Yamas Integration - Surrender and Acceptance
You are all such sincere souls,
tested by the world itself just to arrive here.
Modern-day yogis having to make it through traffic
and yet your hearts still yearn to come and gather in truth.
It takes something —
a quiet inner decision,
a soft but steady yes,
to keep coming,
to choose light when the world grows dim.
Outside it is autumn,
and some part of you longs to cocoon,
to fold back into the comfort of the sofa,
but your soul still reaches for nourishment.
So you come.
You arrive through the weather and world,
through resistance,
and you sit down in presence.
We are not completely given over to mammon.
(Mammon is an Old Testament term for
the world, money, the things of the world)
Your spirit still matters.
Your soul still has relevance to you.
If we didn’t have this connection,
would mammon have enough meaning for us?
Would we still find the drive for life in
The next toy?
The next entertainment?
It’s not enough is it?
We need more.
That’s what gives hope.
That people still exist who are taking care
of the presence inside of them.
Because when we don’t take care of this
as a species
what we become capable of is atrocious.
The less we take care of this
the more atrocious the human possibility becomes.
Only because of the disconnection with the fundamental love
that brought us into being in the first place.
So we pray:
May everybody turn back to themselves
and find this presence inside —
to save humanity’s ass, quite honestly.
Some days I pray so hard for that.
I’m so happy with the last ten weeks.
the depths we’ve reached with the Yamas and Niyamas
have really opened up a possibility —
a new way of living for each of us.
So now it’s integration time.
We’ll use the next two weeks to expand our awareness of them —
of how they move and operate within us.
Of course, we’ve never practiced without them
these Yamas and Niyamas are intrinsic laws of Life,
how Life operates within the field of love.
It’s just how it is.
Our last initiation was into surrender.
We signed up for a surrendered life.
We saw that all the previous nine initiations land in the tenth —
which means, I surrender within myself,
within the heart of myself,
and I wish to allow that to lead my life.
I wish to listen inwardly before I act.
I no longer wish to live from the programming of my mind
I don’t want that to be my guru anymore.
I offer myself to the guru within.
I wish to live from love,
I wish to live in truth.
It’s a high aspiration, but it’s also like,
“yeah, of course.”
And once we say that — once we announce it —
it’s heard.
It’s heard by our own soul,
heard in our body and mind structure,
and most importantly, it’s heard by the whole universe.
It ripples out.
The universe says:
“Oh, we’ve got one here.
Somebody just signed back up.
One of the disconnected ones has reconnected
and made the outrageous statement:
‘I wish to live a surrendered life,
a God-orientated life,
a life lived from authenticity.’”
That’s a big deal.
If we take Ishvara Pranidhana as our thing,
and then let it run through the yamas —
how does surrender operate through them
in our practice and in our daily life?
So, surrender and ahimsa.
Surrender operates through ahimsa
because the very foundation of surrender lies in acceptance.
Right now, your situation is as it is.
You’re either relaxed with it,
or you’re in conflict with it.
The words that are coming out of this mouth
are landing in you.
You’re either having a conflict with them —
a resistance of energy —
or you’re allowing them to come in.
You don’t have to take what I’m saying as gospel;
that’s not required,
that’s not what you signed up for.
But you’re open enough
to run these words through your own heart,
through your own truth-checker,
and ask, “How does that resonate in me?
Is that true in me?”
You could just reject them —
but then you’re rejecting what’s happening right now.
And it could be anything.
Some things are very hard to accept as reality —
but the fundamental thing is:
that is the reality.
What’s happening is happening,
whether I join in with it or not,
it’s still happening.
And the first act of surrender —
the base stone of surrender is:
I am willing to accept this.
Which means we’ve dropped our objections,
our resistances,
our conflicts,
and most of all, our judgments.
Judgment is essentially a means
of keeping ourselves separate
from what we’re judging.
We have a fear
that if we open to a situation,
or even an idea or a person,
they will somehow contaminate us.
