Awaken Your Inner Light

"And unto the angel of the church in Smyrna write; These things saith the first and the last, which was dead, and is alive;" Which means: "And unto the angel (or Atomic Intelligent part of your Being) of (the cosmic forces congregated in the Chakra Svadhisthana, which in your spinal medulla is) the church in Smyrna (Prostatic-Uterine Creative Center) write (lift up through Immaculate Conception the Son of man as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness); these (alchemical) things says (the Cosmic Christ) the first (Solar Prana) and the last (coagulation of this Pranic energy into a soft, semisolid, semiliquid mass or human semen), which was dead (through its transfiguration or metamorphic descent into the sexual matter), and is alive (in your sexual glands)..." "I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich) and I know the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews, and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." Which means: "I (the Ruach Elohim that moves upon the surface of your seminal waters) know thy works (of alchemy, because you are the conducting intelligence that gathers from the blood stream the Akasic forces that enter from the vital body into the spleen), and tribulation (when maintaining the power of Kriya Shakti or the creation and multiplication of the human species without fornication), and poverty (in the knowledge of the Gods, the science of Good and Evil - Daath), but you are rich (because you are a particle of me, the Prana) and I know (that you only need to annihilate) the blasphemy of them (the lustful egos) which say they are Jews (Solar Atoms, Atoms of God, the Prana of the Lion of Judah -LEO), and are not (because they ejaculate the seminal liquor in Saturday), but are the synagogue of Satan (because by justifying “procreation” they dissimate, among men and women, doctrines of concupiscence, and become enemies of the Holy Ghost when snatching its atoms of creation for the satisfaction of their lust)." "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." Which means: ""Fear none (of the Karmas) of those (lustful) things which thou shall suffer (because of your lustful past): behold, the devil (or egos related with Karmasaya and Kamaduro) shall cast some of (the parts of your consciousness that are bottled up into those lustful deeds of) you into prison (into those Karmic situations related with the sins against the Holy Ghost), that you may be tried (by Lucifer as was “Saint Job”); and ye shall have tribulation (Karma) ten days (until the complete recurrent lustful cycle is painfully fulfilled): be faithful unto (the) death (of those karmic lustful elements), and I will give you a crown of life (the immortality in Eden by means of the incarnation of Kether, your own individual particular, Ancient of Days)." He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death." Which means: ""He that has an (awaken spiritual) ear (Chakra Vishuddha), let him hear what the Spirit (Ruach Elohim that moves upon the surface of the seminal creative waters) says unto the churches (or magnetic centers of the spinal medulla); He that overcomes (collects the totality of his consciousness trapped within his lust) shall not be hurt of the second death (which - after the death of his physical body - is the death or annihilation in the infradimension of nature of his protoplasmic bodies and egos which are only concern with the satisfaction of his sexual animal appetite)."

To the Most Renowned and Illustrious Prince, Hermannus of Wyda, Prince Elector, Duke of Westphalia, and Angaria, Lord Arch-Bishop of Colonia, and Paderborne, his most gracious Lord, Henry Cornelius Agrippa of Nettes-heim. It is a very excellent opinion of the Ancient Magicians (most Illustrious Prince) that we ought to labour in nothing more in this life, then that we degenerate not from the Excellency of the mind, by which we come neerest to God and put on the Divine nature: least at any time our mind waxing dull by vain idleness should decline to the frailty of our earthly body and vices of the flesh: so we should loose it, as it were cast down by the dark precipiced of perverse lusts. Wherefore we ought so to order our mind, that it by it self being mindfull of its own dignity and excellency, should alwayes both Think, do and operate something worthy of it self; But the knowledge of the Divine science, doth only and very powerfully perform this for us. When we by the remembrance of its majesty being alwaies busied in Divine studies do every moment contemplate Divine things, by a sage and diligent inquisition, and by all the degrees of the creatures ascending even to the Archetype himself, do draw from him the infallible vertue of all things, which those that neglect, trusting only to naturall and worldly things, are wont often to be confounded by divers errors & fallacies, and very oft to be deceived by evill spirits; But the understanding of Divine things, purgeth the mind from errors, and rendreth it Divine, giveth infallible power to our works, and driveth far the deceith and obstacles of all evil spirits, and together subjects them to our commands; Yea it compels even good Angels and all the powers of the world unto our service viz. the virtue of our works being drawn from the Archetype himself, To whom when we ascend all creatures necessarily obey us, and all the quire [choir] of heaven do follow us: For (as Homer saith) none of the gods durst remain in their seats, Jove being moved; and then presently he ruleth (as saith Aristophanes) by one of the gods, whose right it is to execute his commands, who then out of his duty doth manage our petitions according to our desire. Seeing therefore (most Illustrious Prince) you have a Divine and immortall soul given you, which seeing the goodness of the Divine providence, a well disposed fate, and the bounty of nature have in such manner gifted, that by the acuteness of your understanding, and perfectness of senses you are able to view, search, contemplate, discern and pierce thorow the pleasant theaters of naturall things, the sublime house of the heavens, and the most difficult passages of Divine things: I being bound to you by the band of these your great vertues am so far a debtor as to communicate without envy by the true account of all opinions, Those mysteries of Divine and Ceremoniall Magick which I have truly learned, and not to hide the knowledge of those things, whatsoever concerning these matters the Isiaci those old Priests of the Egyptians, and Caldeans [Chaldaeans], the ancient prophets of the Babylonians, the Cabalists, the Divine Magicians of the Hebrews, also the Orpheans, Pythagoreans and Platonists, the