Perhaps you know this: you say “everything is fine” when it is not. You talk yourself into a situation that has long stopped doing you good. Or you tell one small untruth, and suddenly you need two more to support it. Each of these small insincerities, outward as well as inward, creates pressure, and many small pressures add up to what we call stress.
For exactly this, yoga knows a beautiful principle: Satya.
What Satya means
Satya is one of the core principles of yoga. It means truth and can also be translated as essence. It refers to being truthful in thought, speech and action. Yogic philosophy says: if you wanted to live only one single virtue in your life, this one would lead you to all the others.
We need truthfulness because untruthfulness causes many interdependent fluctuations of the mind. One lie draws further lies and disturbing feelings after it; it creates mental and emotional pressure. And dishonesty with yourself works the same way: all suppressed feelings, thoughts and beliefs let you experience yourself in a state of dis-ease, in the absence of ease.
Honest with yourself: the loving look inward
Many traditions know dedicated times for going inward, and in yoga, turning inward is part of many practices. This is not only about the body, but also about emotional clearing: forgiving yourself and others, transforming false perceptions and negative beliefs, looking honestly at your mistakes and learning from them.
In her book “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die”, Karol K. Truman describes that what is a stressor to one person does not have to be one to another. What someone perceives as stressful depends strongly on early conditioning that contributed to their feelings and beliefs. Her advice: while striving to overcome a particular stress, focus on what happens inside you as you go through it, determine what you feel each time, and change that feeling.
Importantly, you are not meant to deny negative feelings and thoughts; that would only increase your inner conflict. Instead, you lovingly shine a light on your inner conflict (usually what you think and what you feel are misaligned), bring it forward, name it and release it. Look at what is there with total forgiveness and unconditional love towards yourself and others, the way someone who loves you would knock gently on the door of your heart and look at you, no matter what mistakes you have made.
Feeling your truth: the body check
How do you recognise what your truth is? Your body shows you. You can easily feel whether something in your awareness complies with your inner truth or not: if it feels good in your gut, it is true for you. If your body constricts at a thought or a piece of information, it cannot be your highest truth. Experiencing truth, you can breathe freely; thinking of an untruth, a conscious breath feels restricted. My Ayurvedic doctor taught me this principle years ago, and many other teachers teach it too.
This connects to the insight that every person has their own individual essence and their own truth. Union consciousness is like a garden: the garden is one whole, but each flower, plant and tree contributes to the whole with its own essence. With this understanding you can accept that everyone has their own truth, and know at the same time that the differences within the whole enrich the whole.
Truthfulness in a loud world
Especially today, when weighing all the opinions, news and information, one question matters: what is your truth? Does it feel right in your gut, does it resonate in your heart? Does it contribute to peace, does it strengthen compassion?
My mentor Malcolm S. Southwood writes in his book “Toth & The Keys to Atlantis” (which I highly recommend): “Follow your heart through every lifetime. To go against what you know to be right or true is to injure your soul. Never go against your own integrity. The only truth worth knowing is about yourself, and the only truth you can change is your own.”
According to these teachings, you do not have to persuade others of your truth. People caught in negativity will probably not be able to hear it anyway. Simply be your truth, stay distant from gossip and from what you know to be untrue, and use your positive imagination to create something new: a world that is loving and peaceful. You can read how truthfulness also changes the way you speak in my article on clear and loving communication.
When honesty with yourself feels hard
Perhaps while reading you notice that there are certain feelings or truths you would rather not look at. That is not a weakness, but usually a sign that an old imprint makes honest looking feel too dangerous. This is exactly what I work on in my sessions, so that the look inward can become safe and loving.
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