Yantra to remove difficulties

November 1, 2026

When everything is difficult at once

Some periods of life are not marked by a single disaster, but by a accumulation of small obstructions. The application stalls. The repair costs more than expected. The person who could help is away. The letter arrives late, the appointment moves, the plan that looked simple acquires a complication at every step. No one difficulty would be worth a working on its own, yet together they form a kind of weather, and living in that weather day after day wears a person down in a way that a single crisis, sharp as it is, does not.

The old description for this square addresses that weather directly. When inscribed on steel or copper and worn, it brings about the realisation of hopes and the removal of difficulties. I give that as the traditional purpose of the figure, not as a promise about what will happen for you. Hopes and difficulties are paired deliberately: the clearing of what blocks, and the coming forward of what was hoped for, as two sides of the same turning, rather than as separate requests.

Difficulties are rarely one thing

It helps to look closely at the difficulties themselves, because they are rarely all of one kind. Some are practical: money, transport, paperwork, the sheer logistics of getting things done. Some are relational: people who will not agree, who misunderstand, who promise and then fail to act. Some are inner: doubt, weariness, the loss of momentum after repeated setbacks, which makes the next difficulty feel larger than it is. A working aimed at difficulties in general will touch all three kinds, but your observation of it will be clearer if you know which kind is heaviest for you now.

Hopes, too, repay a closer look. A hope can be a definite outcome, such as a job, a home, a reconciliation, or a project completed. It can also be a state, such as ease, steadiness, or the feeling that life is moving forward again after a long stall. Definite hopes are easier to measure. Hopes that are states are easier to feel, and harder to prove. Naming which kind yours is, before you begin, will save you from judging a definite outcome by a feeling, or a feeling by a definite outcome, and confusing yourself in the process.

Being specific about the difficulties you mean

One person might mean a house move blocked at three points: a buyer who delays, a repair that must be done first, and a document that cannot be found. Another might mean a work project stalled by permissions, by a colleague's absence, and by a budget that will not stretch. A third might mean a personal hope blocked by distance, by money, and by a misunderstanding that has never been cleared up, each difficulty small on its own, formidable together.

Write those obstructions down, briefly, before you begin, and beside each one write the hope it blocks, in ordinary terms: the move completed, the project finished, the misunderstanding cleared. That paired list becomes your measure. Without it, the removal of one difficulty can pass unnoticed while two others still stand, and the whole period can feel unchanged even though part of it has genuinely eased. With it, you can watch the list shorten, or shift, and know what is actually happening.

The old note adds that this square is most effective for those willing to work for the needed change, and for those who are optimistic and positive about what they seek. Willingness to work is the practical half: the call made, the form filed, the conversation attempted, even while the weather is bad. Optimism, in this context, is not cheerfulness forced over disappointment. It is the steadier habit of expecting that effort may still count, and of not treating each new obstruction as proof that none ever will.

Working with the figure

The figure is described as inscribed on steel or copper and worn. Worn daily, it accompanies the ordinary round of tasks in which difficulties actually appear: the errand, the appointment, the negotiation, the day of small frustrations. Hold it before you put it on, settle the paired list you wrote, and then wear it through those tasks, rather than reserving it for a single ceremony apart from daily life. The difficulties live in daily life, so the working belongs there too.

It helps to approach each difficulty, while wearing the figure, as a separate matter rather than as proof of a general curse on the period. Deal with the letter, then the repair, then the conversation, one at a time, and note each one as it is addressed. That separation is itself part of the removal, because difficulties gain much of their weight from being lumped together into a single overwhelming mass. Taken singly, they are often manageable, and manageability is the first form easing takes.

The ordinary-world work alongside it

The ordinary work of removing difficulties is mostly a matter of order. Break the tangle into steps, and take the smallest step first, the one that can be done today without anyone else's permission. Write the letter, make the call, find the document, ask the plain question. Each small step, completed, changes the shape of the tangle, and it also changes your own state, from a person beset by difficulties to a person working through them. That change of state is not incidental. It is often what allows the next step to be seen clearly.

Seek help where a difficulty is not yours to solve alone. Advice, mediation, practical assistance, or simply another person's view of a tangle you have stared at too long, can remove an obstruction that effort alone has only tightened. Asking for help is not a sign that the magical work has failed. It is part of the same removal, and a working that is accompanied by asking tends to read, in the record, very differently from one accompanied only by waiting.

Keeping a record, and reading it honestly

Keep a record of the paired list, and update it honestly. Note each difficulty, what was done about it, and whether it eased, shifted, or held firm. Note each hope, and whether it moved closer, even by a small step, or stayed where it was. Note the inner weather too: weariness, momentum, the ability to face the next task without dread. Over weeks, that record will show a pattern that feeling alone cannot: a list shortening, a hope advancing, a kind of difficulty recurring while others clear.

Read the record after a stretch of ordinary weeks, not after a single good day in which three things went right, or a single bad day in which three went wrong. Removal of difficulties, in the way described, is a gradual clearing, not a sudden lifting, and it is judged by the trend across the list. If the trend moves toward the hopes you named, weigh that plainly. If it does not, consider whether the list itself needs revising, whether a practical step has been missed, or whether the hope needs reframing. No magical result is promised here.

There is a final kind of difficulty worth naming separately, because it is the easiest to overlook and the hardest to remove: the difficulty that has become familiar. A long-standing obstruction, lived with for years, can begin to feel like part of the landscape, and a person can stop noticing it altogether, arranging life around it instead of addressing it. When you write your paired list, ask whether any item on it has become so familiar that you no longer count it as a difficulty at all. Naming it afresh, as a difficulty and not as fate, is sometimes the first removal, because it restores the possibility of change where habit had quietly removed it.

Size and material: Copper Yantras are about 1 inch by 1 inch by 2 millimetres, and hand-drawn Yantras are around 2 inches by 2 inches. These sizes are approximate, because Yantras come in different shapes.