So today we're continuing our yogic path journey and we're actually talking about the yamas.
We've done,
This is the third in this series,
The first was ahimsa which is non-violence or really living a peaceful life and last week we looked at asteya which officially means not stealing and this week it's satya and this all sounds really boring at least to me but it's really not and one of the the premises that all these talks are based in is that you know the world we've lived in for millennia is really crazy.
It's really filled with all kinds of real cruelty and meanness and separation and inequality and oppression and and I'm not saying this to be negative because it's also filled with majestic beauty and pleasure and joy and connection and love and light and wisdom and fun and silly and all these things.
The world has all of these things but the really weird thing about this sort of darker side of our existence is that it tends to overwhelm our entire existence.
It's like if you were in a house and there's five people in the house and one person is what you would call the negative leader.
They're maybe always in a bad mood or they're angry or whatever and it's okay to be in a bad mood or be angry.
This is really healthy.
We've done a lot of talks about healthy emotions and all that but the problem is that some people want you to spin around them and so if they want your attention and so you could be in the house and everyone in the house could be really happy and having a great day and be inspired and feeling great but that one person could actually infect the whole house that all of a sudden everybody is focusing on that one person that one thing and all of a sudden your whole day is about either avoiding that thing or working around that thing or working with that thing and you've forgotten how inspired you were.
You've forgotten the great things you were planning to do that day because you're so focused on this negative thing and I mean negative.
I really believe in the spiritual teachings.
We're missing something if we're not allowed to call something for what it is.
This is the opposite of satya and today we're talking about satya,
Truth.
We're allowed to call things for what they are and it's not judgmental and all that stuff it's just oh that's a that's a brown chair and that's a green wall.
That's it.
We're just saying what it is.
It's raining out.
It's cold out.
It's just truth.
It's just what it is.
So what's really weird about this world we've been living in for the last couple millennia anyway because of this weird darkness this weird oppression or cruelty or meanness however we want to look at it I don't understand what it is and that's a whole other story and not worth looking at but the problem is it's this it's infected everything we've ever learned it's infected everything like all of a sudden everything is about dealing with the negative and trying to avoid the negative and everything it's just it's just infected our minds so even the journey of yoga so for example what we're talking about there's eight limbs of yoga Patanjali years ago wrote these sutras thousands of years ago he wrote these sutras summing up all the thousands of schools of yoga that were popping up all over India in my opinion to counter this weird darkness that was in the world what was this that was splitting people into two like literally inside what was splitting people into two parts that would now war against themselves inside so all of a sudden all these different schools all these masters and teachers were popping up all over the place all very different some taught meditation some taught proper living some taught more physical based but all of them were the same thing how do we bring the humans back to themselves how do we bring them back to be whole so we can actually live a true human life not these weird disparate separate battling selves that we had become so Patanjali actually traveled all around and visited all these schools and discovered that there were some basic threads and these are the eight limbs of yoga and the first limb are what they call the yamas and the yama means restraint and now of course if we see a restraint if I hear the word restraint based in the life I've lived within this very strange world that although there is so much beauty and light and potential and amazing abundance here we will become so focused on the dark they are literally like that person in the house that will not let you forget they're there and if we're not careful we'll miss the point of life because we'll be so busy focusing on that thing so even when we say the word restraint instantly me I have I mean I may have a little devil inside of me but I also have a real rebel inside you tell me what I'm not allowed to do I'll go do it whether I want to do it or not don't tell me what to do like I'm gonna do what I want to do so the interesting thing is even the idea of the yamas it instantly because we've lived in this world where we've been oppressed you know whether it was in our family of origin whether it was in our society whether it was in our school whether it was due to our gender orientation race anything whatever it is it's like yamas you tell me what to do okay let's just skip this let's just go on to pranayama because I like that limb better I don't want to look at yamas but it's all because of this weird focus on this dark thing so one of the things that's really been rising for me in the last few months was that it's time to no longer pay attention to that person in the corner and I don't mean to personify it as a person but it's not time for that anymore it's literally the world is so expansive and there is so much potential and there is so much beauty and love in the world that's where we have to expand and when we look at everything we've ever learned this is what's going on in me right now every single thing I've been doing I've been teaching spiritual studies yoga meditation Tantra all these things