profoundest Philosophers of Greece, further what the Bragmanni [Brahmans] of the Indians, the Gymnosophists of Ethiopia, and the uncorrupted Theologians of our Religion have delivered, and by what force of words, power of Seals, by what charms of Benedictions and imprecations, and by what vertue of observations they in old times wrought so stupendious and wonderfull prodigies, imitating to you in this third book of Occult Philosophy and exposing to the light those things which have been buryed in the dust of antiquity and involved in the obscurity of oblivion, as in Cymmerian darkness even to this day. We present therefore now to you, a compleat and perfect work in these three books of Occult Philosophy or Magick, Which we have perfected with diligent care, and bvery great labor and pains both of mind and body; and though it be untrimmed in respect of words, yet its most elaborate truly in respect of the matter: Wherefore I desire this one favor, that you would not expect the grace of an Oration, or the elegancy of speech in these books, which we long since wrote in our youth when our speech was as yet rough, and our language rude; and now we have respect, not to the stile of an Oration, but only to the series or order of sentences; We have studyed the less elegancy of speech, abundance of matter succeeding in the place thereof; and we suppose we have sufficiently satisfied our duty, if we shall to the utmost of our power perform those things we have promised to declare concerning the secrets of Magick, and have freed our conscience from a due debt. But seeing without doubt, many scoffing Sophisters will conspire against me, especially of those who boast themselves to be allyed to God, and fully replenished with Divinity, and presum to censure the leaves of the Sibilles [Sybils], and will undertake to judge and condemn to the fire these our works even before they have read or rightly understood any thing of them (because such lettice agrees not with their lips, and such sweet oyntment [ointment] with their nose and also by reason of that sparke of hatred long since conceived against me, and scarce containing it self under the ashes.) Therefore (most Illustrious Prince and wise Prelate) we further submit this work ascribed by me to the merits of your vertue, and now made yours, to your censure, and commend it to your protection, That, if the base and perfidious Sophisters would defame it, by the grosse madness of their envy and malice, you would by the prespicacy of your discretion and candor of judgement, happily protect and defend it. Farewell and prosper.

"I (the Sacred Fire of the Holy Spirit, that dwells in your sexual organs) know (by means of "Daath", Tantric Knowledge) your works (in the Flaming Forge of Vulcan), and your labor, and your patience (in scientific chastity), and how you cannot bear (the filthy spasm, the abominable orgasm of) them which are evil (fornicators): and you hast tried (the chastity of) them which say they are (Gnostics or) apostles, and are not (because they ejaculate the seminal liquor), and (for that reason) has found them liars (because through the orgasm they become disconnected from the Solar Atoms of the Solar Christ - the way, the truth, and the life): And has borne (the karma of your egos related with Karmasaya and Kamaduro), and has patience (when meditating on these lustful egos), and for my name's sake (or Ruach Elohim, the spermatic fiat that moves upon the surface of your sexual waters) has labored (through sexual transmutation), and has not fainted (has not identified with the corrupted world). Nevertheless I have somewhat against (those lustful egos of) you, because (they are the cause that) you have left your first love (your Divine Goddess Mother Jehovah Eloah)." "Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works." Which means: ""Remember therefore (that in your subconsciousness you have the memory) from whence you have fallen (as consciousness, part of your Monad), and repent (renounce fornication and adultery in the 49 levels of your mind), and do the first works (of scientific sexual transmutation)." "Or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." Which means: ""Or else (if you continue with fornication) I will come unto you quickly (within your psychological interior), and will remove your candlestick (or Spiritual Solar Fire) out of (the Church of Ephesus or Chakra Muladhara) his place, except you repent (renounce the sexual act with orgasm). But this you have (you who transmute you sexual libido), that you hate the deeds of the Nicholaitans, (which are people who enjoy the ejaculation of the seminal liquor) which I also hate. He that has an (awaken spiritual) ear (Chakra Vishuddha), let him hear what the Spirit (that moves over the surface of the seminal waters) says unto the churches (or magnetic centers of the spinal medulla); To him that overcomes (his passional lust) will I give to eat of the tree of life (which are the spiritual fruits or seven superior senses or seven Chakras or Churches), which is in the midst of (the spinal medulla) the paradise of my (Igneous) God."

Over the last few years, I’ve been very interested in the mysterious symbol ubiquitously known simply as the “black cube”. For the uninitiated, the black cube is apparently a symbol of Saturn and it often pops up in important locations throughout the world. To quote Jordan Maxwell from his book ‘Matrix of Power’: “The symbol that was used in religious context with Saturn was the black cube”. There are monuments of the black Saturn cube in various sites throughout the world, and it often features in movies, music videos, and other media. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of information about it and so it’s very much open to interpretation about what it represents, although many people suggest that it represents the material world. This interpretation is inspired partly by Greek philosopher Plato. The cube is one of five Platonic solids and was assigned to the material world (or Earth) by Plato. In most esoteric systems, the universe is held to be the result of the union between Earth and Heaven. Heaven is traditionally represented in 3-dimensions by the sphere (2-dimensions by the circle) and Earth is represented by the cube (2-dimensions by the square). Here, Heaven as the sphere refers to the universal principle of consciousness (referred to as ‘Purusa’ in the ancient Indian tradition) and Earth, as the cube, refers primarily to the 3-dimensional spatial matrix where individual impulses of spirit are given apparent material forms. In this traditional esoteric conception, the symbol of the cube represents the reality we experience as the physical, sensory world.

