The Yamas Week 2 - Satya: Living in the Fullness of Truth

 We call satsang from an inner availability and an inner hunger to reach beyond the current framework of ourselves. 

That’s how satsang gets called into a space.

We don’t always have to be famished — just like, alright, I’m available.

So, The Yamas — this is what we looked at last week, and we continue to look at.

We are looking at them as:
An initiation into a new life.
An initiation into a spiritual path.

They’re the first of the eight limbs of yoga.
They’re the first step into a spiritualised existence.

They’re a life lived with the highest possible aspiration.
An aspiration that isn’t normal in a mundane world.

To aspire towards love.
To aspire towards truth.
To aspire for integrity.
To aspire to be fully and unapologetically committed.
And to aspire for generosity—

So these are higher aspirations.
They’re a higher life.

As a species we’ve shied away from them.
called them impractical.

The Yogis said there is nothing more practical.
You just have to decide how you want to live

From your soul? 

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Ahimsa (review)

So last week we took on the first initiation.

And that was the initiation into Ahimsa.

We declared that we do not wish to live from manipulation and control.
We wish to live from compassion and love.
We wish for the upliftment of all beings.
We don’t wish to tread on other beings.
We wish to pick them up (If they want to be picked up that is).

It’s a different way of living,
A life outside of the drive of competition 

I must better you.
I must prove myself to be above you.

These games that we humans get up to, you know?

I’m only describing the world, am I not?

And the world is the world because it’s what we’ve become.
We’ve collectively created a world in our image.

We’ve also created God in our image.

The yogis said, create a different world

If you want to that is.
Because most of us complain about this one quite a bit, do we not?
Probably most of the time.

So — create a new one from within yourself, by taking on these Yamas.

Spend your time praying for others.
Ask:
“How can I serve?” These kinds of things.

This is all Ahimsa.
Positive Ahimsa.

And notice how our minds have been somewhat —
cultivated and engineered to not do that.

Check whether you are genuinely wishing for your siblings
to become their greatest
And so on and so forth.

Alright — anyway, enough.
Got to move on to the second initiation.

Are we keen
To be initiated into Satya?

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Satya 

Satya means truth. Truthfulness.

A life lived in the fullness of truth.

A life lived in concordance with what I know to be true within myself.
What I’ve discovered to be true in the depth of myself.

Not what I have been told is true,
but what I have found to be true within myself.

To be able to rest inside the depth of myself,
in a place of honesty and authenticity,
because I don’t need to try and project,
an alternative image of what I am. 

Honest.
Simple.
Transparent.
Unapologetic. 

 Not needing to—
be seen and appreciated.
Not needing to prove.
Not needing to be understood.

Simply resting in the exquisite honesty—
Of your own authenticity.

Resting here,
and resisting the temptation to do otherwise:

To create a lie.
To create a distortion.
To create an image.

And letting everything that’s happening somehow pass through
this deep authenticity checker.
And to ask: How does this actually feel in me?

Rather than giving out what we think everybody wants to hear,
or what might be appreciated,
or what might be liked,
or what might make someone laugh.

Rather than coming from a space
that tries to manipulate the best outcome...

Why not choose truth.

And where is that truth verified?
Not in the mind,
In one’s soul.

It means we’ve got to drop in,
and feel it.

It means we’ve got to put down all the:
I should feel this way.
I ought to.
I must.
  This is good.
  This is bad.
    This is what I should be doing…

All this is what we have taken on from the world  

So you’ve got to drop the world
and take a risk on truth.
This is the initiation into Satya.

I wish to live in authenticity and truth
in accordance with what I’ve discovered within myself.

But what if it’s inconvenient?
What if somebody doesn’t like it?

These are the choices. 

The world, or truth? 

The other, or God.

To go inside and listen to the quiet voice of God,
rather than the noisy conditioning of the mind.

I am with truth.

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Initially, for novices like us,
it requires the ability to
  pause and check in.

And pause again and check in.
And pause for as long as we need.

Because what if the sweet voice of truth
is not currently talking to you on the inside?

It means — that’s how the truth is manifesting in that moment.

“I don’t know”
What a truth. Wow.
What honesty.

The willingness to declare “I don’t know”
is a great way to open up to a deeper truth.
That is rich ground for truth to rise in.

---

After a while it becomes possible,
to be existing in the world and
and referencing in with the authenticity checker,
running it through God in your own vehicle,
  as it’s happening in real time.

That’s possible sometimes. 

But sometimes it requires deeper contemplation and feeling.

Sometimes things happening on the outside
trigger our minds and our emotions a great deal.
And there’s no way there’s any truth coming out
of triggered emotions and mental activity.

We’re all clear on that, aren’t we?
How belligerent and convinced we are with how we’re feeling.

It’s necessary to get underneath those feelings,
to get into the deeper resonance and stillness—
and be able to hear what’s really there.

It might require us to relinquish all kinds of ideas
about how we think things “should be”
in order to be with truth.

It’s the great sacrifice of ‘our own thing’.

---

So sometimes we need to pause and contemplate
and wait for truth to rise.

Which is a very true, honest thing to do.

And sometimes we can run it through our system
and it’s very clear.

As we do this more and more,
the idea is that the truth alarm—
or you might call it, the bullshit alarm—
becomes so loud you catch it
at the very first siren from it.