for like 20 years and every single thing I've ever taught is being turned just turned and shaken and said what does this teaching look like if we focus on the light and I don't mean spiritual bypassing I don't mean not healing I don't mean not calling a spade a spade I mean what does it look like if we focus truly on what's right in the world what's right in us and we allow the swamp to be the swamp and again this is not ignoring what is this today we're talking about Satya and so we'll find out why so all of a sudden the restraints have a very different definition and the restraints suddenly become no the restraints will help us stay on our path they'll help us to not keep getting pulled off by that element in the corner that wants us to get distracted that wants to split our attention that wants to actually put cast doubt inside of us one of my favorite things that in the Christian faith that Jesus ever said was that you are all that I am and more you know I don't know why this isn't taught but that we are actually phenomenal beings we are actually divine incredible creations and there's a lot of strange things in the world that would say no no no no no you're not that great you can't heal you can't do these things and there's all this doubt so what the Yama say is you are these incredible beings you are these amazing incarnate sparks of divinity stay on the path here's the path to real happiness being here outside of here there's a million distractions if you get off the path you're gonna it's okay I mean we all get off the path lots of times you're gonna end up in the forest and we may be lost in the forest for a while whatever we can always find our way back to the path but what if you don't want to get lost in the forest what if you actually want to keep walking forward you want to keep making positive steps on your journey as a human on whatever like we often have these existential crises where we're like why am I even here what's the point well what's really interesting is when we actually are taking steps on our path we're not wondering why we're here because we're actively taking steps forward the problem is is when we get lost in the woods and we feel like we're just circling and we just can't seem to get back on our our own path we're so frustrated so that's what the Yamas are they're just like here let's go this way see okay don't go there so in this way Satya is a Yama so we've done a number of talks here on insight timer about Satya and you can find them you can find recordings of them here how we live according to our truth how do we live according to that voice inside how do we live according to our mission and that's another such as just a Sanskrit word that means it actually means all kinds of cool things it means truthfulness it also means that which is without distortion it means that which is beyond space and time and person it's just truth living according to that is beautiful but in this instance in this context we're looking at Satya as a Yama as a restraint and this is very interesting so all of a sudden we ask ourselves okay if I am meant to live my life according to my third chakra my third chakra holds my mission it holds all the reference materials I need it holds the power to propel me forward on my journey it has to be clear it can't have any other nonsense in there I need to just have my own I know I keep it's not really a great metaphor but it's almost like you only want to have gas in the tank you don't want to have any extra maple syrup or sand in there you just want to have what you need on your journey and then you can keep walking forward but unfortunately in whatever I don't know why and again it's a bigger pondering as to why it's funny my my daughter and I are reading this book called the age of entanglement and it's the history of quantum physics it's absolutely genius and Einstein and Niels Bohr used to always have these thought experiments and in German they call them Gedanken and so that's what I always imagine as soon as we start imagining why this is ahead it is it's just a Gedanken it's just a thought experiment it's not really important but for whatever reason we are in a position right now in the year 2022 where we have to teach ourselves to be honest we actually have to remind ourselves every day tell the truth your emotions matter how you feel matters what is your truth we have to teach ourselves that that's crazy what in the world has happened in this world that we're coming out of this spell that we have been trained to not be honest honest this isn't something weird this isn't some idea that I want to have that some pie-in-the-sky reality this is just my reality that's like literally being trained that if it's raining out tell me it's sunny that's how crazy it is that if if you were to ask me what's the weather out like out and I look outside and you have to tell me Katrina be honest tell me what the weather really is and I'm like I know but I want to tell you that it's raining but it's sunny and I but I want to tell you it's raining I have so many programs inside of me that tell me that I should tell you that it's raining or snowing because I know that's what you want to hear and I know you don't want to know that it's raining I get that it's sunny what in the world what in the world kind of conditioning has happened that this is something we have to repeat to ourselves every day and right on the fridge be honest just and don't get me wrong this is I'm talking to me here I'm talking to me I read I had to write a book about getting over people pleasing and self-love and connection to self and honoring me and speaking my truth I spent 52 years trying to say things to make other people feel better and not cause them discomfort and make sure that they feel okay and it was it my truth oh that's not so important what really matters is that they're okay right what I don't know about you but for me this has been something that's really hitting me lately