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Bending Towards Brooklyn: Life as Yoga

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Satya: Truth as Resistance

“The truth will set you free.” John 8:32

As children we are told not to lie. Telling the truth appears in many of the world’s traditions as a principle to live by. And yet, prevarication is ubiquitous; as one of our most habitually ingrained tendencies, we often don’t even realize the extent to which we continually lie. This leads to three questions: 1. Why do we lie so easily? 2. Why should we care about not lying? 3. How do we stop doing it?

Yogic wisdom suggests that truthfulness is more than just an aphorism to live by. This is especially true in our current social landscape of alternative facts, post-truth, and general mistrust. The yogic view on truth reminds us that honesty isn’t just about facts—veracity is indeed not only an act of courage, but also one of resistance.

 

We are hardwired to lie

Studies have suggested that our innate tendency to lie is often linked to the reactive brain, the part of our thought process that causes the fight/flight/freeze reaction when we encounter danger. Lying isn’t restricted to Homo sapiens; many of our animal friends are avid at deception: chameleons and octopi are expert liars, almost seamlessly blending into their surroundings in response to danger. And that’s really the key: lying is our camouflage. Yet, whereas animals resort to camouflage as a means of protecting their lives, lying for most of us has become habitual and is not at all linked with our physical wellbeing. A study in the Journal of Basic and Applied Psychology found that 60 percent of people lied at least once in a ten-minute conversation with a stranger, and a separate Cambridge study found that people are more likely to engage in dishonest behavior when they feel rejected. Additionally, a study titled “Lying in Everyday Life” found that more than 70 percent of liars would lie again.

[pullquote]“Sooner or later we become aware of the toxicity of dishonesty, and we become committed to truth on a greater scale. In this way, honesty becomes an act of resistance.”[/pullquote]This type of lying is wholly different from that of our animal counterparts; we are clearly not lying out of self-preservation—at least not physical preservation. Instead, as psychologist Robert Feldman says, “We find that as soon as people feel their self-esteem is threatened, they immediately begin to lie at higher levels.” Thus, the lying that we typically engage in is aimed at sheltering our egos in a habitual way, and, when normalized and shifted to the greater social level, has the tendency of becoming quite dangerous.

 

Why the truth matters

While there is a stark difference between telling a small, personal lie about who ate the last piece of chocolate cake and a prominent political figure spouting purposely inaccurate data at a crowd of supporters, both the impetus and the result remain fundamentally the same. Lying becomes a form of protecting our interests at the expense of creating an erroneous reality for someone else. Continental philosopher Martin Heidegger called this “facticity.” Through lies, we (consciously or unconsciously) create a new facticity for everyone else and they base their follow-up actions and reactions on this. When we lie, we are essentially creating a new, fictional world for those who the lie affects. When we lie in our personal lives, we affect our immediate circle—our partners, friends, or family—but the stakes are exponentially increased when lying becomes the fabric of our socio-political system and millions of people’s perception of reality becomes skewed. As a result, millions of people are effectively living different facticities, creating a situation where communication becomes a monumental barrier simply because we are operating from radically different understanding of what’s actually true.

This isn’t at all to diminish the impact of lying in our intimate relationships. The yogic wisdom reminds us that part of the practice of yoga is learning to fully be with what is. When we distort reality for our partners, we create a chasm between us. In that space of separation is where we find dukkah, un-ease, or suffering. This is common sense: when we lie to each other we effectively alienate one another and the level of trust and intimacy possible in our relationships suffers. In the end, whether lying on a personal or social level, we are deepening the gorge between us, and thereby we are (both individually as well as collectively) suffering more as a result.

