Asteya: Living In Simple Abundance

Let's explore the yogic yama: ASTEYA. Asteya means "non-stealing". Imagine only taking what we need for our journey? Carrying and consuming only what is necessary. Think of the ripple effects of simplicity, ease, and clarity. Let's explore the possibilities. Part 2 of The Yogic Path Series

Transcript

So today we are continuing our yogic path and you don't have to have watched the first one to watch this to listen to this one but we're looking at the yamas and the niyamas and in yoga they have the eight limbs of yoga which Patanjali put together many many many centuries or thousands of years ago to try to understand the different aspects of a yogic path and by yogic path we don't mean asana we don't mean the path of someone just doing postures we mean the yogic path of a soul of what it means to really feel alive to really feel whole to really live from a soul's place and feel like we have a real mission in life in a positive way that we wake up in the morning and and it makes sense this our circumstances make sense and what we have at our fingertips make sense and our passions have a place to manifest this is a yogic life that we're whole David Bohm used to call it being an individual he used to also talk about the fact that most people were individuals he really loved to play with language because he believed that language really formed our thoughts and he said so you have to decide do you want to be a dividual one who is divided or an individual one who is undivided and whole so the yogic path is the choice to be an individual I don't want to be split I don't want to have my mind in a million places I don't want to be even things like taking on the emotions of other people or taking on the thought patterns of other people it's the idea that no this soul is unique and I want to walk my path the path that I was made for the path that for whatever reason this incarnation this collection of gifts challenges courage fears everything whatever this interesting compilation is I want to experience that in its fullness and I can't do it if my soul or my personality my soul doesn't get divided but if my personality is split into five different parts and this part's trying to make you happy in this part's trying to achieve this thing that society says and this thing's succumbing to all the fears of my karmic past and this thing is having issues with all the Akashic patterns that I think I'm supposed to be playing out and my poor soul is sitting in the middle going you know we're like being drawn and quartered in life and we're just walking around going is this really what life's about oh my god I'm just like so pulled in a million directions so then of course many many many years ago all these schools of yoga came about and all it means is it's a collection of techniques and philosophies to bring us back together asana which we normally attribute to yoga is one limb of the limbs of yoga and it isn't even what we think it's not achieving a handstand and we'll talk about these things later but it's our posture it's our seat it's how we sit on the earth so there's many many many different ways to become whole and one of the limbs of yoga that he came about with or with that he created or described was something that he called the yamas and yama in Sanskrit means restraint and there's a number of reasons why we talk about restraints and these aren't like so in past teachings we've talked about the idea that there are two worlds existing at the same time there's a world of light that is clarity and truth and wisdom it's those things inside of us that we know on a good day we know what's possible in relationships we know what's possible in our relationship with nature we know what's possible in terms of human happiness and it's real it's not a utopia a utopic fantasy it's a real thing and then there's this other world the shadow world it's very strange world we've all been living in for many many generations and it's very dark and it's full of cruelty and it's based in strange things like money and the ownership of parts of earth as if you can own earth and there's all these very strange things and this shadow world I believe is passing away and so very often when we first hear about things like restraints we see it from that shadow world perspective that we were all born into that says what do you mean I can't do what I want like no I mean you're not going to restrain me it's almost like in the shadow world we are so oppressed our soul is so not allowed to live we are pulled in so many directions the last thing we want is to hear about some yogic path that says and guess what else you can't do and if you're anything like me I have a bit of a rebellious streak inside of me if you try to tell me not to do something I will kick and scream and I'll probably end up even doing things I don't want to do just for the sake of getting to do my own thing no you can't be the other boss of me you don't get to tell me I'm gonna do it so the reason that this yogic path in the light that we're talking about here is let's imagine these yamas these restraints having been written or given to us assuming we don't live in the shadow world let's imagine that we live in the world of light we live in that clear space inside of us because that's what we want to expand the more we focus on the other and I'm not saying bypassing and spiritual bypassing and all that I'm just saying when we it's almost like when someone wants attention and they want to distract you from what you're doing and so you're just perpetually being pulled to them no matter what and eventually