it's really hitting me every single day because this is something that especially as someone who's a people pleaser it's like it that that training keeps rising and keeps rising and it's like another subtle flavor of it and another subtle flavor of it and another one and I'm like oh this is so deep it's such deep training so then all of a sudden this this is why this Yama of Satya is so interesting gets so interesting so when you ask yourself imagine you're walking along your path your path whatever your very specific interesting unique perfect path is how you were designed according to your DNA in this space and time why you were even put on the earth and you're walking along your path and all of a sudden there's a situation in your life where you have to tell a lie there's someone in your life that you have to tell a white lie to why white what's the boulder on the path that says you now have to get off of your path go down into the woods and tell this person a white lie why do we have to do that what what's what's going on like it makes us stop that's why the Yama is a restraint it says stop don't go any further don't take another step stop why do I have to lie to this person what's going on what's the training what's the conditioning what's the fear why would we ever have to lie this is a very interesting question because truth is just truth that's all it is it's just truth it's just reality it's reality like this isn't this is my opinion of you or my opinion of this situation this is truth how do you feel I feel sad how do you feel I feel angry how do you feel I feel happy it's just truth there's no second level of it there's no it's just a truth so why do I have to lie and this becomes the journey you know when people say you got to do the work on the path that's the work what's that so all of a sudden you feel you some you have a situation and you have to lie and instead of stepping forward into the woods you step back and you take a breath and you go what's going on why am I lying and then you ask another question why am I in this situation what are the ten lies that got me here and it could be all kinds of things maybe you're in a situation maybe you're in a relationship and you feel like you are financially dependent on this person and so you're kind of lying to keep the peace but what's the lie that got you there maybe the lie was that you can't support yourself maybe you're only a woman maybe you have no skills these are all lies none of these are true so it's a very interesting journey it starts to step us back and say okay hold on and it starts to unravel all the way these lies have been woven together in this bizarre strange world we live in so this path of truth is very interesting and the Yama of Satya says the key is to watch where you are forced to lie or you feel forced to lie that's the restraint that's the bumpers up in the bowling alley saying whatever we do we're not going there and if I have to lie I'm better to be silent and think about it and this is really important this is a huge part of why the yogic path has meditation pranayama all these things because in order to be honest with ourselves we have to have space and time in our brain we have to have stillness and quiet and aloneness to be able to go hold on a minute one of the limbs of yoga is pratyahara which is withdrawing the senses from the world why do we have to do that it's like okay hold on a minute what's going on but I have to withdraw my senses because I don't want to keep reacting in the way I always have or maybe for generations and ancestry we've always reacted this way so we want to be able to pull it in and say what's going on because when we are asked to lie we are in a situation we have to deny reality deny reality that's crazy so it's really interesting in Patanjali Sutra he has a his one line in Sanskrit which I can't read but is this one line and what this line there's many many translations of it but one of them is that as truthfulness is achieved all the fruits of the actions of the yogi are according to his desires another interpretation of it is when we are firmly established in realism all things happen according to our desires so let's look at that because when we are on a path of satya when we find ourselves actually only dealing with what is real then what we desire happens it's like we're building a house and imagine I have real bricks they're real bricks I'm holding the brick in my hand it's a real brick I put the brick down the house is gonna be built I find another real brick I put the real brick down and then I put another real brick down what has to happen the house has to be built that's it because I'm using real bricks and building a house well how else what else could happen but if I'm living a life of lies white lies fabrications stories this is like taking imaginary bricks and and and trying so hard to build the house but I'm not there no there's no bricks because truth is reality there is nothing else everything else where it didn't down in the woods but it's so hard because so much of our world is based on this very strange storytelling version of reality I remember I know I've mentioned this in other talks I once watched the movie a beautiful mind with Russell Crowe brilliant movie about a true story about a mathematician and he was genius genius mathematician and we follow the man it's his story he's the hero so we're watching his life he meets this woman he falls in love with but he's kind of quirky because he's kind of the math genius right and and he gets he finds this amazing job working for the government doing decoding and and awesome things and goes to university has his best friend who just he's so so bonds with and the friend has this niece who's like eight years old and he totally bonds with this child and he just he's just got such a great life and you're following along and you're all in and I apologize for any cuz I'm totally gonna ruin the movie for you right now