Truthfulness, or Satya in the Sanskrit, is perhaps now more than ever a revolutionary act of courage. Satya is also the second yama in the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga—it’s right at the top of the list (right after ahimsa, or non-violence): is just that important. To be truthful requires more than correct transmission of facts; authentic honesty is really about inquiring and understanding the reasons we might feel threatened in the first place, and exploring our underlying proclivity to lie. The yogic call to action starts, as always, primarily with ourselves: it requires us to sit with, name, and acknowledge the uncomfortable elements of our vulnerability that make it so easy for us to fabricate alternative realities. When we take the time to home in on the truth of why we feel threatened enough to paint reality a different color than what it actually is, we might find the courage to speak our truth, simply by taking time to be with what’s here right now. Somehow when we acknowledge what is in front of us, it stops being so scary, so foreign. As we practice investigating and expressing our own truth, we become more aware of our tendency to prevaricate and when and why we do it. Our human penchants are primarily based on repeated action and habit. The more we do something, the easier it is to do until we start doing otherwise and build the opposite inclination. Imagine, for a moment, how much more intimacy we can experience in our relationships if we create a commitment to truth, which, like most commitments worth keeping, it isn’t an easy undertaking. Truth, it turns out, isn’t for the cowardly.

 

The results of our commitment to satya

As we deepen our commitment to honesty with ourselves and with members of our immediate community, our capacity to be with truth expands to our outer personas. We then start to realize the necessity for a world filled with honest communication, and recognize the importance of the accuracy of facts on a larger scale. It is then that we might take the time to do those little-but-now-imperative things, like fact-check an article before we post it to social media or become educated on the veracity of media sources we read. As a result of our exploration into truth, we fortify what Carl Sagan so aptly called our “Baloney Detection Kit” , and we start to become watchdogs—not only of our own consciousness and our ego’s fragility when it is tempted to tell those “little white lies,” but also of institutional dishonesties. Sooner or later we become aware of the toxicity of dishonesty, and we become committed to truth on a greater scale. In this way, honesty becomes an act of resistance, both on a personal level against the fragile ego that wishes to coddle itself at the expense of others, and against greater movements that thrive off the oppression and deliberate spinning of truth for its own gains.

The teachings of yoga remind us that truth, like lying, is a habit. Yet truth, unlike lying, requires the very courageous commitment to the exploration of our easily triggered egos and a curiosity to explore what lies in the depths of our vulnerably. In other words, a commitment to truth calls us to transcend our habitual, reptilian, combative brain and instead operate from a place of consciousness, both personally and socially. It’s in this space that true presence arises, and we become free.

 

LIFE AS YOGA: Yoga and Responding to the New Reality

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Grief, Division, and the Necessity of Waking Up

In the aftermath of what for many of us has been a devastating month after the Presidential election, it’s hard to know where to begin. As I connect with my peers and my community, one thing is clear: everyone is in a different place in their process of coming to terms with the election results. Some people are in a space of subdued resignation;, others rage with fierceness, and still others are overwhelmed by anxiety. When I look around, I recognize much of what I see as grief: the shock, the bargaining, the depression, the anger and blaming, and ultimately, the acceptance.

Grief and its process are real. The shock, disembodiment, and isolation that many people are experiencing are also very real—and they come from the place where, according to the ancient wisdom, all suffering stems from: ignorance and misperception. In this particular case, those of us who are now grieving (myself included) were ignorant to the degree of division, fear, and discrimination that is still rampant in the consciousness of the country, communities, and even the families we love. We are shocked because we were just hit with a heavy realization: things aren’t as we thought they were. And then we woke up.

[pullquote]Full disclosure: as an immigrant woman of color; I have been deeply invested in, affected by, and shaken by the results of the election. I too have found myself in deep emotion, struggling to keep my composure; I have felt utterly lost, and have run the gamut from fury to sadness and back, without knowing how to respond. I have feared for my family and the future of my child. This election was personal for me, as it was for many of us.[/pullquote]It’s especially when our personal fears are triggered and we find ourselves in the throes of lost-ness that our practice can be a source of guidance, like breadcrumbs left on the trail to lead us home. This is the heart of our practice, and this is when yoga is most essential: when it becomes fully embodied—when it teaches us how to respond in times of deep wounding.