you're just like stop and like are you ignoring them it's like no I'm just not gonna be distracted by you any longer enough take it somewhere else I've got some stuff I want to do today that's all it is to simply say you know what I'm not gonna be concerned with these weird ideas that we were all raised in the weird pool we've all been swimming in for generations I'm gonna focus on this light world that also exists it's equally real perhaps much more real in my opinion in my experience so all of a sudden why does yoga create these yamas why does it create restraints for us well there's two big reasons and today for example we're looking at the yama in Sanskrit it's a stea a stea and it means non-stealing essentially and and it means more than that but it essentially means non-stealing so there's two big reasons that we want to embrace this restraint and they're not because we're bad people or we have some character flaw that we always want more than what we want and we don't feel like we're good enough and all these things which do come out of the shadow world which do cause us to steal or to want more than we need but when we really focus on this in the light why do we want to do this why do we want to embrace a stea well the first one is the restraints act like bumpers if you want to go bowling that's how I see the restraints because when I first started bowling and I don't bowl very often and I'm not really an athlete when I say I'm not really an athlete what I mean is I'm not an athlete and so even something like bowling which isn't terribly athletic but it still requires some hand-eye coordination I always wanted to have the bumpers up in the in the gut in the gutters because it was the only chance I had of getting the ball to the end of the into the end of the lane well that's what the llamas are like they're like trust me stay out of the gutters just stay out of them I'm not saying you can't go into the gutter if you don't want to but there is so much in the shadow world that is simply a distraction and those distractions could own you for your entire life they could distract you for lifetimes and not only do they create distractions they create more problems that then distract you that then you have to address and then if we continually are distracted by these things we don't get to live our path we don't get to live this soul's path because we're perpetually being pulled off our own journey it truly is a restraint for our benefit it's not against us it's not against our personal freedom as a human it's not against us as I want what I want how come I can't have chocolate no it's not like that it's like no really let's get rid of all the things that aren't you let's purify the cauldron that's the key and we're going to talk a lot more about that but the second reason that we want to embrace something like a stea not only does it keep us on our path but it also allows us to live in harmony with our surroundings and this is a really beautiful one specifically about a stea because a stea isn't just not stealing it's also not taking more than you need or not keeping more than you need so if you imagine nature nature takes exactly what it needs from its environment only a tree only draws the water it does it needs it takes the nutrients out of the souls the soil that's needed and what happens is because everything in that ecosystem is taking exactly what it needs also giving back to the ecosystem there is symbiosis and there's harmony in the ecosystem but what if there was a plant and this is where it's difficult like say when an invasive plant is introduced to an ecology because that plant is not in balance and it starts to take more than well it actually just throws the whole thing off but if something went in and started taking more than it needed what would happen to the balance in the ecosystem like it throws the whole thing off and you know there's a there's a great movie that was done a while ago called I am but it's a really interesting movie about hoarding and he's not talking about the hoarders that they put on TV he's talking about the hoarding of wealth and he was saying he told the story about historically when humans lived in nature in in beautiful harmony and symbiosis with their surroundings they too only took what they needed and gave back what they could and they said you know if there was a tribe and they went on a hunt and they came back with the hunt or gathering the berries or whatever they did and one person took more than what they needed that would be considered a mental illness like the people would look at that person and say I wonder why they would take more than they need and then of course that person then has to protect it and make sure no one else takes it because it's his right you can feel how odd that is it's like why is that isn't that strange but of course it only seems strange in the world of light in the world of harmony in the world of balance in the world of knowing that we live in a place of abundance it's spring in Canada right now it is like the world is literally like with life with food with foliage with birds with it's just it is spring every year spring comes and the abundance of the world just goes but we don't live very connected to that we live in a very strange superficial place that's sort of again dictated by the shadow world that says no no no there's no abundance we are huge scarcity issues and of course this becomes this foundation for this weird it's like an illness that's been sort of placed inside of our minds that says there's not enough there's not enough and not only is there not enough out