Visiting the Yamas: Satya

Every major faith or dogma has a set of rules to follow. Growing up in Judeo-Christian-ville, I was brought up with the Ten Commandments and a vague awareness of the some 613 rules in the old testiment that folks more devout than my youthful self followed.  In yoga-land, we have yamas and niyamas and much more philip.  But fundamentally, if you can put all the crap people of done in the name of religion aside for a bit, the yamas and the commandments are just good ideas that generally support community. Don’t hurt people, don’t lie — society runs better when these rules are followed.

In the interest of continuing education and idea sharing, I’m hoping to write regularly on the yamas and niyamas.  It may go without saying that my thoughts on philosophical and moral issues are subject to change as I learn, study, expand.  So chime in when it moves you.

For now, I’ll focus on Satya (सत्य).  Translated as “truthfulness, word and thought in conformity with the facts, honesty,” Satya first reminds me of the Sat Nam mantra I learned during my training with Daniel Orlansky.  He translates this mantra as many Kundalini teachers do:

Truth is my identity
(or)
My identity is truth.

Erectile dysfunction, a failure buy generic cialis ronaldgreenwaldmd.com of achieving or gaining firm erections. These slings are popularly known for cialis price their reliability. This is mainly attributed to the lower limb joints: knees, ankles or feet, or even loss of bladder or bowel control from cancer pressing on ronaldgreenwaldmd.com cialis stores the spinal cord. The manufacturers of Kamagra cheap viagra http://ronaldgreenwaldmd.com/the-practice/ do not follow the precaution or rules and regulations by the FDA. Self identifying with truth is a powerful way of allowing your personal truths to be ok.  We all contain in ourselves disparate truths.  Reconciling those spaces between body, mind, spirit, often causes us great confusion, angst, what psychologists call cognitive dissonance.  When you allow your experience to be what it is, often running against years of social training to the contrary, you accept the wholeness, the honest truth of yourself in those moments.  Even within the dissonance and discomfort of disparate truths there is a truth in the experience of it.

This line of thinking, accepting the truth of feelings, thoughts, etc. as truthful experiences in the moment can be a bit tricky however.  I’m thinking of a moment in a past relationship when I had the feeling a partner was cheating on me.  My mind knew he wouldn’t do that, but I had the emotional feelings of having been replaced in aspects of our relationship.  It was an incredibly difficult feeling to explain or reconcile.  The truth was, I was having an experience, but my initial interpretation of that emotional information wasn’t true, even though I was rather attached to it at the time.

“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” – Mahatma Gandhi

In those moments, I lived my confusion.  But that’s not really what Gandhi was articulating, is it?  We know Gandhi as the keeper of the peaceful path in a battle of right and wrong.   He was talking about living an idea.

“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Here, we’re talking about ideas.  Truth is an idea.  It’s helpful to remember that cognitive dissonance, emotional or physical sensation are simply events pegged in time.  And these quotes come from people — without context and outside our personal situations.  But moment to moment, from living your personal experiences, your expression of truth, we know that there are truths that transcend single moments.  We know that emotions and facts are not always in alignment.  Still, we aim to find the truth that puts it all in agreement.