You catch yourself—
you see yourself doing all this stuff:
“Why am I needing to do that?
Why am I needing to show off here?
Why am I needing to defend here?
Why am I needing to show that I know?

Why am I needing to regurgitate this morning’s newspaper
  like I was the discoverer of the news?
  Why am I needing to buy into other people’s opinions
      and other people’s politics,
      in order to feel like I have a veritable
      and worthwhile place on earth?

What if I just ran it through my soul
and see what comes back from that one?

What if I’m no longer manipulable by untruth?

What if I’m no longer just a product of a society
and a media that’s come into a general consensus about something
which will inevitably be shown up for what it is sometime soon?

What if I’m not to quick to jump on board with all of this stuff,
and I let myself just rest,
and listen to a deeper truth that is trying to emerge from love?”

This is the invitation into Satya.

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Truth’s Innate Power

I think it’s always good to remember that truth has its own power.

That is— when you’re resting in the truth of yourself,
when you’re resting in what you know to be true,
it has its own influence,
from your body outwardly.

So sometimes it’s not appropriate to say your truth.

However true you may think it is,
it may not be yet ready.
Or the situation may not be fitted to that truth.

So then we have to have rely on the quiet power of truth—
to do this work without action on our part...

Because otherwise, remember Ahimsa?
How much harm can you do with your truth?
‘Your truth’?
it’s normally at that point that it causes harm,
when it becomes ‘my truth’. 

The truth exists anyway.
It doesn’t need me to get up on my soapbox necessarily—
although it might.

But it may well not.

It can be quiet, existing underneath.
But as long as it’s there,
and there’s awareness of it and recognition of it in you,
it becomes available to all around you.

I experiment with this a lot.
If Sarah and I are having a private discussion
where we manage to dig a little deeper inside of ourselves,
and unearth a truth nugget about how the mechanism of Life seems to work...

If we keep that to ourselves—
before you know it, normally within 24 hours,
somebody else will expound it.

Truth has its own way of spreading.

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Truth: The All Consuming Fire

Now of course, being initiated into Satya
can happen on a lot of different levels.

What if I chose to live the truth above all else?
what if I was no longer the comfortable agree-er
or the annoying disagree-er?

What if I just rested in and became inwardly guided,
rather than externally manipulated?

What if I went inside and listened patiently
for the voice of God within myself to become clear

I will have to silence my mind.
I will have to let go of all my opinions—
to hear that voice clearly.

I will have to have nothing to gain and nothing to loose,
to live as a disciple of truth.

Just like love,
truth will ask everything from you in the end,
until only it remains

It will replace your existence,
and you will simply be truth.

Gandhi said:
I have so honed Satya,
I have reflected so deeply
and kept cleansing my mind of all my own opinions,
in order to find out what Life actually wants from me
in any situation—
or how Life wants me to behave—
that if I act in discordance with it these days,
immediately I feel inflicted with pain.

The authenticity and truth alarm is so loud in me
that it will literally stop me moving.

I will get half a word out, and
I will taste untruth in it, exaggeration in it,
trying to get my own way with it—
and then I’ll have to swallow that word,
now or later.”

You see, that’s when truth really gets a hold of a being.
One step outside— and it’s like stepping on a thorn.

It’s an invitation to watch bullshit coming out of my mouth,
and to be willing to smile,
to be honest,
and to withdraw and go,
“No, I don’t necessarily have to do it like that.”

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Truth in the Body, Truth Everywhere

In your asanas,
if you drop every idea you have about how it should go,
and you rest in your heart.

If you’re absolutely honest, for example,
about how your body is—
and you are not trying to change
anything at all about reality—
and you just go with your truth...

See if it ever goes wrong for you.
See if truth can ever take you to the wrong place.
See if untruth can ever take you to the right place.

It’s a real opportunity,
to fully discover that your mind, the programme,
has never ever taken you to the right place
or in the right direction.

And yet the truth has never taken you anywhere
but the right place.

And it is fine to follow an untruth,
because eventually that will become painful enough
that it directs us back to the truth.

No problem, no judgement.

But you’re looking to hone your system
to such a degree
that it’s almost instantaneously self-correcting.

Like you’re in a posture,
and you’re starting to think about where it should go,
and you go— “What am I doing?”

And you just return to your breath, and ease.

Then truth unfolds.

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What a life! 

Spiritual lives are fucking cool.
Mundane lives are not like this.

In a mundane life you create your own story,
have your own mind,
and you try your damndest to live by it,
no matter how much suffering it causes,
no matter how untrue it is. 

It’s a tragedy no? 

A spiritual life is to be inwardly guided—
continuously,
in absolute perfection,
by this incredible intelligence called God.
Or whatever you may like to call it.

Realising that that power is doing it all through me— in all uniqueness.

It’s edgy.
You know it is.

And that edginess is the place to go and have a little look
and find out— you know, like ooh!

Because that’s the space of surrender, isn’t it?

Like, am I ready to surrender to this guidance,
to this truth within myself?

Am I ready to say:
“Yes, alright, I’ll go Your way, not mine.”

And you keep reaffirming this.
Alright.

But only if you want to of course. 

Thank you. 

Namaste.