In order to return home, we need to take stock of where we are now. The heated election results (as well as the campaign leading up to it) prompted a sort of national reactivity. The divisive rhetoric that started well before the election results came in has succeeded in awakening within us, collectively, a very mythological, caricature-like “us” vs. “them” mentality; and hence, we find ourselves in that exact reality. Through the process of othering (which both parties took part in), we have brought to the forefront one of our most damaging human tendencies and easiest default modes. By creating such stark oppositions—not just about our political attitudes and philosophies on financial policy or immigration, but about who we are as human beings—we have drawn a thick line in the sand and have chosen to embody the epitome of duality. The problem is that while this situation is real, and its consequences are certainly very palpable, it isn’t actually true. The divisions are based primarily on falsehoods and misperceptions.

Xenophobia, for example, is rooted on the false premise that a person originating from outside of one’s own country is by default a threat. On the other side of the coin, the assumption that a person with xenophobic attitudes is a wholeheartedly rotten human being, is also dangerous. For stark, extreme divisions like this to take hold (as they have) requires that we throw the baby out with the bathwater (as we have); it requires that we willingly blind ourselves to the nuances of situations that always, necessarily, demonstrate the paradoxical aspects of any argument, no matter how corrupt. In other words, even in the most “evil” of places, there is good—you just have to know where to look; you just have to ask the right questions.

The result of adhering to a false division is that when we live in a state of opposition to the truth, we suffer. The current state of division has our (collective and individual) nervous system in an absolute fritz, firing like a pinball machine. When the nervous system is on alarm, we can’t act; we can only react, and reactions tend to snowball and deplete us. In talking to people, one phrase I hear often is, “I’m so tired.” Yes—we are depleted. In such a state of over-activation, we are unable to drop into the place within ourselves that can actually access truth, the place of inner knowledge known in our tradition as Vijnamaya kosha, or our wisdom body. This is the element within us that aids in our process of discernment. In order to access the Vijnamaya kosha, in order to tap into the inherent wisdom that allows us to respond with grace rather than reactivity, we must work through the sheaths of the body, and if the body is playing the fear game, the door to wisdom just won’t open; we get stuck in the cycle of duality—the dangerous game of fear mongering.

So what now? According to the Yogic Sutras, before anything at all, we need to learn to check ourselves: in what ways are we contributing to division? Instead of spending our energy proliferating divisive rhetoric and attitudes (a task much easier said than done), the sage advice is to rise above it. Does this mean that we ignore injustice and hide in a cave? No. Does it mean that we discard our responsibility to speak truth to power? Absolutely not. It means that we learn to do the work that’s necessary to come to understand others’ intentions, even if we disagree wholeheartedly with their conclusions. When we can understand the root of another’s experience, we gain insight into their paradigm and worldview. From here, it usually becomes clear what instincts drive their decisions (self-preservation, perhaps—it’s a powerful one). Then, we can pinpoint the root of emotions (like misplaced fear), and work to ameliorate these fears with reason (i.e. data), kindness, and education—tools much more powerful than a match of heated vitriol, which simply acts like kerosene on fire and keeps the wounds alive. In the process, we work our muscles of compassion.

Yet, the work is also within ourselves: we must check in with our own assumptions and fears. We must work to educate ourselves and others to enlighten, and to align with truth. This is perhaps what K. Pattabhi Jois meant when he said, “Practice, practice, practice” because it will take plenty of practice to accomplish such a task—to find the truth within ourselves, the rootedness into our wisdom, the compassion that allows us to recognize misconception, and the strength to enlighten it with the glow of fiercest gentleness we can muster.

The silver lining is that we now know what lies ahead. Prior to the election, we were asleep. No wound can heal if we don’t know it exists. Today, the wound and the work ahead, while deep and formidable, are clear. Now we have no excuse—we have woken up, and it’s time to practice.