Alchemy and Kabbalah are the two great sciences that the initiate needs to understand in order to walk on the path, in order to return back to Eden. These two sciences of Alchemy and Kabbalah are symbolized in the book of Genesis. Alchemy is symbolized as the tree of knowledge, which is in Hebrew called Daath. The Kabbalah is symbolized in the book of Genesis as the tree of life. These two trees represent the science or the precise wisdom, the precise knowledge, that one needs in order to know God and to achieve freedom from suffering. Gnosis is a Greek word which means knowledge. Gnosis encompasses the knowledge of the two trees, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and bad. The books of Genesis and Revelation are the vehicles of that knowledge. They are an encoding of that wisdom. When we examine the book of Revelation, we have to bear in mind that were studying something that is deeply symbolic, and we cannot take it simply at the literal level. As was explained in the previous lecture, when we look at the seven churches that are mentioned by the writer John, he says seven churches in Asia, but we know that when you study Kabbalah you understand that it is not Asia that is written there, it is עשיה Assiah, which is the physical world, the kingdom. And those seven churches are symbolic of seven magnetic centers that exist in the physical body and in the other internal bodies that we have. In the same way, the other symbols and names and words of the book of Revelation are symbolic. They indicate to us the precise means to come to the knowledge that the book is indicating. Alchemy and Kabbalah form the foundation for the initiate. They provide the ground upon which the path can be realized. So this ground is the fundamental understanding that every initiate needs in order to work in the right way. Kabbalah or the tree of life is more or less a map; it is a symbol. This tree encodes in its structure a map that demonstrates both how the consciousness works and how nature works. And for the initiate, for the student, for the aspirant to really come to know directly the knowledge that is contained in the book of Revelation, that person must understand the tree of life, because the book of Revelation is in itself expressing the knowledge of the tree of life. So if you do not have a good understanding of how the tree works, of how Kabbalah works, you can never understand the book of Revelation, likewise the book of Genesis, or for that matter, the rest of the Bible. This symbol encodes that knowledge. The tree presents Gnosis in a visual form, which then indicates structures and relationships. Those relationships and structures exist within our own psyche. They are within us. They demonstrate how our own psychological systems function. So it is necessary for the initiate to understand that structure. When we look in the book of Revelation and we study this text, we see that the language is very dream-like. The language is very poetic. It has a kind of structure, a kind of tone, which makes it different from the rest of the Bible. This is due to the language from which it was written. Revelation, like the book of Genesis, is an expression of the kabbalistic language or root knowledge. The tone and language within which the book is written demonstrates that it contains something more than simply the printed word. When we read for example, “I turned I saw seven standing lamps of gold and among the lamps one like a Son of Man robed down to his feet with a golden girdle around his breast.” To take that literally leaves the reader very dissatisfied. This is because on the literal level one cannot access the real content of the book. To just imagine some radiant person is not enough. The book of Revelation is a sacred book precisely because it demonstrates and communicates a science, something practical, not merely something to be believed. And that is really the nature of Gnosis or Daath. It is something practical, something that we have to utilize. Unfortunately, most readers of the Bible and the book of Revelation fail to grasp that, because they do not have the keys. We study Gnosis, the tree of life, and we study Alchemy in order to grasp those keys and use them to unlock the symbols that are contained in this book. To unlock the symbols, we have to understand something about the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life Imagine, visualize, one sphere, one circle, and place upon that sphere the name Malkuth; this is a Hebrew word that means “the kingdom.” This single sphere is a symbol like an algebraic symbol or mathematical symbol, which represents many things. But in the case of what we are going to look at in this lecture, we will say that this circle represents our physical body. It represents us as a person. So you, seated inside of a physical vehicle, are symbolized by this circle of Malkuth. That circle rests or hangs from a triangle, and that triangle has a sphere at each point. So now we have in our imagination a single sphere hanging by itself, above which is a triangle pointed downwards. And that triangle symbolizes a deeper part of our selves. It symbolizes our psyche, aspects of our own psychological structure. So if we have this physical body which is symbolized by Malkuth, we have within ourselves energy, which is that first sphere closest to Malkuth at the bottom of the downward hanging triangle, that sphere is called Yesod, which means the foundation. The top two spheres at either end of the triangle are Hod on the left and the one on the right is called Netzach. Yesod, or the lowest sphere of these three above Malkuth, represents the energy that we have and this is often called the vital body or the etheric body. This is the energy that gives life or gives force to the physical body that we have. So in a certain sense you can say within that sphere of Malkuth, which is by itself, we have Yesod, but symbolically we show it above and separate from Malkuth. After Yesod, the next sphere is Hod. Hod is related to our astral energy or emotional energy. And to the right of it is Netzach, which is related to the mind, to the intellect, to thought. In Sanskrit, Netzach is called Manas. This is inferior manas and is related to the mind that we have. Above this triangle is another downward pointed triangle. The lowest point of that triangle has another sphere and this one is called Tiphereth. This one is superior manas in Sanskrit. Manas is a term which means mind, or intellect, more literally. But it is not intellect in the way we normally think of it. In Netzach, we have a kind of mind that is more concrete, it is more rational, and in Tiphereth we have a kind of mind that is more intuitive or abstract. So you can see that as we move further away from Malkuth were dealing with more and more subtle forms of psyche. More and more subtle forms of energy.