there you're not really enough either and this is where everything starts to go crazy and this didn't begin with us this didn't begin in May 2022 that we suddenly developed this strange I'm not enough there isn't enough in the world this has been going on for millennia but what's interesting today is it's becoming very obvious that it's not true so then we have to seriously look at this word enough and I know this sounds so simplistic but if I was to say to you do you have enough food what does that mean enough do you define it in your own mind like and I for just for each of us to think about that if I was to say do you have enough food does that mean you have enough food for today to eat do I have enough food for what what does that mean because what's really weird is we've redefined the word enough to mean excess oh I have enough for today and for the next month and for a rainy day and Allah and don't get you wrong I'm not talking about storing food for later and all that I mean this was a natural part of farming also right when you grew your own food you harvested it you canned it you kept it this is what got you through the winter I'm not talking about healthy storage of food I'm not talking about that I'm talking about this definition of the word enough do I have enough money do I have enough friends do I have enough what and this enough is so weird because somewhere in there we've redefined it that there's no such thing as enough there's not enough time there's not if I have money I can always use more if I have enough food I can always use more if I have enough clothing I can always use more well it's like well that's not enough enough means I have what I need and even there you say yeah you have what you need but it's not what you want you want like there's more to life no you don't have to like we even kind of demonize the idea of well you don't have to just live bare bones you know we don't have to all be kind of Zen with nothing in our homes besides what we absolutely we we have this whole dialogue about the evil of just enjoying what we have and that the the joy in life comes from having more but what if you could upgrade what if you could change that what if you could have more and it's a very interesting thing Thomas Merton I love Thomas Merton he was a Trappist monk many years ago and he used to talk about this he used to talk about how the consumer society this very strange which is a huge part of the shadow world there's a big difference between someone who makes chairs because people need chairs and another person who makes new chairs every year because they want you to buy a different chair because they want to make money even though you have a chair so then they have to do all kinds of advertising to figure out how to make you want the new chair and throw out your old chair which is a whole different thing than simply creating what we need and so Thomas Merton used to talk about how this advertising and marketing and this weird money-driven consumer society created artificial needs in us and these artificial needs would keep us so distracted and so desiring of whatever we didn't have that we never got to have a contemplative life which is what he was all about we never got to just relax and enjoy the fact that we have enough that there what if everything you have right now is truly enough and this is a very interesting thing also because we've been so accustomed to running at such a fast pitch that we're just running running running running running running running running running fast pitch fast pace and that we run so fast we think if just for a moment if we were to say what if I have enough right now it's almost like we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves so like I I don't I don't need any more I don't need more than I have right now there's almost such a quiet inside it feels so unnatural that we think well I must be missing something because I feel so quiet inside and I don't feel like I need anything else am I dead this doesn't even feel natural so it's a very interesting thing to embrace this idea of enough because even even in school in society we're even taught that even ourselves well I may be happy with who I am but you can always learn more and you can always be a little fitter you can become more fit you can always run a little faster you can always do this like I remember years ago I was training with a guy doing we were doing barefoot running and and I was training for a marathon and and he was such an interesting man because when we would train together it was never about getting a faster time at the next race his entire philosophy about running was he wanted to train today so that he was still running when he was a hundred years old that was his goal it didn't matter how fast he ran it didn't matter what his time was it didn't matter he loved running he loved what it did he loved how it made him feel he loved the joy of it he loved the challenge of it and he wanted to be doing it 60 years later both we were both in our 40s at the time and he wanted to be doing it 60 years from now and that's a very different thing that we don't we don't have this perpetual I can be better I can be better I can be better because the weird thing is when we perpetually need to be better we never get to enjoy this we never get to enjoy where I am right now in in the spirit of a stea we're literally stealing the joy from this experience because I'm not good enough because I can always be better and again I'm not talking about stopping the joys of human expansion I fully I love I love embracing the idea of human expansion that