Breaking up is hard to do because it is both a mental and physical process, Sadhguru explains. Memories live within our bodies and mind. Therefore, pain will arise during a breakup because the body is physically trying to work out the memories and keep them at a distance.

Full Transcript:

Sadhguru: You need to understand this – what you call as myself right now is a huge volume of memory. Your body is a way it is simply because of the genetic memory that it carries. You have your mother’s nose, your father’s complexion and something else, your grandfather’s something else, simply because what you call as your body is a complex amalgamation of memory. A very ancient memory lives in your body. What you call as my mind is one hundred percent memory right now. So you are a huge heap of memory in many ways and memory goes into you in different ways. Through all the five senses, you gather memory – what you see, what you hear, what you smell, what you taste, what you touch. Of all these five different ways of gathering memory, what you see and what you touch are the deepest forms of memory. Especially, what you touch creates a certain level of memory in the system.

So when you say a spouse, you have touched and there is a certain level of memory. Now, your divorce means in some way you’re trying to rip that memory off and that’s not going to be easy for various reasons. But at the same time, the very fact that you’re going through your divorce means you want to be finished with that memory in some way. Maybe not erase that memory but someone who was a spouse, someone who was a… in many ways a part of your life, slowly, for whatever reason, you have begun to experience them as a baggage that you’re unwilling to carry. So, you want to keep the baggage aside but you find the baggage is not something that you voluntarily carry, it is something that compulsari… compulsively sticks to you. So when whatever sicks… sticks to you compulsively, if you try to rip it off, there will be pain. See if you can get rid of your mother from your system. You will see it’s impossible.

So similarly, memory has built up about your spouse, you can’t just get rid of it just like that. If you do it – even mentally, psychologically, if you’re equipped to do it – you will still see the whole system will go through a certain level of suffering, invariably. Even if emotionally, psychologically, you are in a balanced state that you can deal with it, the system will go through a certain process. You will see that especially when you are away from these people… (Talks aside) Especially when you are taken away from your spouse either through divorce or death, you will see the memory within your system plays up much more strongly when they are not here. Particularly, when death happens, you will see the memory of your spouse works in every cell in your body, if you have lived long enough together. It is not just an emotional and psychological process, it is a very physical process.

So divorce is a… a voluntary death. You have decided to kill something that is a part of you, in some way. It is because of this reason, that having this understanding of the existence and the way the system functions, that they always told you, “Till death do you apart, you will not part” because there is a physical memory about this and the body doesn’t have the balance of the mind. The mind can decide and turn around but the body cannot turn around. The more memory you build into it, the more confused it becomes. So, one type of memory, body handles it much better. Now that you’ve chosen to divorce – for whatever reasons, which I don’t want to delve into – if it could be avoided, that would be best. But for some reason, you have come to that situation where this is… this has to happen - you need to understand this, that divorce essentially means you have chosen to kill something, which is a part of you, because what you call as myself is just a certain volume of memory.

Now, to… how to conduct this gracefully? Most people think the best way to conduct a divorce is immediately jump into another relationship and another relationship of the same kind. No, you will cause much more struggle and turmoil within the system by doing that. It’s extremely important the body has enough time to work out the memory, the body has enough time to keep the memory at a certain distance. Otherwise, you will render yourself to a space, where to make yourself peaceful and joyful will become an extremely hard thing to do in your life. So conducting this process gracefully and well is important as it is important to conduct every aspect of your life gracefully and well.

Now, two people, who have shared their emotion, their body, their sensations and their living spaces, ripping it apart is… because two memories have merged in many ways, ripping it apart is almost like tearing yourself apart. Even though you might have begun to almost come to a place, where you can’t stand the person anymore, still it hurts, simply because you’re trying to rip out a memory, which is you, because you are a bundle of memory. If one does the necessary spiritual sadhana, if one does sufficient inner work to establish these energies, which is yourself… You’re only divorcing your spouse, you need not divorce yourself. But you need to understand this, you have already divorced yourself. You’re quite divorced from your own self. Your existence has been nurtured by making a bond, a partnership or a bondage – depending upon how you’ve conducted this – to make yourself feel whole in some way. Most partnerships of this nature are made because by yourself you would feel insufficient, incomplete. But that’s not how life is. This (Referring to oneself) is a complete life process by itself. It does not need any assistance from outside.

So now that you’ve some to such a situation, it is time to turn inward and see. It is time that you find the completeness of what this life (Referring to oneself) is. It is time you discover that this being (Referring to oneself) is a complete being. It does not need any external assistance to be the way it is. To conduct our life in a society, we may need… we are interdependent. But the fundamental existence of this (Referring to oneself), the balance of what this is, the space of what this is, the possibility of what this is, is a complete process by itself. Our interdependence is only according to our external requirements but our inner existence is complete by itself. You’re divorcing your spouse, which is bad enough – do not divorce yourself from yourself.