One of the most important questions in personal and spiritual growth is “What is your True Self?” The answer is elusive, but the question is essential to ask ourselves, contemplate, and discover. You may be thinking, “Hey, I don’t really know what my True Self means. How is it different than just plain old “me”?” Sit with that question a moment. Ask yourself, “What is my True Self?” You may begin to have a feeling in your body, a vision come to mind, or hear some words that speak to who you truly are. Some part of you knows that there is a core essence, a deeply real, empowered, joyful YOU within, that longs to express in your own unique and authentic way. The Small “s” self Often, we’re stuck in what I call our small “s” self. It’s what we refer to as “me” – the personality or ego, as well as the body. Our self is what functions in the world for us most of the time. It drives the car, pays the bills, and cooks the meals. It has a very important role in our day to day tasks and getting along in the world. But the self gets caught up in thinking. It can easily get stuck on a train of thought that disturbs our inner peace and also significantly limits us. The self has a lot of limiting beliefs about who we are, what we’re capable of, and what is possible in life. Those thoughts are usually based on past experiences that are like old computer programs, still running in us decades after they were installed. The self bases a lot of what it perceives, experiences, and feels from the perspective of those old programs. It’s stuck in the past, and often stuck in unhealthy ways of being. The Capital “S” Self – the True Self Your capital “S” Self, however, transcends the personality, the ego, the body, and all the thoughts, beliefs, opinions, and even emotions that we experience. It is your Divine nature, your Essence within. And it’s not limited by anything you experience in your mind, heart, or body. The Self is founded in pure potentiality – just about anything is possible with the Self. It doesn’t look at life with limitation, judgment, worry, or resentment. Those and most other emotions are based on past experiences. The Self is fully Present: fully here in this moment, now, and every moment. This is your True Self. It’s the quiet place within that watches the thoughts that arise, the emotions that wash through, the sensations that you experience in your body. Already Whole and Complete There is great joy in experiencing your True Self, because it is authentic, real, and already full and complete as it is. It is already whole, loving, and loved, simply because it doesn’t separate itself from that love and wholeness. The True Self is immersed in Oneness. This may be a completely new idea to you. But when we take ourselves beyond the limitations of thought, emotion, and sensation, a whole new way of experiencing life emerges. Freedom within and joy are possible. And we discover what truly fulfills us, what gifts we have to share with the world, and the everyday blessings that life offers us. It’s a Journey Discovering and embodying the True Self is a journey. It unfolds more and more every day. Not perfectly. Not instantly, like taking a pill. It’s a process. We will still feel our feelings and have our everyday experiences. It doesn’t make life magically perfect. But it does shift us into a state where we can embrace whatever is, stay rooted in our center, and find peace and happiness in the simplest of moments, right now. We become grounded in the truth of who we are – to know ourselves deeply, and to understand life deeply. This website, Awakening Self, is all about sharing perspectives, reflections, body/mind practices, and spiritual philosophies that help us to shift out of the self into the True Self. Together, we look at what gets in the way of being our True Selves and how to let that go (or embrace it with compassion). We open to seeing our Self in potentially new ways, and apply these perspectives to whatever spiritual beliefs we have. Remember, too, that it’s important to have a sense of humor about the journey, because we can get awfully serious about all this personal and spiritual growth, can’t we? Again, ask yourself, “What is my True Self?” Rather than try to figure out the answer, just sit with the question. Feel into it. Let it simmer within you. Only you can truly discover that answer, within. As you ask, you begin the process and you initiate your True Self to reveal itself to you. Allow it to happen. Pay attention and open to receive it. Let me know what you’d like to explore here; I’d love to hear from you. Welcome to the journey – I’m glad you’re on board with me.

n today’s meditation practice we had the instruction to relax first and then to evoke into our imagination a problem, particularly a problem that causes pain and suffering, whether for us or someone else. Did anyone solve their problem in meditation today? I did not give you that practice expecting that anyone would solve their problem. Did anyone find that when they began to imagine that problem that their mind was filled with thoughts? How about filled with emotions? How about tension in the body or discomfort and agitation? Did you want to run screaming out of here? The reason we did that practice today is to discover why we cannot solve our problems. It is because of our mind. We see the problem. It is very easy to identify and recognize where we have problems, because they are accompanied by pain. This is inevitable. This is how nature works. Where we have a problem there is suffering, whether our own suffering or someone elses. The reason we cannot solve those problems is because we do not know how to use the faculties of consciousness. Because of our conditioning, when we look at a problem, we react to it. Our mind justifies ourselves. We repeat our point of view, our perspective, our rights, we go over our traumas or how we were wronged and justified in what we did etc. etc. The Three Traitors In Christianity that tendency is symbolized by a figure named Pontius Pilate, who was very intelligent, very clever, and very smart. He always washes his hands of the crimes that he facilitates. Our intellect does that. This way that we think and the way that we utilize reasoning is our traitor. It betrays our consciousness, which in the gospel is represented by Christ who is sent to the slaughter by Pilate. This happens because the Christ is delivered to the Romans by Caiaphas, the high priest. Caiaphas is the believer, the noble priest who seems to radiate so much goodness, so much gentleness, so much love, and so much humility, but is actually the executioner of the soul. Caiaphas is the one that sends the soul to Pilate to be judged and crucified. That symbolizes our the traitor in our heart, which is emotions, attachments and desires that process through us emotionally. In meditation today, when we visualized a problem, many thoughts appeared; did you notice that they are the same thoughts that we always have about the problem? And then emotions are there, pain, resentment, pride, anger, and