| Listening Truthfully to Understand The importance of satya & the illusion of separation are two key yoga teachings that are very relevant right now. In recent years it seems increasingly there’s a very strong illusion of separation created by lack of quietly and truthfully paying attention. Instead of paying attention and seeking truth we are witnessing a lot of people shouting and very few people listening. We are witnessing people entrenched in their views, convinced they are right and others are wrong, desperate to prove to others their own rightness, convinced that the 'other' wants to cause harm to community, fellow humans and the planet. This is all experienced as noisy conflict and division - yet we know that yoga teaches us that separation is an illusion. So how can we see through this illusion and find our interconnectedness? How can we heal and work together? What does our yoga teach us? Yoga teaches us that we are not our ego, teaches us discernment so that we are able to step outside the 'I-ness" the ego. Once we are aware of this we can strengthen our resolve to listen to learn and not to protect the ego by being 'right'. Next we can look at 'Satya' - truthfulness, are we being honest with our beliefs about others? Satya is a yama and therefore often presented as restraint: about slowing down, filtering, carefully considering, not jumping to our own stories. How about we ask if WE TRUTHFULLY KNOW that our perceptions of those we disagree with are really true? How about we ask if WE TRUTHFULLY KNOW whether there really are so many people who actively want to cause harm to others? How about we slow down, have open eyes, ears, hearts and minds Pay attention to what we truthfully see and hear Pay attention to our bias, assumptions and our motives Pay attention to seeking to learn and understand To especially seek to understand those who may hold views and have experiences different from our own When we combine this with the knowledge that we are all interdependent, inseparable from the nature we are part of, we can see that perhaps people who hold views different from our own also want happy, healthy, fair communities and a planet that is healthy and can sustain all life. If we truthfully listen from a place of love, a place of knowing that separation is an illusion and that human motivations are based on fear or love we can perhaps start to realise that perhaps those with different views have different information? Or different experiences? Or different understandings? If we listen from a place of understanding that we all want a happier, healthier world and we only differ in how we think we can best achieve that, then we can start to work together to heal, to build a more compassionate future. How do we do this? Yoga teaches us to pay attention to it all, to pause, be quiet, to watch our own expectations, assumptions, bias and to come from a place of love Be open to what we don’t expect. |