at all times we get to continually grow and grow and grow and grow but I'm not growing because I'm not good enough I'm growing because I'm intrigued about something I'm growing because I want to experience something interesting I have a something inside of me that wants to grow another branch like a tree the tree was perfect when it grew the site the new branch now it just has more branches so this isn't about not expanding it's about not expanding in ways that aren't ours so if we come back to the idea of staying on our path that the llamas and a stea says this is this will help us stay in our path so I always vision this like a like a path so here I am walking along my path and every one of us has a very unique and interesting path to take a stea is like I'm on my path and I look over there and I see that person over there and I think wow look what they've got I'd like I'd like some of that I don't need it I have enough for my path I have what I need but that looks really looks really good I'd like some of that so I like some of that well what's gonna happen if my eyes become focused on that thing over there that I want well I'm gonna start to do this and I'm gonna go over there and I'm gonna try to get that thing I'm gonna try to get whatever it is that they have but I don't need it it's not on my path so we go along our path and this is what it's like it's like we go along and the advertisers come in and they say you want this right look how happy these people are and you're like wow I guess I don't think so and then the second person the third person the fourth person and that like the hundredth time you hear it you go wow I guess I really do want a new patio set and then you think well I'm not stealing I bought it that's okay I just I bought it the problem is we didn't need it and now who are we stealing from nature the resources that had to take to make that wooden chair plastic chair rubber thing whatever we are stealing well it has to come from somewhere and it isn't something we need because it's yoga is not about living without and that's not it we have to just really be clear what are our true needs and then the next thing is am I stealing from myself because I don't need the thing but now I have to make the money to buy the thing so I have to work more and then I have to go and get the thing I have to maintain the thing I have to clean the thing I have to protect the thing I have to make sure nobody steals it and one day down the road when I no longer want it I then have to throw it out and somehow nature has to sort itself out it's a complete distraction if it's not needed so it's a very interesting thing to actually just ask ourselves clearly what is it that I need and if you were to imagine what if what if you were climbing a mountain real mountain climbing would you take more than you need or would we take exactly what we need we would take enough for all possibilities maybe we might take an extra something in case we hit a winter storm we might take a little bit of extra this because of that but it's all truly a need it's being intelligent and wise for the journey but we won't take anything we don't need this is the spirit of a stea can you imagine the simplicity of really being clear about what it is we need on our path individually and only carrying that like how little we would require Thoreau Henry David Thoreau when he wrote on Walden Pond or Walden I can't remember what the name of the book is and his whole thing hundreds of years ago was that because we are so focused on accumulating wealth or accumulating success or accumulating prestige we end up slaves to that desire and we never actually expand what it is to be human we never actually expand the human potential because we just come into this slavery and that's all a stea is protecting us from it's protecting us from this excess this and not only the accumulation of the excess the work we have to do to purchase or get the excess but even the thought process like when you think of in our mind how much time we can spend thinking about the things we don't have or the things we want or the things we should want or the things that we should change in our own bodies or our lives or whatever it's like we have the excess causes so many issues and that's all a stea is is saying to us is keep the bumpers up really live your life so what's really interesting is in Patanjali sutras the sutra that talks about a stea yeah it says when a stea is established all the treasures and jewels appear for the yogi and this is really interesting because if we come back to our path analogy that we're going along our path and we are not worried about what other people have we're not worried about what other people tell us we should want and we are just staying on our path on our journey listening to these perfect perfectly tuned chakras within us listening to this perfectly tuned self within that knows what we're passionate about knows what we're called to all of a sudden and we know that we are enough we know that everything we need for this incarnation is inside of us all the intelligence all the courage all the love all the happiness all the chutzpah whatever it is that we need to get through our journey or to experience our journey to manifest our journey is all inside of us right now and we walk our path with this knowledge everything we need will appear on our path for us all the treasures all the jewels everything we desire will just appear another way that we steal from ourselves is actually in our mind you know it's funny you know we talk about the physical world we talk about having enough of