Satya

Satya is Sanskrit for "truthfulness". And it's another guiding principle of Yoga. I know I've already written that "ahimsa" or "do no harm" is THE guiding principle of Yoga. Satya really is part of "do no harm", but just as theTen Commandments are all followed if you follow the golden rule (as far as I know - please correct me if I'm wrong), so, too with Yoga, all the precepts are contained within ahimsa. But, it seems we humans need things pretty clearly spelled out in order for us to get it halfway close to right.

When we were studying satya, Leonard, my Yoga teacher, gave my class an assignment. We were to pick one day, any day in the upcoming week and be honest - totally, completely honest for a full 24 hours (minus sleep-time, which frankly, turned out to be a good thing). Being the gung-ho student I am, and a person who sees herself as fundamentally honest, I decided that this would be easy (certainly easier than practicing ahimsa for a full day, right?) and I would do my 24 hours starting the very next morning.

An aside here for definitions: complete honesty means being honest to yourself and others. It means not telling those convenient little social white lies ("Oh, I'd love to but I'll be washing my hair that night" I had a high school friend who used this any time she didn't think the planned activity was interesting enough.)

The next morning, I awoke ready to do my homework. I had a doctor's appointment the next week and for a variety of reasons, I wanted to cancel it (notice the word "wanted"). As I'd determined that it would not be practicing ahimsa to cancel too close to the appointment (because I'd be doing the doctor harm as then he may not be able to fill the time slot), I'd decided, while still drinking my morning coffee, to leave a message on my doctor's answering machine that morning. "Hi, " I said, "This is Madelyn. I have an appointment next Tuesday at 11:00 and I'm afraid I won't be able to make it. I'll call back to reschedule." First of all, in the spirit of satya, I no longer remember what day and time the actual appointment was. I wrote the previous sentence, which is in essence true, as an example. Secondly, when I hung up and turned to my husband, quite proud of myself for taking care of this little detail, Hank looked at me disapprovingly, slowly shaking his head. "What?" I asked (yes, this is a direct quote). "That was a lie," said he. "You said you couldn't make it to the appointment. The truth is you don't want to make it to the appointment." "Crap," I replied (to the best of my recollection). I was about five minutes in to my 24 hours of truthfulness, and practically the very first thing I said was a lie. Hank counseled that I just start anew which was what I did.

I realized pretty quickly that the way to stay honest was to neither speak nor think. As neither of those options was fitting in to my day, I felt pretty lucky to make it through the next few hours honestly. Then, a friend called. She wanted me to attend a meeting that afternoon. I'd known of the meeting, but had never planned on going. Yet, I waffled - I didn't come right out and say, "Hey, I have no intention of going to the meeting - it'll screw up my whole afternoon, I really don't care about it, and the last time I went it was a total waste of my time." Nope, I waffled, I listened to all her reasons on why I should go and advance her agenda. Interestingly, as she spoke, I heard her but also had a rather lenghty debate going on inside my head. For a while she and I almost had me convinced that I should go, but then there was a small part of my brain that still whined, "I don't want to go." And a stern part of my brain asked, "Are you acting selfishly here?" Finally (phew!) and fortunately before the conversation ended I realized I wasn't going to the meeting, that I wasn't being selfish, that just as she didn't want to advance her agenda because it really had nothing to do with her, neither did I want to advance it as it had nothing to do with me. Before our conversation ended, I was able to say to her, quite honestly, "No, I'm not going to the meeting, and I think if anyone is concerned about this issue, they should be the ones speaking to it." Ahh, it felt great. I realized an important thing about the truth (okay, I'll admit it - it may be an obvious truth, but I got the lesson clearly that day): sometimes it takes a while to figure out what the truth of a situation is and you can't speak the truth until you know the truth.

After that, it got easier. We usually don't speak (or think) the truth out of fear. Fear of not being liked/loved/respected, etc., fear of getting in trouble, or fear of how things may change if the truth is out there.

But the truth is freeing. Even the little inconsequential truths now seem to me to build a strong structure for my life. When I'm speaking the truth, I can see it more easily. And visa versa.

I did that homework assignment about four months ago and for a long time afterwards, I felt like I was easily being truthful. My biggest fear was that without a certain amount of embellishment, my stories would be flat. But I found that if I spoke with passion, that was enough. Now, I feel I need a bit of a tune-up. My nose isn't about to grow long from my lies, but I've noticed I'm not paying the attention I was to details when I was first practicing satya.

BTW, the next time I changed a doctor's appointment, I called and simply said, "I'd like to switch my appointment but I'll keep this time if my changing it will cause a problem for the doctor." In response, the receptionist said, "Madelyn, you're giving us plenty of time to fill the slot. Don't worry about it, We have a cancellation policy so people can change their appointments." Oh.