a lot more y (patient, easy-to-live-with or spiritually evolved).  And then turn it to yourself.  Ask, what can I let go so that I can be more patient, easy-to-live-with or spiritually evolved?

This is tough and takes a metric tonne of honesty.

And you’ll want to keep making it about them and their stupid habits, that’s just what we do.  But really think.  What needs to go, to take the heat out of this particular issue.  Maybe it’s part of your world view.  Maybe it’s some standard you hold dearly.  Maybe you need to see their annoying habit as just who they are rather than something that needs to be fixed.  Maybe you were both raised differently and you need to see that as OK instead of wishing they’d go back and re-live their childhood for you. 

Whatever it is, these are your time-worn patterns.  They probably have come up in other relathionships.  These are your own personal kleshas.  And you need to let them go instead of wishing your partner was a different person.

And I know you’re thinking – but Corilee the world will come crumbling down!  It’s going to head straight to hell in a handbasket if I don’t hold up my ‘standards’.  Yeah, it won’t. 

It’s tough to let go of these biggies but think of this hard letting go as something you can do while your honeybunny becomes a more perfect partner ;-)  

I had a very experienced yoga teacher say once that when she stopped focusing on where the students needed to improve in their Triangle pose and focused on what they were doing right and how far they’d come, they all improved.  She let go of her belief that they needed to do a perfect Triangle, now.  Maybe it was just her perspective, who’s to say.  But either way, it sounds like a much more sane way to live.