How Honest Are You With Yourself and Others?
This is the second of ten posts teaching the first two limbs of yoga— the yamas and the niyamas— in a manner that relates to contemporary living with real-world anxieties. A key component to a life of integrity is framing it with the yamas and the niyamas as you come to know how you relate with others and love yourself. I will teach these guidelines one at a time with the hopes you, the reader, take the time and care to implement these principles into your daily life. Notice your thoughts, words, and actions and if they are in alignment with the teachings I give.
The first guideline for relating to the world and loving yourself is non-harming (ahimsa), which extends to your thoughts, words, and actions. The second guideline we will explore is truthfulness (satya), which I like to plainly call “getting real with yourself.”
Truthfulness and sincerity is the practice of being truthful and sincere with your thoughts, words, and actions. More than that, it’s about getting real with who you are and what you want. Deborah Adele teaches, “Real comes from the center of our unique essence and speaks to the moment from that center. Real has a boldness to it, an essence, a spontaneity. Real asks us to live from a place where there is nothing to defend and nothing to manage” (The Yamas and Niyamas p. 45).
Do you find yourself defending your choices to yourself as if trying to convince a deeper part of yourself that your choice is correct? Or do you work at managing a lifestyle that becomes exhausting?
Truthfulness teaches that we strip away what we do not need when we get real. For example, perhaps we don’t need all of the services we’ve hired to keep up a quality of life that may not even be an honest reflection of our real selves.
An examination of truthfulness begins with you. How consistent are your thoughts, words, and actions with one another? Do you say one thing to yourself but do something different? For example, do you say you will track your spending habits for the next week and only buy essentials and gasoline for the car? But then do you find yourself buying a five-dollar coffee drink every morning as you run errands? Can you get real with your inconsistency?
Are you truthful with your expectations of what you can accomplish? If you fold in non-harming, are you kind to yourself when you fall short? Nicholai Bachman advises, “When [truthfulness] is practiced with nonviolence, the remaining yamas and niyamas become much easier” (The Yoga Sutras Workbook, p. 107).
Are you truthful and sincere to your families and community? Truthfulness requires a high degree of responsibility and follow-through, but it opens you to a lifestyle free from harming yourself energetically. It sets up clear intentions.
Practicing truthfulness affects our relationships directly. Are we in groups that support our real selves? Do we allow people to be real, judge, micromanage, or control others to suit our preferences? Every group has unspoken rules for what is acceptable and what creates its culture. Be truthful about whether the people you surround yourself with elevate your energy or bring you down. If they drag you down, it is probably a toxic relationship.
Parker Palmer writes in Let Your Life Speak: “‘Seasons’ is a wise metaphor for the movement of life, I think...The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycle of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages us to embrace it all—and to find in all of it the opportunities for growth” (96). We go through changes in life that move from difficult to barren, vital and energetic, to sustained and content. Find what this season is for you and put forth your best, honest effort to support yourself this way while also practicing non-harming. What can you do that is healthful and nurturing while also nurturing your true desire?