“If I open to your opinion,
it might take away my own.”
So we live defensively.
That’s not true.
You can say absolutely anything to me —
you can express an utterly racist, bigoted,
damaging, even poisonous point of view —
It doesn't matter to me one bit.
and I’ve trained myself to make this so.
I would humbly say to all of you,
because you are yogis —
make yourself so.
Otherwise, what is life going to be?
Ahimsa won’t be there.
They have their opinion,
you have yours — welcome to conflict.
If you just allow their opinion to run through you.
Then you’ll be able to respond
not from agitation or your own software of opinion,
but from your heart.
And it will come with love.
Judgment creates contraction;
force creates resistance.
If I come on too strong —
with my body, in a posture, with a stretch —
it will subtly resist me.
I can change it, yes —
force can create change —
but it cannot transform.
Love can transform.
Love is the only power of transformation.
Force cannot transform;
it can only change.
Transformation arises naturally —
from within.
Like a blossoming of a flower.
Force can make change,
but it looks like this:
I’m still the same contracted piece of clay,
just in a slightly different shape.
You wouldn’t say, “Steve, you’re transformed,”
you’d say, “Steve, you’re a slightly different mess.”
Transformation is what happens within due to a softening.
If I’m casting any judgment upon you — even subtly — your prana knows.
You’ll feel it, and you’ll subtly alter your behaviour accordingly.
Either you will want my approval or defend
because you feel the judgement coming at you.
So with our judgments, we’re distorting everything around us
according to that judgment.
If I allow everything about you to run through me
and I’ve got no objection,
then you can just be you.
I’ve got nothing that’s contracting around you,
No judgment holding you in a particular shape.
And then your whole system can start to loosen up.
In fact, if I give you enough space and time,
you’ll begin to reveal every truth within yourself.
It’s amazing.
Love begets truth.
If you and I were to sit together
and you didn’t project anything on me —
no judgment, no label, no story —
I would gradually reveal myself to you.
If you simply looked with love in your eyes,
and kept that steady gaze of acceptance,
I would open.
That’s the greatest power in the entire universe.
Nothing can get close to that.
If I manage to clean myself of the inner muck —
or simply develop the capacity to be with you,
so that whatever you send my way
does not disturb my inner state of presence —
I am love on earth.
Transformation would happen everywhere I go in that case.
But I have to do this work within myself.
It doesn’t mean I can’t have an opinion,
and it doesn’t mean I have to agree with you.
It’s a neutralising
but it doesn't take away our own substance.
If you express something harmful or untrue,
it’s not that I’ll sit here nodding
just because I’m practising ahimsa.
It simply means I’m not going to contract against you.
That’s all.
I’m not going to create that tightening inside.
And we all know what that feels like —
so we can all learn not to do it.
Then truth starts revealing itself,
and that truth probably isn’t the opinion at all.
Because that opinion is usually just bolted
on top of someone’s psychology —
born out of trauma, defensiveness,
or simple convenience.
So you see how ahimsa naturally leads to satya.
In your body in the practice,
if you cast no aspersions upon it —
no judgments, no demands —
and just say,
“Let’s see what you want to do, body,”
it will reveal the truth within itself.
It will begin to unlock,
to behave as it was always meant to behave.
The body is spontaneous by nature —
alive, expressive, animal, free.
But our psychology lays so many limits on it.
“Do I look right? Am I doing this properly?”
You don’t see that so much in the East —
though it’s changing there too —
but traditionally their bodies move with more fluidity.
Men there often have a femininity about them
because they’ve never been told not to.
There’s an ease in that.
In the West, we’ve become stiff —
walking like cyborgs —
gripped by our own psychologies,
and our poor bodies can’t even be bodies.
We think we are the body,
and that confusion breeds so much sickness.
Always remember:
if I’m struggling to find my flow,
if I’m struggling to surrender into things,
the first stumbling block will be ahimsa.
There’s something I’m just not accepting
about the way things actually are.
And they are anyway,
whether I accept them or not.
