Cultivating Compassion Through Nonstealing - Dharma Talk With Renee Sills

Asteya is the ethical practice of nonstealing and is one of the yamas, or the ethical relational observances described in the practice/path of ashtanga (eight-limbed) yoga. In this talk, Renee describes how the ethic of nonstealing is intrinsic to cultural competency and anti-oppression work.

Transcript

So a Dharma talk is something that we can do for one another, With one another, When we relate our personal experience to the philosophy that we're studying together. And a Dharma talk isn't a time to necessarily say that this is the way something is. It's a time when you say, This is the way that I've experienced this. And it's a relating of a personal approach or story. Dharma, The word, D-h-a-r-m-a, Dharma, Is the work that you're here to do in the world. And one of the translations is to act as if, To behave as if, You hold the world together. It's the way that you synthesize your experiences to help the experience that we're all having become more cohesive. Dharma is the work that we do as individuals that is an offering to the greater everythingness, Tribe, Ecology, Planet, Universe that we're a part of. Dharma is the destination for your karma. You've seen that bumper sticker, Like, My karma ran over my dogma, Or something. All these words. Anyway, So, Karma is another concept, And these are coming from the Vedic tradition. But they have all kinds of similarities with other words and other ideas. Karma is somewhat like your genetic lineage, Your DNA. You did not choose the actions of your ancestors or their experiences, And yet you carry them forwards. If you grew up with a parent who grew up with parents who grew up with parents who didn't know how to support a child, That's not your choice. Yet, You're going to grow up feeling the impact of that, And making choices at some point when you parent, Or when you come into relationship with other people. And the more that we become self-aware to our own patterning and instinct, The more we can change choices that our parents and their parents and their parents made, Or couldn't make. So the other day when one of you was talking about, I feel that this is the way, That this practice is changing my lineage, It's true that the reason to have a yoga practice is to liberate ourselves from the confines of our suffering. And suffering is something that we all do. And a lot of the suffering is unconscious. It's the way that we're programmed to behave and to react and to believe things, The assumptions that we make about life. And we've all had the experience of resolving karma. Every single one of us has had the experience of coming to an understanding of a way that we've been patterned, Seeing it for what it is, Seeing that it causes suffering for ourselves and others, And deciding to change. And sometimes that change happens in an instant. You see it and you're like, Fuck no, Never again. And you change. And sometimes that change happens over decades, Where you see it, You turn away. You see it, You turn away. You see it, You make a little bit of a change. You see it, You turn away. You see it again, It hurts a little more, You make a little more change. And it's incremental over time. And those deep, Deep, Deep habits are often like this. It's incremental over time. We're like, Oh, I could change. And then we keep doing the same thing for a while. And it's okay. And that's why we practice yoga. So when you do a posture practice, An asana practice, And you come into warrior two, At some point you have some kind of recognition about the pose. This is after the preliminary, Oh my god, What am I doing? Where is my right foot? What do you mean, Me? Right? Like there's that first experience of something where we're like just learning what it is. And then fairly quickly we develop habit around it. And the habit that we develop is probably related to all the other habits that we have. But then we do it for a while. And at some point we recognize that there's discomfort. And that discomfort might feel like a lot of things. It might be fatigue, It might be literal pain, It might be distraction. But we recognize that like, Oh, I'm not fully here. And then we explore it a little bit and we make a change. And it feels better or it feels different. And then we're there for a while. We're like, Ah, I've got this. Yeah, Totally. We've got this one. And then a little while later we're like, Hmm, Discomfort. And we make a change. And it goes on and on and on and on. Right? And that is resolving karma. That's basically the process of it. Is we're in these loops. We talked about these loops for a few days now. The Chitta Vrittis, The circular cycles of our consciousness. So we're in these kind of endless loops that have to do with the conditioning that we've received. That has to do with the conditioning that everything that we're part of has received. And we see something and we recognize that there's discomfort. And we make a little bit of a change. And that's the way it normally goes. And sometimes we make a really fast change. Trauma is an interesting thing. Sometimes trauma is an opportunity to make a really fast change. So we talk about trauma in its more destructive manifestations. And the weight of trauma that we all carry. And this is deep and this is real. But what happens for people when they learn, This is like the cycle of adult learning, Is there's kind of three spheres of learning. And the center sphere is the sphere of comfort. Total familiarity and comfort with what's around. The middle sphere is the sphere of mild to moderate discomfort. It's like you're pretty comfortable, But you're not totally comfortable. Because there's a little bit of an edge. There's a little bit of an unknown. There's a little bit of a risk. The outer sphere is extreme discomfort. And this is the sphere of trauma. This is when you're