Satya – Truth

Satya is one of the Yamas in Yoga Philosophy. The Yamas simply mean self-restraints in one’s actions, words and thoughts. Satya intrigues me for a lot of reasons. Simply Satya means truth, but truth is not simple. When we look at what truth means to us it doesn’t have the same meaning to another.

I like to compare this to a group of people observing the same crime. When police investigate the crime, they interview as many bystanders as they can. The interesting thing about these interviews is that the bystanders often all have a different variation of the situation. They all have their own variation of the “truth”. The part of this situation that I think is even more interesting is that each person truly believes their own variation of that happened. This is their “truth” no matter how much it deviates from what actually happens. Their brain has focused on specific details that are now part of their own reality.

Now the story above might be a simplified explanation of the truth, it’s how I try to think of things when I come in to conflict or when I struggle to understand another’s actions. When we take a moment to step back and look at someone else’s options or actions, we can’t completely understand what their truth is. Meaning, we can’t fully understand what they believe to be true. When we look at other people’s actions and question why they do things, sometimes it’s more important to question…. What is their truth? What do they fully believe to make them take the actions that they do.

We don’t know what is in other people’s mind. Quite often we don’t even fully know our own minds. Why do we think the way that we do. What is deep down in our own psyche that makes us believe certain things to be true. Whether you believe that someone has hurt you, or whether you think that someone should do something that they didn’t, we can’t completely know what is in their mind. We often think that things are so clear, but to others they might think that other things are even more clear.

I think the lesson here is that with Satya we should focus on sharing our own truth. However, we need to also understand that others may not ever completely understand our truth, but they also do not need to. Your truth is for you to hold and not for other people to judge or question. Which brings me to my next point, to understand that other’s have their own truths that we also may never understand. It is not our job to question their truth, nor may we ever really understand what their truth is.