if you've never seen it and then all of a sudden it comes oh he comes to a point and his family they're all coming together and they're having like an intervention because they've discovered that he doesn't have a job he goes to a place but he's just scribbling on the walls and then they discover that there was no roommate in college he'd made that up too there was a wife he was truly married but nothing else was real but he couldn't tell and it wasn't and it was really horrible right like he did like electroshock therapy and awful awful things but what was really interesting is it wasn't until one day he realized that his best friend's niece never aged that in his mind for decades she was only eight years old and that's when he realized that his version of reality wasn't right this movie blew my mind it absolutely blew my mind I was married my kids were young we had people living with us from Holland we had all of these things like I was busy busy busy world and I sat there thinking have I done that have I created a reality and just put it over my own eyes because it was the story I wanted to be true is that what I did and I remember looking at my husband thinking have I actually ever seen the real you or do I have a version of the perfect husband and I've created this story of the perfect husband and I'm imposing that on you and then I'm just criticizing you for not living up to this imaginary person that I've imposed on you I actually told my my husband and my kids I'm like I am mind-blown right now I am absolutely mind-blown and I am questioning my own reality right now so I I don't want to talk to anybody because it was just like I had to really question because for example I'm a real idealist I think from the time I could I began reading I would read a story and you go oh I like that character I want to be like that character oh I want to be like that character oh I want to be like this teacher I want to be like this yogi I want to be like this master I want to be like that and I created a life inside that I was sure that that's what I wanted to be and this was real like this was a possible thing you could just create the world focus on it and become it and then of course then what do we do we criticize ourselves because we're not living up to this ideal we manifested in our brain out of books and movies it's not real at all and then the really challenging thing is that this thing that I created in my mind this ideal which sounds very wonderful and altruistic and interesting and yes that's what a driven person with conviction does you create your own life you make the rules you define who you are this is all of this stuff we are inundated with this we literally NLP ourselves out of our own reality and so then all of a sudden you start to live then this is what happened to me I had created this reality and and the hardest thing is I mean this is one of the things about a beautiful mind is the more imaginative you are the more intelligent you are the more active your mind is it's like we create the structure of this perfect life and then we color it in we are so dedicated to this vision of how we want to live we color it into a point that we cannot tell the difference like we just can't so then my story was that I created the life I married the good man I had the two kids I went to university I got a degree I did everything I was supposed to do I did everything according to my plan that would make my life happy perfect awesome respected loved all the things that I wanted so desperately and I just fabricated this life or this belief or whatever inside of my mind and then in 1999 I got sick and of course my mom had just died of breast cancer and her mom and you know all this huge story there but I got sick and all of a sudden I realized that no your castle was built on sand it wasn't real I was making up something really interesting and inventive but there were no real bricks no real bricks according to Katrina's path not according to the world or something or maybe what a study at Harvard said I should be doing but it wasn't this very one out of seven and a half billion person path it had nothing to do with me it's like I didn't even know me when I made this story up so all of a sudden my whole world collapsed this happens a lot with people with illness with mental breakdown with loss of jobs with death with all kinds of things suddenly we realized that we were like building our life on a house of cards and it was all nonsense and then you get down to rock bottom it's that great saying that rock bottom became the foundation of my real life and then we start to look around and we say what's truth how do I really feel about this what do I really think about this what kind of life do I really want to live and we can I mean this can be a massive dark night of the soul massive existential crisis like I'm just saying it really fast but these are not easy questions to answer but the beautiful thing and of course then we discover say something like yoga or Tantra or a spiritual path that says okay if I can't follow the world's secular path because we know where that leads I'm gonna look within hence all the spiritual paths and then the yogic path the paths they say okay on the path of Satya all you need to do is tell the truth at every step because we've got to re-find ourselves now because we've been living this whole life in a forest thinking we were on the path but we were lost in the forest so then how do I get back to the path I'm walking I'm walking I have to tell a lie wait why do I have to tell a lie something's wrong okay back up turn left go this way instead walk in truth walk oh wait a minute why do I have to lie again turn right go this way and that's how we get back on our path telling the truth or telling a lie this is really important the truth is literally according to our wiring it's our journey every single person here has a unique path why would we not follow it you know we don't want to