This is Morgan at Splendid.
Yoga.
You can listen to this one doing whatever you'd like.
If you'd like to make this a meditation,
I'll leave some space open for that at the end.
If you're just puttering around or driving,
You just need some words in the background,
You can listen to this one actively as well.
Saucha is a Sanskrit term meaning cleanliness.
And in the yogic world,
It's one of the Niyamas.
The Niyamas are the commitments that you make to yourself to create an optimum human experience.
So they create your success.
And Saucha refers to striving all day to see that the world and all of those around us are sacred.
That's how it's described in the Essential Yoga Sutras translated and written by Geshe Michael Roach.
He continues,
Saucha also means not cluttering up your day with busyness,
The craving for countless shallow interactions with others and piles of completely meaningless junk lying around the temple of our home.
So the cleanliness bit refers to the literal cleanliness of keeping your home clean,
Of making your bed and washing your dishes and cleaning your floors and doing your laundry and all those things that we do if we're well and can do them or all the things that are done for us because of those who love us.
But it's also that inner cleanliness of what you put into your body.
If you're surrounded by a lot of stuff in the physical world,
If you can imagine like a hoarder's house,
It's hard to move around.
It's hard to get from one place to another as opposed to imagine something much more minimalist like a yoga studio where there's a lot of open space and it's very easy to move around.
There's a lot of freedom to how you can move.
It's the same with what you put into your body with how you feed yourself.
If you put in a lot of anything,
There's just not going to be a lot of space.
It's going to be difficult to move and to feel free.
But if you can eat and feel yourself in a way that allows you to move as freely as you could in a big open space,
Then you are that much closer to divinity.
And it refers to the people that you surround yourself with as well.
If you surround yourself with unclean souls,
People who are not true to themselves,
People who do not know themselves,
People who do not know that they are more than their humanity,
People who do not know that they are in this world,
Not of it.
If you keep yourself surrounded by those unclean people,
Then you yourself will be unclean.
Mess attracts mess.
And this is not to be met with judgment.
Because the people in your life who are unclean are going through their own battle,
Their own struggles,
Their own journey to divinity.
It's more about how they make you feel.
Do you feel confined when you're around toxic people or do you feel free?
Do you feel like you have to act a certain way in order to be around the people in your life,
In order to be accepted and loved?
Or do you feel liberated to be however you are in that moment without expectation,
Without judgment?
It's the practice of sautcha,
Is finding those people who make us feel clean,
Who make us feel clear,
Who make us feel liberated and removing the people who don't.
With a fond farewell,
With a gratitude.
And how you spend your time.
How can you practice sautcha and what you do with your time?
Do you feel liberated and free when you spend the first several minutes of your day scrolling through your social media channels?
Does that make you feel joy?
Does that make you feel liberated?
Does that bring you closer to your divine self?
It can,
Certainly.
But what if you gave yourself more of a focus first thing in the morning,
Rather than reaching for those shallow interactions,
That quick hit?
What if you sat with yourself,
Perhaps like you're doing right now?
What if you sat with yourself like you were your best friend?
What if you sat with yourself like you were your best lover?
What if you sat with yourself like you were divinity?
Would that give you liberation?
I wonder.
Let's try it.
We'll spend these last few minutes here in relative silence.
Being your own best friend.
That means that any time a difficult thought arises,
You respond to it like someone who really likes you and loves you would.
Any thought that arises of the million other things that you could be doing right now,
All the shoulds.
How would your best friend respond?
I tell my friends,
I think you're doing great.
I think you're doing enough.
I think you're doing the best you can.
And I'm really proud of you.
What would your best friend say to any thoughts about your body?
Would they agree with them?
What would your best friend say about your problems?
All those things you want to change.
All those things you wish you'd done differently.
How would your best friend tell you to cope with that anger,
That resentment,
That disappointment,
That betrayal?
Tell that to yourself.
Tell that to those thoughts as they arise.
Identify the thought and have a conversation with it.
From the perspective of someone who really likes you and loves you.
Here we go.
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
You You You You You You You You You