the envy that we feel. All of those emotions attached to that problem are Caiaphas. The believer, the “noble” and “holy one” is a liar! These emotions are lies because they are rooted in desire, fear, anger, pride, envy, gluttony, and greed, and all of those qualities that none of us want to admit that we have. In all of our problems, we only want to see ourselves as the virtuous one, the holy one, the priest or the priestess (Caiaphas). We only want to see ourselves as the smart one, the intelligent one (Pilate). We do not realize that in fact that these images of ourselves are flawed. These figures are traitors. They are not virtuous. Instead, they are the cause of our suffering. How did all that happen in the gospel? Does anyone know? Who let all of that happen? Judas. Judas is the one who betrays Jesus, and starts that process. Who is Judas symbolically speaking? It is all the energy that we have in us. It is our life force. It is the vitality that we get from divinity to be alive. Divinity gives us that energy, but we utilize all of our vitality and all of our energy for our desires. We convert it into a traitor. Contemplate as a scientist the context of our lives. Observe yourself the way a scientist would. For example: here is an organism, and it was born at this time, and lives in this period of time, eating and consuming and acting, all these little things that this organism does, but let us put all that in a chart and analyze how it spent all of its time and energy. Where did it get spent? On what? If you put it in a chart, 99% or more of all that time and energy was spent on desires. How much was spent on spirituality, on developing the consciousness and awakening, on meditation? In the context of your entire lifetime, if you look at it in hard facts, the factual, honest results are not beautiful. We all think we are spiritual people, but the truth is even if you look at the context of a single day, how much of that time did you really seriously invest into your soul? It is that you will keep when you die. Nothing else will be with you. All the other things that you are putting time and energy into you will lose. How much of our time goes to TV, internet, chit chat, gossip, Facebook, eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, chasing girls, chasing boys — whatever it is we do — compared to how much time was spent developing the consciousness, your inherent nature? The consciousness survives death. I think you will find the facts very distressing. That is why we did that exercise in meditation today. It is not an easy exercise. It is not easy to be honest with oneself.

The painting here is a very old representation given by the Buddha Maitreya. It is part of Tibetan Buddhism, and it outlines the essential stages of developing meditative serenity. You can say it is concentration; specifically, it is the ability to place attention on one thing and not be distracted. That map has nine essential stages through which a serious meditator will work. The beauty of the map is not only does it explain the basic stages of developing concentration, it also explains the obstacles that you face and gives you the antidotes to overcome them. Once you apply those techniques through the course of your practice in developing meditative serenity and you reach the upper levels, you have developed what is commonly called one pointed mind, perfect concentration, Dharana, Dhyana, or Samadhi, or in other words, you have this quality called pliancy. Pliancy is specifically defined as the conduciveness of body and mind to meditate, meaning that your body and your mind do not fight meditation. They do not distract you. Your body and mind are not an obstacle at all. In fact, they are willing helpers to your spiritual life. Of course, that is the opposite of the way it is for most people. For most people the physical body and the mind are obstacles in their spiritual lives, because the body has lots of wants and needs and our mind has lots of wants and needs, and we tend to spend our lives just satisfying the desires of the body and mind. So that map is really significant. It is entirely practical, and it has nothing to do with beliefs, but provides a very clear structure that you can follow in order to acquire meditative serenity. tree of life This other map that we rely on is called the Tree of Life. It is also the primary symbol of the tradition called Kabbalah. This symbol represents the universe, all the levels of the things that exist and the things that have the potential to exist. That is not only outside of us, but it is inside of us. Even though it looks complicated, it is actually quite a simple tool. Once you start studying it you become accustomed to it. It is very beautiful and extremely powerful. We use these two symbols in combination in order to understand meditation and develop our spiritual life in an effective way. Through this course that we have given in the last year, we have explained how these two symbols relate to each other and the type of knowledge they can convey to us in order to help us to develop our spiritual life effectively. In the previous lecture, we talked about this word comprehension. We introduced the notion that there is a kind of knowledge that is beyond intellectual knowledge, and we call it comprehension. You can also call it understanding. This is not anything you can acquire from anyone. It is a knowledge that only comes from inside of you. It can never come from any other source. It is knowledge that belongs to the consciousness or to the soul. It is the kind of penetrating wisdom that cuts through illusion, desire, and suffering, and reveals the truth. When you know the truth of something, everything changes and you can never go back. Once you know the truth about something, you cannot unknow it. Comprehension is like that. Once you have comprehension, everything changes. It is that kind of knowledge that is like a lighting bolt, a living thing, an energetic thing, and undeniable thing. So with comprehension we see the truth of the thing, we see the reality of the thing, and moreover we see the illusions for what they are. This is what we want when we meditate. We want comprehension. We want a kind of knowledge that allows us to not suffer the way we have been suffering. A kind of knowledge that allows us with grace and love undo the problems of suffering. Not only to help ourselves come out of suffering, but to help others come out from suffering. So on the Tree of Life, that type of knowledge is represented at the very upper portion of this symbol. Briefly, the Tree of Life represents densities in nature, both outside of us and inside of us. At the very upper reaches are the most subtle, most primordial forces. At the very height is what is called the Absolute. It is unmanifested and the potentiality to be, but has not yet become. When that expresses into becoming we have the first emergence into existence, which is the primordial energy or presence in nature. In religions that is always represented as a trinity, and you