in an experience that you have no control over, Where there's really fast and sudden change. That's extreme discomfort. Where learning happens for adults is in this middle sphere of mild to moderate discomfort. When we're really familiar and comfortable with what's going on, We're usually in our habits. Right? Like we don't have to question that much in those moments. It can be a place where we restore. It's not a place that's bad. It's so good to go home, You know? In that deep way where you're just like, Oh, I can let go. It's so good to like go get into a hot tub. Oh, I can let go. Like being comfortable is a good thing. It allows us to restore ourselves. But if we're too comfortable, We're also not questioning. So when we're around people who are all the same as us, We're comfortable. We don't have our views threatened. We don't have to look inside at what is uncomfortable. We're not challenged. So in this sphere of mild to moderate discomfort, Our lives aren't at risk. We know that we have resource. And that knowledge gives us the ability to face what's uncomfortable in somewhat of a regular manner. So we can come up against our edges. We can face difference and we can question ourselves. And we know that in that questioning, We're still okay. Right? And it's the ability to be like, I might not know. I might not have the answer. But that doesn't mean that I'm a horrible person. It just means that I don't know. Ooh, That's uncomfortable to not know. But it doesn't mean that I have to freak out and defend myself because I have inner comfort. I have some resource. So that's a pretty good place to be in. And hopefully that's the place of this training. You know? There's a safe container here. We're a community that has come together. And you can trust that because of why we've come together, We all have good intent. We can trust that about each other. Even if we don't really know each other. And we're going to push each other to edges. And that's the nature of community. There's a metaphor for community as being a bag of rocks. And the bag is getting jostled and the rocks are all rubbing together and that friction polishes them. And that's what sangha is. That's what community is. We're a bag of jagged rocks with our edges and our uncomfort and our hatred and our fear. And we're jostling together, Rubbing up against each other and seeing our differences in each other's eyes and hearts when we get triggered, Especially. And then we sit with it and we work through it and we understand the other person's good intent. And through that, We understand our own good intent and then we grow and we become more polished. And next time we're jostled, It's not as sharp. That's the work of community. And here we're in that middle sphere, I hope. That outer sphere of trauma, Of intense challenge and intense danger, Really, When you feel like you could die. That is trauma. That's a potential for freezing or fighting or fleeting. It is also the moment when we might wake up really fast to deep conditioning. Right? When you experience something that is so intense, Sometimes that's the moment when you realize that you've perpetrated it too. Sometimes that's the moment when you realize you've allowed it to go on because you believed you weren't deserving of something better. And you wake up and you're like, No, Never again. We've probably all had that experience too, Where we're in a situation and we say, This is it. This is the bottom line that I'm going to change. So I just want to bring that into the room when we're talking about trauma, Is that it is something to respect, That it's incredibly challenging, That it's potentially life-threatening, That it's a lot of baggage that we're all carrying, And that it's when we can address those moments that we have the biggest, Most profound opportunities to change. And if we can hold space for one another to know that we've all been traumatized, That on some level, Living in this world means that everybody at best is carrying low-level trauma, That's a big gift to our community, That we know that holding each other and the experiences that we're having all the time is also holding each other in the opportunity to change. Because this is a safe space. But when you leave this space, I don't know where you're going, And neither do you. And you might be entering into a realm of trauma. When a person of color enters a world that is based in white supremacy, She's going to be in a world where she's going to be able to change. And when she's in white supremacy, She is traumatized every single fucking minute. Every minute, There's the need to defend herself or themselves against an entire worldview that says you're wrong, That says you're not worth what I'm worth. That is a huge amount of trauma in the cells, Right? When we're holding space together, We have to recognize the fragility of each being. That we don't know what each other has gone through. And it's a fact that one in three women has experienced sexual assault. And it's a fact that if you're in a female body living in this country, You have experienced sexual assault on some level, Even if it's just psychic. And it's a fact that if you live in a human body, You're experiencing the assault of the earth, Which our bodies are made from. That you feel disconnection from the land that you're a part of, That your ancestors were a part of, That you objectify and oppress other beings, Because that's the nature of living in a capitalist culture, That we're implicit, That the clothes that you wear and the things that you wear are not the same, That the clothes that you wear and the car that you drive and the food that you consume is all part of a web of suffering. And that is so traumatizing to all of us. None of us want to live that way. We know that. And we're all trapped in it. So a couple of years ago, There was an article that came out in Time magazine