wait for some near-death experience we don't want to wait for some crisis to suddenly realize oh my god none of that stuff even matters are you kidding like we don't want to have to wait for that it's way easier to just say just okay you know what I'm just gonna simplify this why do I have to lie to you and that's it another really interesting thing about truth is because truth has been so confused in the world and there's so much meanness and criticism like we're almost taught that criticism is normal I'm sure it comes out of our families of origin but even if we have the most beautiful childhood for some reason I don't know why it's a bigger discussion but our education system is based on criticism it's literally like here's what I've done here's what you did wrong let's focus on that here's where you have to improve oh here's what I've done okay here's what you've done wrong we better focus on that like we've been trained to focus on the criticism of others authority friends partners everybody so truth gets very confusing because we think we're supposed to tell the truth about you here's what I think about you I'm just being honest I'm just just for your own good somebody's got to tell you the truth this is not satya this is meanness this is cruelty this is criticism this is not truth satya is about your path where are you walking on your path if you're busy criticizing somebody else how they're climbing their mountain all you know is you're not climbing your mountain if you find yourself needing to tell someone else a criticism then for some reason you've stopped moving in your own path none of us ever finish evolving there's no such thing we're always expanding we live in an infinite universe so no matter how much we read or how enlightened we feel or whatever it just there is no ceiling in an infinite universe so if I ever catch myself thinking I'm supposed to criticize that person in any way and tell them my truth or what I think of them all it means is for some reason I'm lacking the courage to take whatever the hard step is in my life that's next because I my life is more fun if I'm actually on my path on my journey it's much more interesting to me why I've turned to look at someone else and this is one of the reasons that the first yama is a himsa and a himsa spell it for you himsa is translated as non-violence or not harming a himsa comes first and that includes ourselves that means the truth we tell ourselves to because we've been we have integrated extreme judgment extreme judgment of self in the same way that we judge others so the first step is a himsa to do no harm so satya and a himsa go together if you find yourself if you're in relationship it's not always just about us we don't live in a cave by ourselves we're in relationship someone asks what are you talking about and you're gonna be honest if that honest is gonna if that truth is gonna hurt that other person and I don't mean disappoint them it can disappoint them it cannot meet their expectations that's all on them that's their expectation that's their a beautiful mind delusion of reality that's a whole different thing but if you're simply honest yourself you have to be very careful that it's also kind that they're not separate none of these limbs are separate so that's a really big deal when it comes to truth because we it's not a brutal truth it's just a quiet truth and this is where Gandhi taught so much about satya graha satya this truth graha is to stand in and to stand in your truth there is no fight it's just my truth it's just reality like if you want to argue with me that it's not sunny out I'm not sure what you want me to say it's sunny out no you know better than that it's raining no sunny well I want to debate this with you what what like what are you talking about this is satya graha there's no need for violence because I don't know why you're questioning my reality this is my reality and that's it there's nothing to argue about there's nothing to be mean and again part of the ahimsa and the talk is on Insight Timer here it's on my youtube channel part of the journey with ahimsa is very similar to this one with satya if you find yourself needing to defend yourself with any kind of violent thought action we have to ask ourselves why we're in this situation because it's not on our path if we need to be harmful to defend ourselves we're in the woods we need to get back on our path and it's the same with satya to really honor that if I can't be honest here I'm lost in the woods how do I get back on my path it's really interesting the last thing I just want to mention it's a very interesting foundation for living when we believe that I really am here with a purpose I'm not a cog in the machine's wheel or that doesn't make sense I'm not a cog in the big machine I'm a human we have these beautiful chakras that we talk about all the time these divine chakras physical chakras there's a purpose for me being here I'm not even sure what it is because every day I'm taking another step I don't know you know where I'll end up tomorrow because I haven't stepped there yet but it's a very interesting philosophical foundation to say why am I here am I here to serve all of those other people's expectations or am I here to discover my path to discover whatever it is I'm here to discover and the path of yoga would say that that's the path you were made with purpose and that's where we use satya and these yamas to say and we don't have to be mean about it we don't have to demonize the other person we just sort of say that's interesting but I feel the need to lie to you hmm I need to look at that I need to look at why I need to go off of my path to interact with you just give me some time to look at this before I respond it's very gentle because when you know that's your journey that's your journey I'm not here to serve you you need to walk your path it's that simple how long is the dark night of the soul it feels like dying dark nights of