see that trinity here at the top, but it is interesting to know these words in Hebrew that describe that trinity. The first one is Kether, which means “crown.” The second one is Chokmah, which means “wisdom.” The third one is Binah, which means “intelligence” or “understanding.” When that trinity creates, it does it through this hidden region called Daath in Hebrew, and that means “knowledge.” At the top you have a crown, wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge. These are all expressions of the fundamental trinity of existence that Christians call Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Hindus call it: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva. The Buddhist call it the Trikaya: Dharmakaya, Sambhogakaya, Nirmanakaya. If you have studied any religion you know about this essential trinity. They represent a level of intelligence, a type of insight into reality, a type of knowledge. It is a cognizance. It is consciousness, but with profound knowledge. That is inside of us in a germinal, potential state; it is not outside of us. We all have that within. That is our most primordial nature. The most primordial aspect of that which gives us life is this type of knowingness, a type of knowledge, but in us it is undeveloped. It is in potential and if we work with it and learn to access it then it can be expressed through us. Comprehension is how we start to access that. In Sanskrit in both Buddhism and Hinduism that type of knowledge is Prajna. When you break that Sanskrit down, pra means “beyond” and jna means “knowledge.” It is a type of knowledge that is related to that which is beyond. It is the very heart of beingness. A type of knowledge that is beyond what we know of as knowledge. It is beyond concept, theory, and belief. Instead, it is the knowing of reality, the truth. The goal of meditation, the purpose of it, is to access that type of knowledge. We need to understand our position in relation with it. That type of knowledge is inside of us. It is something that we can access, but only if we understand how. Through the tools that we are using in this moment, our access to that is very limited. That is because we are very much limited by the conditioning that we are currently experiencing. When we study ourselves in relation with nature, we see that we are much more than we can perceive immediately. Physicality In the Tree of Life, if we look at how it maps our structure as a person, we would start here and now with the physical body. This is the most obvious aspect that we have to work with on a daily basis. Our physicality is represented here on the Tree of Life as the lowest of those ten circles. This is called Malkuth, the kingdom. This is our kingdom, the body. That physicality is marked by the fives senses, that ability to sense physical experience. tree of life Specifically in regard to meditation, when we want to meditate the first thing we have to deal with is the physical body. We place it in a posture, but what is the experience that most of us have? The body does not like it, it complains. It has pain, it has discomfort, it is hot, it is cold, it is hearing sounds in the next room, or someone is playing music or someone is talking too loud or there are car sounds or dogs barking and we get very agitated because of the experiences of the physical senses. So we are disturbed, not only physically, but emotionally we react to that, we may even react to it with our thoughts. What this demonstrates to us is that we are very much identified with physicality and that we have not developed sufficient will to cultivate that power of pliancy, which is what I was describing earlier as something very pronounced at the upper levels of developing meditative serenity. When you have pliancy, the physical body is able to sit in its posture, calm and relaxed, regardless of the physical circumstances. If you have studied any of the meditation traditions you will know the stories of the yogis and masters who were able to sit and meditate despite incredible difficulties. The example that comes into my mind is a master of Chan Buddhism who was so devoted to understanding and reaching comprehension that even though he had dysentery and was dying he did not stop his meditation. If you know what dysentery is, you will realize that is an unbelievable amount of willpower to sit in meditation in spite of that type of illness. That is how much will he had, and how much pliancy he developed; the body was capable of maintaining its posture so that his consciousness could continue working in case he died. He didn’t, he overcame it. That is the sort of power that is necessary, because we will all die and if you are able to meditate through the process of death you will have incredible influence over what happens to you next. But if you are very much a victim of the suffering of the body, you will not. Instead you will pass through that experience unconsciously and with a very unpredictable outcome. If one is able to develop pliancy with the physical body, then the body is able to sit and be undisturbed despite any external or sensual interference, whether sounds, noises, hot, cold, hungry, thirsty. You will sit and meditate in spite of it because you have control over the body. Energy What about the person who sits to meditate but quickly falls asleep? Why does that happen? Let’s relate it to the second sephiroth, Yesod, vitality. There is no energy. Yesod is the superior aspect of the physical body. When we do not have sufficient energy, vitality, in the body, we need to sleep to recover it. Similarly, when we lose the ability to be concentrated and focused in our meditation practice, this is partly due to a lack of energy. This is not just energy in the body, but energy to fuel our attention. Students fall asleep in class. Drivers fall asleep behind the wheel. Employees fall asleep at work. To fall asleep in this way does not always mean that they body falls asleep. The body can remain active. It is the attention that has drifted away. When our attention lacks energy, it drifts, and we lose awareness. That is the sleep we mean: it is a state of distraction. This is very common among meditation students. Many can sit and start their meditation practice, but quickly become distracted and remain unaware that they are supposed to be concentrating. That is a lack of energy. Emotion Another experience is when we are trying to practice meditation but have too many surging emotions. We have a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, we have a lot of envy, we are very angry, we are very afraid, and we are very excited. Perhaps we had a dream, a vision, or something like that and we want to go back to that experience. We are excited, yet may also be afraid of it. In this type of scenario, the obstacle here is the emotion, which is related with Hod. Thought The next is related with Netzach. When you are trying to concentrate, but the mind will not stop; it is constantly analyzing, thinking, naming things and labeling things, trying to explain things