about the hormone called oxytocin. I almost said oxycontin, That's the other thing. A different kind of drug. So oxytocin is known as the love drug that your body makes. And it's the hormone that gets released when you fall in love, Or the hormone that gets released between a mama and her new baby. It's the bonding hormone, Where you have intense feelings of love for someone, And all you can see in them is goodness. So we've also all had that experience. Oxytocin, Unfortunately, Isn't like a daily dose. It can be. We can practice through meditation to develop it by practicing compassionate meditation. But it arises because of the biological need to bond, To create family. So when you fall in love with someone and you're like, Yes, I want to be with you, That's a bond, Right? That creates safety, And it creates community, And it creates trust. This is your person, These are your people. When you have a child, You want that bond, Right? And they want it from you. It's really important when it comes to family. So this article that came out was really interesting, Because it was saying that they're finding, They, The they, Studies are showing, They're talking about, They're finding that oxytocin is found in the body. In elevated levels, In the brains of people who are experiencing racism. So when you are experiencing the feeling of othering some other group of people, That whole group of people, Judgment, Bad, Different, Other, It's the same thing, The same hormone that's moving through your brain, As when you're saying, Yes, You are me, You are part of me. Because tribalism is this, And humans are tribal animals, We're pack animals. We need to know what group we're a part of, And we need to know what group we're not a part of. And we forget that evolution, Our human evolution, Is actually really small in the big scope of nature and the world. Right? We're a young species, We're a young manifestation. So not so long ago, Comparatively, Were we living in experiences of life that completely depended upon knowing who we are and they are. That was part of what we needed to know in order to survive. Working with karma is understanding which survival skills are no longer necessary. That's one way to understand what people do with trauma. Because everybody is traumatized and gets traumatized in this part of life. You face experiences where you might die as a fact, You know, And we develop our scars. Who was talking about this? I get my scars, I get my injuries, And then I look at my body, And I think, That's a history there, That's a story, I'm proud of that. But that's also trauma. It's like we go through something hard and we develop a technique and a mechanism to not be so traumatized, And then we get a little bit better. So another thing that is said about karma is that it's removing one thorn with another. Because anything that we do can create habit and anything that we do has shadow. There is no ultimate perfect act. There's no perfect pose. We're always going to be living in these very subjective experiences. So through our evolution as humans, We've been replacing our survival needs with other things, Right? Our instincts, Replacing survival instincts with other things. So now we happen to live in the 2000s, Right? I was born in a time that wasn't long ago, And I remember thinking, Oh my god, The year 2000. We're almost at 2020. We're like in the future. We're here. We've arrived in the future. We're in 80s sci-fi future right now. Hoverboards are coming. I mean, They have them. They have them developed. They're just not in the consumer market yet. What was I talking about? Help me. Evolution as a species. Replacing our survival. Oh, I know what I was talking about. So here we are in 2020, And we live in this world that has the internet. I remember when the internet started. Raise your hand if you were born after the internet started. After. This is the future. This is a person who has a different consciousness. The consciousness of the internet is a different kind of consciousness. We talk about the Aquarian age. It is synthetic. It's digital. It's plural. This is someone who understands we in a really different way than any of us who were born before the internet understands it. Her nervous system fires differently than ours. This is the future. This is Kiana 2. 0. So here we are living in this world. It's a new world. It's a new world of community where all of a sudden tribes, People who look similar or different, Right? And we can see it. When we see someone that has a similar genetic lineage, We recognize something. We're like, Oh, You look like my aunt. Oh, You look like my grandma. You know, When we see someone who looks very different, We're like, Oh, You don't look like my family. But then we also make assumptions about what other people's families are. So sometimes we see people and we're like, Oh, You don't look like my family. But then they show us a picture of their grandma or something and we're like, Oh, She looks like my grandma. So we can't always tell just from outer appearances who we're related to, Right? Like that notion of race and racial identity is a total myth. Because we don't know. And we've ascribed certain characteristics. Like whiteness is this crazy thing. Like my family lineage comes from Eastern Europe and the UK, Like Wales and England. I know that in my genetic line, On one side, I have the Jewish diaspora and the Holocaust and people who are persecuted in pogroms. And that side of my family has a lot of karma. And I feel it all the time. In my defensiveness, In the way that I need to know that I'm safe, My hyper vigilance, The way that I'm really resourceful, That's that side. Then I have this other side that I don't know as much about, But I know that they came from a lot more resource. And I know that on that side is a lineage of women who were priestesses of some sort. I feel that. I feel that