Life as Yoga Series Part 2: The First Sutra and Modern Separation

By Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga) Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Upon opening the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the very first statement we read is: Now the teachings of yoga. Like many sutras, there is more than meets the eye here. A sutra is a succinct statement or aphorism that was deliberately created to be short so that it may be easily memorized and so that its meaning might be dissected through study, reflection, and chanting. Much like a bullet point in a lecture, the sutra itself is the tip of the iceberg of a larger point being made. Sutras are a lot like poetry; there is a lot packed into a limited space. As a result, every word is intentional–every word matters. The brevity of each sutra is purposefully done to facilitate unpacking this meaning.

When the Yoga Sutras were first written down (prior to being written down they were part of a rich oral tradition), many other philosophical texts already existed. As a means to clearly differentiate the subject of a particular text, it was common for treatises like the Yoga Sutras to open with a definitive statement that addressed the topic at hand. In this case, we are dealing with the subject of yoga.

Yoga, as I mentioned in the opening article of this series, is a word that etymologically most resembles our English word for to “yoke.” As such, the subject of what we are about to delve into is the yoking/joining/uniting. This begs the question: What then is apart/disjointed/separate?

This is where the philosophy becomes relevant and tangible. The sensation of precariousness in modern life is clearly evident. Both national and international news are filled with stories of pain, anger, and anguish. In my own social circles I’ve heard many voice fear and anxiety about recent events that seem to highlight the darker aspects of the human condition. Even the very basis of our political structure––a two-party system––is demonstrative of precisely what the sutras are referring to here: separation. Said simply, we all tend to abide in a space of separateness, and this is true on many levels. The degree of separation we experience within ourselves is then reflected by our actions and behavior. As a result, the state of separation on a large scale is most obvious in the current social upheaval––the internal reflects externally, or as the aphorism goes: As within, so without. This means, necessarily, that the greater social suffering we are experiencing is only possible as a result of smaller, more personal suffering or separation. We are, after all, a part of a greater canopy, a stitch on a larger quilt of humanity, and our actions as well as our internal states have an effect on the whole quilt. There is a deep and relevant truth here and we can see it clearly when we take a look at any of the perpetrators of recent tragedies--their actions, which affected many, many people, were all based on one fundamental and ultimately flawed assumption: separation. We cannot hate or attack that which is united, that which is ourselves; we can only harm that which we believe is different from us, that which we believe is separate. The recent tragedies we’re seeing are a result of the separation mindset. 

The Yoga Sutras, then, are a text about the space within our consciousness which we are all very familiar with, and how to yoke, unite, and bring it back together. Or, more accurately, how to recognize the falsehood of separation. As such, the wisdom and techniques presented by the yogic wisdom are not a religious or prescriptive code to follow blindly, but rather a guide into ourselves, our experience, and our consciousness. In using them, we aim to create real, palpable change, and live more cohesive lives, so that our experience of the world is more united, and less separate. As a result, we create bonds instead of  weapons; we heal, instead of harm.

The Sutras, as a manual of self-knowledge made of an organized system of techniques, gives us the first clue into creating that unity in the most simple of places––the first word of the first sutra, “now.” The first place where separation seeps in is in the here and now; our first line of disconnection is in the present. We live in a world of texting-while-doing just about anything. We reach for our smartphones the second we feel bored. We are rarely whole-mindedly, whole-bodily, wholeheartedly here for ourselves or for each other.

The first homework of the Yoga Sutras in the very opening line is simple: practice presence now. This begins by noticing our degree of presence at any given moment. Notice the times you are tempted to reach for a phone when you are engaging in another activity. Notice the times when you are tempted to disconnect from a conversation mentally. If we can commit to deepening our presence even slightly, we are committing to taking the first step into the realization of a deeper existential truth we will continue to explore––the truth of our underlying unity.