logically with reasoning. That is not meditation. That is thinking. Thought is an obstacle. It is a bad habit. None of these can lead to real comprehension. Physical sensations are simply sensations. They do not provide access to reality. In the same way, energetic sensations are simply sensations. They are fundamentally illusory. They do not provide access to reality or comprehension. Sensations are not reliable. Definitely, they provide nothing reliable in relation with consciousness or meditation. Some people want to meditate on chakras, or on the meridians and the energy moving around inside of us. They want to have experiences of energy moving or auras. It is a waste of time! It is just energy. Experiences of energy do not mean anything and do not change anything. In the same way that it means nothing to feel your lungs filled with air, it also means nothing to feel a chakra. Energy is just energy. The body is filled with energy, and we need it, but energy undirected and unmanaged is just that: undirected energy. Do not be fascinated by that! Do not let that become an obstacle! The same occurs with emotion and thought; we need them, they are useful, but we are hypnotized by them. They are very limited in their abilities. Neither emotion nor thought sees the truth. We do not realize that. All of us struggle with all of these obstacles, each in our own way. That is why we teach meditation in the very specific way that we do, in order to access real knowledge: comprehension. To reach comprehension, all of these conditions have to be suspended, especially during your meditation practice. We need to free the consciousness of the conditions of the physical body, energy, emotion, and thought. This cannot be done solely by trying in the moments we are meditating. To succeed, one has to be doing this all day long, and ultimately, all night, too. If you can suspend those conditions and be concentrated at all times in all activities, then you reach comprehension more rapidly. When beginning meditation, we place the body (Malkuth) in a position and we leave it there, still and motionless. We make it still and relaxed. We no longer engage with it and we extract our attention from it. The body should be placed and then forgotten. With energy (Yesod), we harness it, we work with it, and we direct it. Practically speaking, this means that once the body is positioned, we relax deeply and do some pranayamas or mantras, in order to harness energy and direct it. Then we set that aside. We are not hypnotized by energy or fascinated by it. With emotion, we let it go. Just as we relax our body and our energy, we also have to relax our mood, our emotional state. We are no longer hypnotized by emotions and we are not identified with them. We let them be. In other words, we are not trying to resolve our problems emotionally with emotion. It is the same with thought. We leave them be. We disengage from them. We separate our attention from thought. Consciousness is not physical, energetic, emotional, or mental. Only consciousness can meditate. Thus, we are not trying to resolve our problems with thoughts. or meditate through thinking, or meditate through feeling. Instead we want to suspend physicality, suspend energy, suspend emotion, suspend thought, and become will. Observe and Understand Will is attention, placed and directed. In our meditation practice today, we said “visualize your experience of today.” In that moment you would suspend the body, energy, thought, and emotion and become attention. As attention, you observe the memory, not thinking about it, not feeling emotions about it, but simply observing the facts of what could be remembered visually. In that state, we are accessing something higher on the Tree of Life. The higher you go on the Tree of Life, the closer you are getting to the truth, to reality. The lower you go on the Tree of Life the further you are away from reality. Ideally in meditation this is what we would do. Ideally we would have pliancy so that our body and mind are very conducive to meditation and they do not fight with us. The body and mind obey. We sit, close our eyes, shut the senses off, withdraw from body, energy, emotion and thought, and simply imagine the thing we need to understand. That’s it: we just imagine it. We do not analyze with thoughts or wander through our feelings (emotions). Instead, we simply observe the facts. If we do that well and with some accuracy, then it is effortless. This does not require effort, since we are utilizing the natural abilities of the consciousness. What are those abilities? Firstly, the ability to perceive, and secondly, the ability to understand. Those are natural in us. Those are not forced and do not require skill. It does not take skill to look, and it also does not take skill to understand the truth. A child for example, a baby, is very small and can see the parents fighting, and know they are fighting, and know there is pain. They do not have the intellectual idea yet, or the words for it. They do not necessarily fully understand emotionally what is going on, but by perceiving it they do understand what is happening. Even a dog can do that. A dog can see a fight and know what is going on, just because it has consciousness. What I am trying to indicate to you is that it does not take skill to see and understand the basic facts of things. Yet, that ability has the potential to be grown and expanded very profoundly, not only to perceive what is happening, even non-physically, but to understand in levels that are very profound. Only consciousness can do that. Diving into the Depths The goal in meditation is to increasingly separate from everything that is low on this tree and go as high as possible – In other words, to withdraw inside ourselves as deeply as we can, and get closer and closer to seeing reality. This can be difficult for us to conceptualize or understand because on this graphic it is organized in a vertical pattern. In truth, experientially it is not vertical, physically. Experientially, it is a withdrawal into the depths inside of ourselves, to go deeper and deeper into the consciousness. It is a matter of depth, not physical height. The Trikaya, the trinity, is not above us in the sky, it is inside of us, but deep inside of the consciousness. Someone who has the ability to access meditation can immediately jump into these deeper levels, immediately, without effort. They can immediately cease paying attention to the body, energy, emotion and thought and to become will, to see something and understand it. It is not a matter of time. It is not a matter of effort. This happens without effort and without exertion, because it is a natural ability that every living thing has if we learn to use it. It is as effortless as hearing or seeing, but of course is using a different sense. This ability is rooted in Tiphereth on the Tree of Life. It is directly in the middle. It is related to our consciousness and our willpower. From Tiphereth, the consciousness has access to all the parts of the Tree of Life. Most