in my mom. I feel that in my grandma. And knowing the cultural lineage of that part of the world, Reading Mists of Avalon. I connect to that. I feel that. And I know that those people were landowners and early colonialists. And I know that they're responsible for a lot of suffering. And that there's a lot of guilt and a need to atone for it. And I feel that. I've met other white people who have Germanic roots, Whose family actually came from Nazis or people who were in that really Aryan vein. My partner actually, Her lineage goes back to Vikings and it's something she's really proud of. They're Mormon and then they're Vikings. You know, And I'm like, Whoa, Your whiteness is so different than mine and her values around it. I'm like, What? Like, Oh, Or whoa, That's nothing I relate to. But we look similar. So the idea that we are the same race, Like I don't know where that comes from. We're, We all come from very unique lineages, Right? Where these streams, Each person is this stream and somewhere we came from the same mother, They say. Right? They say we all came from this same mother. So oxytocin is this crazy thing. It's a survival mechanism. It lets us know what we're a part of and what we're not a part of. But bias is this other crazy thing. And somewhere in there, There's a really interesting conversation. When we notice the effect of feeling familial with someone and we decide to investigate it. When we decide to investigate why do I trust you more than the person who doesn't look like you. What is that? It's so interesting to investigate our assumptions of who people are based on these kind of instinctual feelings that arise to know that a lot of these strong feelings that we get of bonding, Of difference, Are actually chemical responses. And we can put a lot of magical thinking onto chemical responses. So this is another thing I've gotten from my partner. Because she's very practical and she's not prone to magical thinking in the same way that I am. Like I have a hormone rush and I'm like, Yes, I'm in love. Whatever I was doing yesterday, I'm going to move to Spain. And then I'll fucking do it, You know? And she's like, She's like, Oh, Wow, Feeling. That's fun. And then she's like, Practically, This is going to work out this way and this is going to work out that way. And I don't think it would be good for me if I went on that train. But I'll just enjoy the feeling right now because it's cool. Like we're so different that way. And I have bowed to her for that lesson. Because I can really go on those hormonal rides, The emotional rides. And I think that there are more people in the world who have that tendency, That share that tendency with me than are like her. I actually think that the quality to really notice the emotional response and to not always identify with it is rare. And I think that some people are really able to teach that in the world. But that many people are emotional people. We vibe. You know? And we have a feeling and then we're like, That feeling must be right. And off we go following the feeling. And then at some point we're like, Whoa, That was a feeling. But something else is going on, Right? It happens to a lot of us. All of us. So, It is good practice for us to investigate our own feelings. And that doesn't mean we don't listen to them or honor them or share them. It just means that we practice discernment. So that's one of the reasons we practice yoga. That's another way we could think of yoga is discernment. We make good choices. We learn to make good choices. We learn to sequence. We learn to focus on certain kinds of sensations rather than other kinds of sensations. It's an interesting thing about the body. Our muscles really like extreme sensations. When we have one, We're like, Oh, I must be doing something right. But the physiological effects for our organs and our nervous system usually is a lot more subtle than muscular sensation. So oftentimes we can push past the point of a pose because we're looking for a familiar sensation. Often we lose the benefit in that way. So learning to rest and to not have to have things so sharp or so extreme is actually a really advanced practice. It's developing subtle awareness. And ideally then we do that in our relationships. So we get from the point of needing to have big explosive, Oh, My God, I'll never be the same, Feelings of in love, To, Oh, This quiet space between us feels really safe and that's important to me and therefore I want to help you be happy and feel safe. That's a really advanced development, Right? That's like an advanced yoga practice. Oh, You make me feel amazing about myself, Therefore it must be right. Right? We're in the like dazzle stage before we know someone. Oh, My God, We're the same sign. We both love sushi. It's like it's gonna be forever. And then at some point after we've worked through so many differences and we're like, Wow, We're all human. I care about you. I want you to grow in a healthy way. So ideally that's what we're doing here in this space, In this space of mild to moderate discomfort, Is we're learning to care about each other, We're learning to see our reactivity, We're gaining tools to watch it. We're like, Whoa, That thing doesn't mean that you're a bad person, Doesn't mean you're criticizing me. Oh, My God, You're just learning to tell me I'm out of alignment even though you don't really know what it looks like yet. You're not telling me I'm a bad person. Okay, We've all had that experience in this room, Right? We're learning to correct each other and someone's like, Don't do it like that. And then we're like, Ah, And then we're like, Oh, Right, We're here learning to correct each other. But we're doing that on micro levels. So that's a Dharma talk. A Dharma talk is talking about philosophy and weaving it in. And one of the things about Dharma is that it's not only personal, But it's applicable to