The Confession

Welcome Yogi! After a break of many years, we're reviving the Sanctuary Blog to share some of Steve's satsangs from the Sadhana Sessions ~ with deep gratitude to Ross for lovingly and attentively typing up Steve's words and sharing them right here. Let's begin with...

The Confession

"I have something that I have compiled over some time, I call them my confessions. I have a whole list of them, maybe one day I’ll get around to sharing them. They are good tools. They are also good fun because for me they are humbling and they remind me of some deep truths. One that I normally put at the top of the list of these confessions is “I confess I don't know anything” and I really try to mean it because it’s true. Nothing. You can’t know anything.

I’ve got information. You’ve got information in your noddle too. Plenty of it that you’ve collected along your journey. You might be proud of some of the information that you’ve collected, but it is only information. You have yours and I have mine depending on the sources that we’ve been exposed to and the experiences we’ve had but it’s still just information about Life. So I have to confess that before anything happens I cannot already know it. I cannot know anything about what’s going to happen in the next second until I actually arrive there. You cannot know in advance, it’s impossible. You may have some speculations borne out of information that you’ve acquired through your own experience, what you’ve read or picked up along the way, but you cannot know.

It is utterly impossible for us to know anything ahead of the moment that we arrive and even once we arrive there’s not a knower, there is simply an experiencer, but not if we already think we know. If I have already assumed that something will happen or have already strategised to protect myself from something that might happen, then I won’t have that moment I will only have my own projection of that moment. So there is a danger that I’m not actually legitimately experiencing anything at all. Because I already think I know before I arrive, therefore, I’ve already canceled out almost all opportunities to learn, absorb, or to have an actual experience. What a shame.

 

It requires some courage ~ Parakrama. The reason we are so hellbent on knowing in advance is because it makes us feel safe. We have all kinds of strategies to somehow feel like we’re in control when we arrive in the absolutely unknowable moment. Which it always is. It’s understandable why we do this but the unknown is the unknown. When we get there we don’t know how we will cope. The practice is designed to give you a certain courage, and a certain faith to arrive in the moment unprepared. I’m not saying you can’t plan stuff. That's a separate thing and it’s common sense. But fundamentally living from a space where we don’t already need to have strategised a whole package of perceptions before we meet the moment. So we can meet moments as they are. Then you can say “that was a real moment.” Yes, it was a moment because you hadn’t already predetermined the moment. You hadn’t already made up a story before you got there which will of course colour the experience. 

I’m not talking about this because it’s some philosophy, I want you to taste it. The reason I use this confession is because I’d really like to experience as much of life legitimately as I can. But if I’ve already got my mind made up, I won’t have an experience I will just have an assumption. Which often means I will just be on a repeat experience because I’ve already assumed it will be like this or that. Basically, I will pre-determine and it will be like that, again and again. Groundhog day. Simply because my mind has already decided due to a previous experience that it thinks it had. Even that experience isn't real because it isn't current. What if we just show up and open up and meet the experience without a defence, without a strategy to cope and we find out we actually can do it? We can do it! For example, I had nothing prepared to say to you tonight, that would have ruined it if I came in like that. If you’ve already predetermined the music you're playing too much then nothing fresh can come through. That is an amazing invitation to life. 

But as always it is a bit unfair to expect us to just try it out on the job so we have something called Sadhana, where you get this incredible opportunity right here to discover that it works. So if you’re not predicting how your forward bend will be, if you can cancel out all your inner dialogue then you get an experience. This is just the ultimate invitation to do it. We’ve created a sangha in which there is zero judgment. You have a real chance at absolute self-discovery if you give yourself the chance. So you meet every single posture without any predetermination. You’re not allowed an opinion. Not even during it. If you are judging the experience you are not having it. Just have the experience! Then have the next one! 

The idea is that the breath encapsulates the experience, you get one and you pulse with it, your mind might project a whole load of stuff on top of it, but you stand determined to just have the breath as the experience. Then there’s a chain effect and you have a sequence of experiences. If you have a real sequence of experiences then you go into something called Samadhi in which you enter into the stream of Life itself and you forget yourself altogether for a radically blissful moment. Wow, look at that, life without mind. It's the best thing ever. Then you might snap back in and your mind will have a little game with that. It will ask how to get back there etc. but you got there because you weren’t there. You get everywhere worthwhile because you’re not there. 

It's so daring, that’s why nobody does it. Try to get simultaneous with your breath, then you really can’t think ahead. You can just follow the breath and you will still have a bit of space between you and the breath which means you can still think behind it, you can still have an opinion behind it.

But what happens if you get simultaneous with it? What if you dare to 'Be' at the same time as your breathing?

Now we’re going! Then there isn’t a ‘you’ witnessing anything, it’s just the experience.

You and Life, simultaneous with each other."

~ Steve.