That’s the thing about it, isn’t it?
Accept it or don’t —
but if you accept it,
the whole thing changes.
Then truth starts revealing itself.
Once you’re back in your truth,
that truth will begin to guide you forward,
and an authentic path starts to unfold before you.
You see how it unlocks?
You accept —
you get closer to your truth —
and then automatically
the way forward begins to appear.
It can’t happen before that.
The way forward cannot happen
until the reality of where you are
has been accepted.
Otherwise, you feel stuck.
You could push and strive and say,
“I’ll make this happen,”
but somewhere inside you know
it’s not right,
because you haven’t accepted where you are.
Once you do,
you get honest about how you feel about it.
Then it becomes clearer,
and the path forward reveals itself —
and that is asteya.
Your path has just revealed itself to you,
and that’s the only path for you.
Someone else has got another one
unfolding before them —
and that’s fine.
You still travel together,
but your own inner unfolding
is now taking place.
Now it’s authentic to you —
that’s asteya.
The next one is Brahmacharya
which is faithfulness.
You ask yourself,
“How committed am I
to this authentic way
that Life is showing me?”
It is showing itself
you just have to keep letting go of all your ideas.
Can I be faithful to it,
committed to it?
That’s brahmacharya.
Once you’ve relaxed into what is,
accepted it,
become honest within yourself,
then your path reveals itself —
and now you are walking with God.
Brahmacharya.
Now you’re walking with the God-force,
walking with spirit.
And then the question comes:
will you be faithful?
Because there will be many other options.
People will try to tell you,
“No, not that way. Don’t do that.”
It doesn't mean you don’t listen to folk,
especially if they’ve walked their own path,
but you’ll keep checking in:
“No — I’m going to be faithful
to God within myself,
not to everything else.”
“Oh, but this will happen if you do that.”
I don’t care.
“You’ll die.”
I don’t care either.
Yes — that’s brahmacharya.
It’s that serious.
It requires that much faithfulness,
because you’ll definitely be tested.
And because you’re now starting to follow this path,
it’s good to know how faithful you are —
to God,
and to the path itself.
If you want to keep the flow going —
and it is flowing now, isn’t it? —
you accept,
you’re honest,
your path unfolds,
you’re faithful to it,
and you go forward.
You will be offered all kinds of things along the way.
This is why we have aparigraha.
You’re flowing now
but if you stop to grab anything along the way,
to hold it,
the flow stops.
It halts right there with the grasping.
If you keep releasing your grip,
it just flows, flows, flows —
and it gains its own momentum.
It feels as if your spirit is now running life.
If it says,
“Take more rest.”
You listen.
But who actually listens to that?
Hardly anyone.
The world doesn't agree with resting.
Your psychology is the world
so won’t agree with you resting either.
It says, “Work. Quick. Keep going.”
Knock that on the head.
It’s time to change course.
The spiritual life is called the razor’s edge —
the path of fire and light the whole way.
So you say,
“Yeah, I’m going to be faithful to this again.
I’ve tested it.
I’ve made sure this isn’t just me.
I kept feeling into my presence within
and it kept saying clearly:
No — it’s this way.”
So you go.
It doesn’t matter where it takes me.
There’s the Yamas.
You can see how they roll,
how they unfold into one another.
If we can, with some regularity,
give them contemplation time —
even just a minute in the morning —
to run through them quietly:
Ahimsa reminds me to accept.
Acceptance brings me closer to satya —
truth.
Truth reveals asteya —
my authentic path.
And from there,
I walk faithfully in brahmacharya.
Holding on to nothing —
aparigraha.
You just take yourself through them like that,
and they start to bed in.
Then they begin to find you through the day.
That’s what happens after satsang:
you might forget everything we’ve said tonight,
but sometime tomorrow,
something will arise and tap you on the shoulder —
or bite you on the bum —
and it’ll whisper,
“Remember?”
It comes looking for you
from within yourself.
Thank you for being here.
Namaste.
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