everyone. And one of the things that we can do to give a Dharma talk is to recognize our own failing and our own lessons. So being a good teacher or a good facilitator is really being able to understand what you're learning and to be humble about it and to share that. Because we know that we're doing this together and we want to lift each other up. And that's the kind of sangha and student body that you want to build as a teacher are people who are going to be your peers and your trusted colleagues and your friends. Not people who are going to try and undermine you or steal your authority. And you don't create those relationships by resisting the instinct to act as if someone was going to try and undermine you or steal your authority. And if that's what you believe, Then you will act like a big boss. Right? You're going to let your ego come in and be like, This is my way, This is my brand, This is my lineage. If you're going to teach in my lineage, Then you're going to have to use my name. Then you're indebted to me. I don't want that. I want to be able to say, Oh my God, The work that Dara is doing in the world is so powerful and it's so profound and it's Dara's work. And she's part of my community. She went through the solo program. And she's doing amazing work in whatever it is she's doing. And then I want people to find Dara and to be like, Oh my God, I love the work that you're doing. And for her to be like, Yeah, I love the work that you're doing. And for her to be like, Yeah, I had this thing happen in my life and I did that thing and I did that thing. And at one point I did this amazing yoga teacher training program and it gave me skills to facilitate. And we're part of the thread of Dara. We don't own her. We don't own your behavior. We don't own your lineage or what you're going to call your class. We want to be recognized if you receive something that's valuable. We want to be told if we do something that is harmful. We don't want you to slander us. We want you to come and be like, Whoa, When you said that thing the other day, It hurt my feelings because we want to grow. You know, We're in this together. So now we're going to talk about Asteia, Non-stealing. Non-stealing. And non-stealing is this practice of non-violence. It is the practice of honesty. It is the practice of being in community together. We don't take away each other's complexity. You can steal something like take someone's wallet, Steal someone's bike, Steal someone's partner. And that is an incredibly hurtful thing. And you can probably also make a case for why you did it. Right? There's the acts of stealing. I stole that person's wallet because I was desperate. For whatever reason, That person stole a wallet because they were high on drugs, Because they needed a fix, Because their life had been so fucking shitty, Because they had been abused in whatever way, Because they didn't have any choice, Because drugs were their option. Can we blame them? I don't know. I don't know. It's, You know, When people who follow the Christian faith say, It's not my place to judge, It's Jesus' place to judge. That's that. That's that ethic. There's something higher that can judge this, But me, I'm too biased. I don't know. Ethically, I know that stealing someone's wallet is a painful thing for that person that I'm stealing from, Because we've all been stolen from and it feels awful, And I don't want to inflict that on anybody else. So, I know that for me, It's going to be better for my spirit to not steal, To not engage in the act of stealing. But it's also going to be better for me to not judge the person that needs to steal, Because I don't know where they're coming from. If I wanted to somehow address that person who stole, I might try and meet them where they are, In a compassionate way, Understand where they're coming from, And see if maybe they have any ideas of what kind of help they needed. Not impose my ideas on them. One of the ways that we can practice not stealing is by not stealing someone's story. It's easier to practice not stealing objects than it is to practice not stealing someone's story. Or complexity. That kind of stealing is something that we all do all of the time when we make assumptions. When I make an assumption about what someone else's experience is, I steal their story from them. And then I put my assumption on them and I'm like, Oh, I know what's going to help you, I know what you're going through, Here, Let me do this for you. And maybe sometimes some or all of what I'm offering to them is helpful, But also sometimes some or all of what I'm offering to them is nothing that they want. So it's really different to approach someone as an equal, To say, Hey, Who are you, What's going on, What's your experience all about, Tell me about that. Wow, That sounds hard. Could I help you? These are the skills that I have. That's so different than making an assumption that we know anything. And that's an important distinction as people who are in positions of power as facilitators, Which everyone in this room is. So when you're in a position of power, And this is teaching ethic, It's not your job to tell your student or to tell your client what their story is. You can listen to them and you can offer things, But you don't know. It's the same thing when you're encountering someone who's very different. So if they have a different identity, You're a cisgendered person and you encounter a trans person. You might have your own ideas about what fluid gender means, You might have your own ideas about what masculine and feminine mean, You might have your own ideas about what orientation or blah, Blah, Blah, But you have no idea what their experience is. And for you to put your ideas forward onto them as if it was their experience is stealing from them. And it's not being honest and it's being violent. So with every yama we have to look at the ones that precede it.