Satya: On Authenticity

What is the truth? When I was in graduate school, longer ago than I want to admit, the social sciences were grappling with postmodernism. According to postmodernism, there really is no truth – truth is in the eye of the beholder and based on conditioning. There was some tension between this and a belief in the scientific method – in universal principles that hold true regardless of how people perceive the world. The world isn’t flat because you think so, for example. 

It seems like in yoga, there is also a belief that truth does exist. Yoga and science again in accord. I’m saying this flippantly – I’ve heard many people now tell me how physics is finally catching up to what yoga knows, but my partner is a physicist and I’m pretty sure he has some issues with that idea. I frankly don’t have the knowledge of physics or yoga to take that on. 

In any case, truth is clearly slippery. Patanjali writes (translated): To one established in truthfulness, actions and their results become subservient. 

To me, this speaks, as so much of yoga does to intention.  Let’s be honest (see what I did there?) we know when we are intentionally lying, misleading, gaming the system. And there is a little voice inside of us that peeps up, scratches at our soul a little when we make life decisions that are out of alignment with our personal truth, which I might also refer to as our authenticity.

We might be really really good at ignoring it. Or we might mistake it for an inability to sit with necessary discomfort sometimes. And that’s one great thing about yoga – it’s a tool to help us hear it again, and to distinguish that inner voice from the cacophony of other things going on inside.

Once again – I haven’t figured this out yet, of course. New Year’s is approaching though. That arbitrary time of year when we make resolutions aimed at bettering ourselves – whatever that means to you. 

I think it was last year that I made a new year’s resolution to live my life authentically. But in that search for authenticity, I tried out living in 4 states, traveled to two countries and changed jobs twice, careers once. I. Am. Exhausted. (by myself). Enter yoga teacher training. Let’s start working on the internal. I’ve been changing external conditions hoping to hear the internal voice instead of sitting still long enough to make friends with it again.

According to Ekhart yoga, the word ‘sat’ translates as true essence or true nature and ‘ya’ is to do it. Sat, they explain, goes beyond truth, deeper – it goes to the unchanged and pure core of a being. We are supposed to be doing who we really are. Take that further – if who we really are is a spark of the divine, a part of a giant unified whole – well then taking that into account as we think, do, say, act in the world requires us to act with honest, true, authentic intention.

I have always been fascinated by linguistics. At our core, who we really are, is called “atman.I studied German for a while and the word for breath is ‘der Atem.’ So similar that I assume this couldn’t be a coincidence. And it’s not, they do go back to the same proto indo european word from long ago.

At our core, our breath sustains us. It is pure. And how we engage with it changes our presentation of self. Our breath tells us an awful lot about what we are experiencing. I often stop breathing when I sleep – or so I’m told. I haven’t noticed, personally. It’s scary, I’m told. I don’t know, though, if I’m scared when I’m asleep. But I do tend to hold my breath when anxious, gripped by fear, trying too hard. When the way through it is always to breathe. 

I think about what we are most afraid of – the cessation of breath, the death of our bodies. It’s a tough fear to let go of and this fear is one that I think can truly interfere with who we are, with acting from a place of authenticity. What if this life is all there is? But I leave with this thought, a quote I stole from Nelson Mandela:

“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.”