This month's Satsang is an exploration of how we protect what we value and the role of cultural conditioning in determining our value systems. Cultural conditioning, self-prioritization and boundaries are big themes in this conversation.

Time stamps:
0:00 - 41:45 - Welcome, intro and talk
41:45 - End - Community sharing and integration

Audio-only version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1A48ZBKZl9a6vB4fTwfWRet7DiNbOn0Rz/view?usp=sharing

Journal Prompts:

Self-knowledge and what Deserves Protection

1. What do you already know you need to stay strong, well and connected to yourself?
2. What in your life deserves to be treated as valuable before its absence proves its value?
3. What helps you feel most like yourself, and how well are you currently protecting it?
4. What have you learned about yourself that you keep forgetting, dismissing or overriding?

Boundaries and Self-Prioritization

5. Where in your life are your own needs the most negotiable thing on the list?
6. When someone asks something of you, what tends to make their need feel more important than yours?
7. Where are you asking, “Could I?” when the more useful question might be, “Do I want to give myself to this?”
8. Where would “I count, too” change a choice you are currently making?

Giving, Generosity and Depletion

9. Where is the line between generosity and self-abandonment hardest for you to recognize?
10. What are you willing to spend yourself on, and what no longer deserves that expenditure?
11. Where are you choosing to give more because something genuinely matters to you, and where are you giving from habit, guilt, fear or expectation?
12. What does generosity look like when it includes generosity toward yourself?

Looking Toward Year's End (+ Your Winter Walk)

13. As you look toward the final months of the year, what would you like to decide is protected before the requests, invitations and expectations arrive?
14. Imagine arriving in January feeling connected to yourself rather than needing to recover from the end of the year. What did you protect along the way?
15. What did September help you gather that October is asking you to protect?
16. What could you protect now that would prevent the need for recovery later?