Perhaps the deepest veil is not separation itself, but our forgetting that the separation is not absolute.
A contemplation on Śauca, the sense of lack, and the subtle ways we disperse our energy searching for what may already be within us.
What we carry
Over these past weeks I have been spending time with Śauca, one of the Niyamas of Yoga, usually translated as purity or cleanliness. It is an ancient teaching, and perhaps at first it can seem almost too simple for the complexity of the lives we live today.
Keep the body clean. Take care of what you eat and drink. Keep your environment clean. Become attentive to your thoughts, your words, your actions, your intentions. And yet, the more I sit with Śauca, the more contemporary it feels.
We live in a time in which we are constantly taking things in. Food, information, images, conversations, other people’s emotions and expectations, experiences, desires, possibilities. We move through an enormous amount of input every day, often without realizing how much of it remains with us. Life leaves traces. In the body. In the mind. In our emotional field. In our energy.
So there is something very beautiful in this ancient invitation to keep returning to cleanliness, simplicity and refinement — to notice what we are carrying, what we are allowing into our inner space, and what may no longer need to remain there.
But as I was sitting with this teaching recently, another question came very clearly: What if what needs clearing goes deeper than what we accumulate?
As I stayed with this question, I found myself contemplating something that seems to accompany us very deeply into the human experience: the sense that something is missing.
We come into this life experiencing ourselves as separate. Separate bodies. Separate minds. Separate stories. We move through the world as individual beings, meeting what appears to be outside us, learning to protect ourselves, to reach, to choose, to find our place. And somewhere within this experience of separation, we can forget. We forget the deeper connection from which we come. We forget that beneath the individuality through which we experience this life, we remain part of something greater.
The separation begins to feel absolute. And perhaps this is where the sense of lack begins. Perhaps the deepest veil is not separation itself, but our forgetting that the separation is not absolute.
From that forgetting, a subtle feeling can begin to accompany us: that something is missing. That something outside us might complete what feels incomplete within us. That there is somewhere else to arrive, something else to become, something more to know or experience before we can finally rest.
The human longing is not something wrong, as it is the longing that moves us, opens us, makes us explore, create, love, learn. But underneath some of that movement there can be a kind of forgetting.
We search for what, at the deepest level, we have never truly lost.
And this is where Śauca has begun to reveal another meaning to me. Perhaps cleanliness is also the willingness to become aware of this movement within us. To notice when we are living from the experience of lack. To recognize how much of our attention, desire and energy is being shaped by the assumption that fulfilment lies somewhere outside ourselves. And, spiritually, to keep refining our perception so that we can move again towards the experience of wholeness.
And, spiritually, to keep refining our perception, becoming increasingly available to recognize and experience the wholeness that is already here.
The veils we don’t always see
This is where the idea of the veils becomes meaningful to me. The veils are not only what we accumulate through daily living — the impressions, tensions, emotions and energetic residues that inevitably become part of our experience. They can also be the deeper patterns of perception through which we have learned to experience ourselves and Life.
The sense of lack can be one of them. And when we begin to see it, something very subtle can change. We can start to notice how often we move from the assumption that fulfilment is somewhere else, and how much of our energy follows that movement.
This is where prāṇa becomes so important. Prāṇa is the vital energy that animates us and through which we participate in Life. Our attention carries prāṇa. Our desires carry prāṇa. Our searching carries prāṇa. Every time we reach outward, something of our energy moves with us.
So perhaps caring for our prāṇa also means becoming intimate with these movements: sensing where our energy goes, what nourishes it, what disperses it, and learning how to gather it again. Perhaps nourishing our prāṇa begins by no longer dispersing it in the search for what we believe is missing.
And this is where practice becomes so precious. Through the body, the breath, prāṇāyāma, meditation and silence, we can begin to gather ourselves. The movement towards more can become quieter. Our energy can become clearer, our perception more sensitive, and something that was always present but difficult to feel can become more immediate.
Connection becomes experience. Not an idea of being connected. Something we begin to recognize in the body, in the breath, in the quietness of the mind, in the way we inhabit ourselves.
This is another way of understanding Śauca: as an ongoing care for the conditions through which we experience Life. A continual refinement that allows us to become more sensitive to what is already here.
A quiet kind of fullness
There is a beautiful word in the yogic tradition: Ānanda, often translated as bliss. It points towards a dimension of our experience that can become more perceptible as the sense of separation softens and we reconnect with a deeper wholeness.
The word bliss can easily make us imagine an extraordinary spiritual state. And yet, in my own experience, Ānanda can reveal itself in much quieter ways: as a deeper sense of being at home within ourselves, as a joy that stays, as an inner space we can inhabit with ease — feeling connected to something greater that nourishes us, and to a sense of beauty, of luminosity that seems to permeate Life itself — while remaining fully here, in this body and in this life.
A sense of being held by Life. Of belonging to it. Perhaps even the simple inner recognition: I am here. Life is here. And in this moment, nothing essential is missing.
And from this place, our relationship with Life can begin to change. We can still desire, learn, explore, create, love and grow. We can move towards what calls us. But increasingly, that movement can arise from connection rather than lack, from the fullness of participating in Life rather than from the search for something that will finally complete us.
This is where the ancient invitation of Śauca feels so alive to me today. To keep clearing. To keep refining. To care for the cleanliness ofthe body, the mind, our energy, our intentions and the space through which we meet Life — allowing the veils to become a little lighter and our sensitivity to what lies beneath them a little greater. As they become lighter, we remember. We remember that the connection was never truly lost. We remember that beneath so much of our searching there is already Life. And we allow that remembrance to enter the way we live.
The deeper we remember what we are, the more fully we can inhabit the life we have been given.
Clearing the Veils
This exploration is part of the field from which the next Soulful Living Sadhana — Clearing the Veils has emerged.
We will begin on October 8 with Mastering Your Prāṇa, a two-hour Foundation Session in which we will explore our relationship with vital energy through teaching and direct practice — learning to sense it, care for it, gather it and refine it. From October 9–15, we will then enter seven consecutive mornings of Sadhana, allowing repetition to take this exploration beyond understanding and gradually into experience.