those first chakra needs whether or not it's money or food shelter companionship all that kind of thing but there's also something inside of us that we steal from the moment we worry about things from the past we worry about the future we worry what if this doesn't go right what if this doesn't go the way we planned it and that also steals from us it steals from our current joy it steals from this present moment there's a reason that they they say that you always want to be here be here now this is a huge spiritual tenet that you always want to be here because if we're anywhere else we are we're actually stealing from ourselves it's almost like there's all this possibility right now but we're not we're actually not even gonna have it the Buddha used to say be where you are right now or you're gonna miss most of your life and again this is so interesting about this contentment of actually having enough we actually look at ourselves and we say I have enough right now and we sit quietly with it or even if I didn't have anything to worry about I didn't have anything to worry about the past I didn't have anything to worry about in the future it's almost like we don't know what to think about we don't know I well if I'm not stressed out about this then what am I thinking about and the key there when we find ourselves there is to allow the stillness it's so interesting because we struggle so much in meditation all of us I'm not saying I'm not pointing fingers I mean all of us and it's almost like we are so unaccustomed to silence we're so unaccustomed to stillness we have this nervous part of us inside that says okay okay okay what am I supposed to be thinking about what do I want what should I do what should I maybe maybe there's something I can go by whatever and it's like no just sit still and the beautiful thing is if we sit still long enough and this could be anything we could be in a we could be in a massive transition in our life what if we've just left a situation a job a relationship a town a way of living a philosophy anything we've had a great aha moment it is so easy to go driving forward into the next thing taking with us whatever we've known in the past but the key to actually living in this joyful place of enough is to sit in it like just to sit in it it's like imagine sitting in your backyard let's say let's pretend you have a backyard I don't have a backyard but let's say you have a backyard and you're sitting there on your favorite lawn chair the grass is green the birds are singing and you have nothing you have no book no phone nothing to distract you if we focus on what I want oh you know it'd be really great right now it would be a nice cold beer oh you know what'd be really great right now if my friend came over you know what'd be really great right now is if I had some chocolate if I had a great book oh I wonder what's play you know we have this there's got to be something else I can add to this moment and this is the this is the illness this is the thing so what if we practice a stea in that moment and we just sit surrounded by the grass and the birds well what happens all of a sudden you notice a smell of lilacs wafting in on the breeze and all of a sudden you start breathing a little bit deeper and you feel this beautiful air flowing through your lungs and then all of a sudden you look over and you see a bumblebee going from flower to flower and all of a sudden you realize the sky is so blue and the Sun just beats down warming your skin and then you hear other birds calling and you just sit there and you realize that you're actually happy and you're totally at peace that we need nothing this is what the sutra means that when we practice a stea all the treasures all the jewels appear on our path like they're right there all the time and it's all for our joy when we release all these weird distractions they're all artificial they're not real we feel happy we feel joyful we feel fulfilled we we feel the abundance of life and this of course is the whole point of yoga this is the point of the yogic path is to feel that way can I comment on a stea and addictions addictions are so interesting because because addictions are addictions have an extra level like a stea is it's almost like we all have a generalized addiction to more but we spread it out we want a little bit more of that a little bit more of that a little bit more of that and it looks very normalized it's normal to want more money it's normal to want to have a bigger house it's normal to want to have extravagant this this is luxury has become very normalized and not only normalized but something you get you aim for so it's almost like as a general population we always want more and addictions seem to have a more focused path and but it's the same compulsion that if once I have a bit of it then I want more and then that that having more makes me want more and then I have more than I want more and then but that could even be the addiction to money like I'm always amazed when people and I this sounds awful but people will say oh I can hardly wait to so my websites are all on a platform called Kajabi and so I'm I belong to a Facebook group all about you know for people who use Kajabi and they'll talk about oh well my goal this year is to make a million dollars and might have a million sales and I always think do they have a cocaine addiction or something what are they doing with a million dollars and I'm not and I really hope I'm not sounding arrogant or something I just I genuinely don't know what anyone would do with that kind of income and but it's it's so normalized that it's but it's like