the soul are really hard but the key is to honor it and to really look at what's needing to die old ideas like I remember when I was sick part of the story of what if you could skip the cancer my mom was one of the greatest people that ever lived like she was the most loving wonderful funny like when you hear me laugh you're listening to my mom laugh because she was so silly and so fun and so loving so as her daughter I wanted to emulate her in every way I wanted to be her I wanted to be like my mom I wanted to be loved like my mom I wanted to be all that and this is also where I learned the people-pleasing this is where I learned to never rock the boat this is where I learned to bury your truth if it means upsetting someone else's reality and when I was sick I remember because she had just died and so I had all of her clothes this is what happens when parents die and you're the same size as them so I had all of her clothes and I would be wearing her pajamas especially even the pajamas this she got all these beautiful pajamas when she was she lived and like we lived in the hospital for the last few years before she passed and I remember wearing her pajamas one night and coming down to the kitchen to get a glass of something and her presence was so much inside of me I realized I actually said to her I said mom you have to you have to leave I need I can't I can't see my path and it's like I had to actually disentangle myself from my mom because all of these trainings are all woven together they're very hard to piece apart and that was a massive dark night of the soul for me to separate emotionally from so much of what I loved about my mom but I had to separate it to kind of tease out what wasn't okay really wasn't serving me what was really hurting me how long that took I don't know but you have to you have to just stay in it and then it's ironic that right now there's a truck backing up outside time to back up one of the most powerful things that Carolyn Mesa often said about the dark night of the soul when she said oftentimes we end up in a dark night of the soul because we've asked for guidance but we don't like the answer and if we don't like the answer we wait for a second answer we wait for a different truth it's like looking out the window and saying what's it like oh and the answer is it's raining well I don't like that truth so I'm gonna sit and I'm gonna stare out the window until I see what I want to see but it's not the truth and that will leave us in a dark night of the soul because I don't want to take the next step I don't want to take the step that's my truth and honestly that has served me well in my life asking myself what is it I don't want to see so there's a lot of angles for dark nights of the soul there's a lot of there's a lot of a lot of reasons we're there those are just a couple when using positive affirmations to create a desired mindset of our outcome are the affirmations white lies such a good question we could do an entire talk about affirmations do they help or do they harm I really it's a great question I think I'd like to do a talk about that because it's almost like you can tell that sometimes I can't even say positive affirmations that aren't true positive positive affirmations not real not honest positive because you can only think positive things sometimes the best thing you can do is say I am so freaking angry right now that's what I need to write on them that's the affirmation I need for me personally because I've been such oh someone said this to me on the weekend that her greatest issue was pathological positivity I mean for me as a people pleaser the best thing I can do is write on my fridge I am so freaking angry and I'm finished with playing with people's nonsense that is an affirmation I needed to hear over and over and over and over again so I would finally be honest with myself so this whole thing I am happy I am love I am light I am peaceful no you're not because something bad just happened and you're upset about it you're not happy you're angry why are you telling yourself you're happy but at the same time in Kundalini yoga for example that I teach we chant sat nam I matter the truth within me matters this is one of the biggest things that drew me to Kundalini yoga because we would sit in meditation and we would inhale sat exhale nam sat truth nam that it's my name it's who I am it's exactly what we're talking about here the truth is my path whatever my truth is is what I'm supposed to be doing here so when I discovered Kundalini yoga as a pathologically positive people pleaser I needed something that I was going to repeat sat nam sat nam sat nam over and over and over and over again I don't consider that a positive affirmation I considered I consider it truth when your truth is pointing to a marriage ending it's easy to not move on when the next step is unclear and you hope the dynamic changes totally totally understand like and that's that's what I mean like we don't have to you know we don't have to bring axes down on places in our life we just we just back up a little it's just you know I mean like we don't have to and again this sort of this is the last thing I'll mention that it's like when we really look at the foundation of why we think we're here are we here just to make another person happy are we here to make another person comfortable are we make here to make ourselves comfortable this comfort things an interesting question or am I here for some kind of adventure and I don't mean some weird like bungee cord jumping I mean am I here to discover something am I here to discover what is this DNA sequence about what is this version about and then suddenly we just look at the world and we look at the relationships and we just we just always ask ourselves is this part of my journey doesn't have to be mean or anything and the journey is always unknown if we're actually on the journey so thank you so much for being here I hope you have a wonderful day