is that an addiction that first they they finally make their first 50, 000 then they make the first hundred thousand and now my next goal is a million well is that a whole lot different than many addictions it's just interesting how some addictions are and again there's so many addictions that are so damaging like I'm not taking away that in any way but it's a very good question like is that the foundation of addictions and there's so much to talk about in addictions in terms of connections and intimacy and all kinds of things right there's also something really interesting about faith whatever faith is for you so if you imagine you're walking through the woods and you need to you want to find food or something like that right so you see some berries and you pick the berries well if you're journeying the likelihood is you're not going to take more than you need because you don't want to carry that much if you know you're going to be going over some barren land maybe you take a few extra bits for a couple hours from now but you're not going to just because you come across a whole plant of berries you're not gonna pick enough berries for a week and carry them instead we have an interesting faith or a faith in nature that wherever I am in a day there will also be some kind of food and I'll find water and I'll find whatever I need there's a certain connection to nature that says all will be provided and it even goes deeper than that because again yoga is so much more than just this yoga when we are present we also hear our intuition and a really formative book for me was the book mutant message down under by Marlo Morgan we are so in sync that's hilarious and and they do the same thing like they're walking through the neat they're walking through the outback and they needed to find food and of course food would always appear and a place for water would always appear and and then one day Marlo Morgan she had to lead the tribe she had to lead the people and she was so stressed out because she wasn't connected to the land she wasn't connected to her intuition and of course they went days and days and days not finding food not finding water because she just couldn't get out of her head and eventually she realized okay fine and she broke through something she broke through something in her mind that allowed her to finally be intuitive and that again comes back to this practice of a stea we actually have to want it we have to want to stop this madness and oftentimes it can be illness or crisis or something like that that forces us onto our own path and stops us from focusing on all these distractions so it's kind of nice to actually find it through meditation instead to kind of my friend Nelda years and years ago probably over 20 years ago I went to her and I was a bit of a Tasmanian devil I think in my mind kind of caught in a life I didn't know how to get through or get out of or to heal or whatever and she just looked at me one day and she says you know you could live your life like you're in a pinball machine only changing direction when you hit a wall or you could choose to listen which to me is more the yogic path what do you feel about raising children in a way of non-stealing as far as having enough but the world and close relatives don't hold that view it seems that the child will usually go with wanting more they fall under the spell of this world I continue on my path of consciousness but see how the world influences the young honestly we our children see us more than we see they see the world our example does count it may not totally influence them they may not follow in our footsteps but we do matter and we matter more than the outside world and when we quietly walk our path we are always in their periphery whether that may be their karma or their patterns and their Akashic past they have to do that maybe they need to work all this out in some way but we are still in the corner of their mind and the less we preach at them the better we get in savior mode but it's our children this is a big deal we don't want our kids to suffer in all the reasons we're talking about this today we don't want them to be distracted by all that we want them to have a happy life so it's pretty hard to separate savior and mom mode or dad mode or whatever that's a toughie or even grandparent mode when we see our niece and nephews and all the great things that's really tough and it's good to care it's it's that's it's all good so it's a balance there's a balance of desiring the best for people and really knowing that they're on their own journey and also really knowing that sometimes the desire to affect our children or our partners is also a distraction from our path it's really easy for me to teach my children what I've already figured out but am I climbing my own mountain anymore so it's really and it's it's not a either-or it's all the things we want to be conscious of all the possibilities all the all the topics before us so thank you so much for being here I hope you have a wonderful day

Reviews

So really good! I am going to listen again inmediately. So many wise lessons about enjoying your/my life NOW. So lovely and nurturing 💚

Loving this series! Namaste (Just as an aside - I live in Ingersoll, which is just down the 401 from Toronto a couple hours driving. I feel somehow connected to you as a fellow Canadian)

This was an awesome talk and causes pause to ponder material wealth and enoughness. Thank you Katrina!🙏

Love this series, great insights❣️✨️
Thank you so kindly❣️✨️⚛️⚘️☄️
🙏🏼✨️☮️🖤🌸

Thank you for this wonderful and broad perspective that really hit home for me! 💙