significantly, it can perceive that which we call God, Buddha, Master, Atman. Only the consciousness has access to that perception. The physical body does not. The mind does not. Emotion does not. Emotion wants to know God, but by itself it cannot. Only Consciousness can know God. The mind wants to know God, the body wants sensory proof of God, but it cannot know that. The consciousness can know. That is why we need to learn to use it. To do so, we need to know how to extract it from conditioning. Conditioning The main problem we have is that we have too much desire, too much pride, too much anger, too much envy, fear, lust and that is what is represented in the shadow of the Tree. It represents the submerged levels of our mind. Generally when we sit to meditate, we might get the body to relax. We might be able to have calm emotions and calm serene thought and we might be able to place attention. Then what is going to come up in our imagination? What will we visualize? What will we be seeing in our minds’ eye? Let us say we had a fight with somebody and we want to understand, “why am I suffering with this anger? Why am I suffering with this pain with the fight I had with this person?” We sit to meditate, we visualize that scene, we start remembering, and the pain blooms again; thoughts emerge, and soon we are imagining how we were wronged, and how we will get our revenge. We are imagining how our pride was hurt and we want their pride to be hurt. We want them to feel shame and remorse. When we have envy for something we do not have and we are trying to meditate on that trying to understand, we generally start feeding that envy instead of really understanding that envy. Obviously, that is not going to help us change. Fortunately, we can learn to overcome this problem. The Three Trainings The work is challenging. To successfully do it requires a very specific set of skills. The whole of the course we have given is based on this concept in Buddhism called the three trainings. This concept is present in every religion. It is the essential structure in every religion. But we used these terms specifically because they are so precise. The Three Trainings Sila: ethics Samadhi: meditative ecstasy Prajna: profound wisdom 1: Ethics The basis of all spiritual life is ethics. It is the first step, and it is the step on which everything else depends. Every religion has their own name for ethics. By ethics we do not mean morals, or doing what we tell you to do. Ethics means you adopt beneficial actions, actions that not only benefit yourself but benefits others. You also stop harmful actions, not only harmful actions against yourself, but harmful actions against others. This means not only physically, but mentally. This means that not only should you not speak with violence against other people physically with your mouth, but also in your mind. Not only should you not curse your neighbor or speak harshly to others verbally, but also in your mind. That includes all the behaviors in our mind. All of our actions — physically, emotionally and mentally — produce the state of mind and body that we are experiencing. We do not access real knowledge (prajna) because our body and mind are disturbed. When we change our behavior and we adopt beneficial actions, everything calms down. We become serene, we become happy. Instead of feeling anger, envy, lust and pride and all the pain we have, we start to feel happiness and love for others and compassion for others, and gratitude for what we do have. Those qualities stabilize the mind and body and we become calm, we become serene. That is what this path is based on, meditative serenity – to develop pliancy of mind and body. That pliancy is represented on the graphic by the elephant. Do you see how calm and relaxed the elephant is and looks attentively at its master, ready to obey? Only a mind that is ethical can serve in that way. Only a body that behaves ethically can serve in that way. How do you learn ethics? You do not learn it in a book. You learn it from yourself, from your conscience. Your conscience is that part or yourself that knows right from wrong. It knows when to speak and when not to speak and when to act and when not to act. Your conscience knows what is right and what is wrong. Where is the conscience? Where do you feel it? In a thought? Is the conscience in thoughts? No, everybody know that! It is in your heart. It is not a voice, it is not a thought, and it is not a word. It is a kick. It is a pulse, a movement in your heart and you feel it, not think it. But usually we ignore it because it contradicts our desires. It contradicts our anger, envy, and pride. Our pride wants to stand out and be out on top. Our anger wants revenge; our envy wants what others have. The conscience tells us we do not need those things, but we do not listen to that. That is why we act wrongly, and end up suffering. By listening to conscience, following the conscience, we develop ethics. Then, the mind and body stabilize and become serene and then we can access Samadhi. That is the second training. 2: Samadhi Samadhi refers to a state of consciousness. Samadhi is a state of experience as a perceiver, where the ego is not conditioning consciousness at all. In such a moment, there is no desire, no anger, no pride, no envy, no greed, no gluttony, no laziness, no lust and no fear. Instead there is contentment, serenity, and happiness. We have that inside if we stabilize the mind and body, if we do what is right and we act in a beneficial way for ourselves and others. When we access Samadhi, what we are accessing is the consciousness unconditioned, unfiltered by sensations or desire for sensation. It is unfiltered by emotion and intellect. Samadhi is the experience of the pure consciousness, released from all those cages on the lower part of the Tree of Life. In that state (which we call an ecstasy) is when the consciousness experiences its’ true nature. We then and only then have access to real knowledge; which is Prajna, wisdom. 3: Profound Wisdom You see, this is a very simple structure. Stabilize the mind and body by doing what is right and ceasing harmful action leads to no longer having guilt, remorse and regret and start to feel happy, calm, content, and have gratitude, compassion, love, and patience. With all of that, the mind settles and our true nature becomes accessible to us, and it alone has the ability to see reality. Our anger cannot see reality. Our pride cannot see reality. Only when consciousness is free of conditions can we see and then understand. That means in all of our experiences in all times and all places, through our use of our body (motor, instinctual and sexual brains), through our emotion, through our intellect, we need to be measuring ourselves. Are we really serene? Are we really at peace? Are we really accepting our circumstances and transforming them for the benefit of ourselves and others? We all have pride, anger, envy, greed, gluttony, and avarice. Until those qualities are radically eliminated, we will never have true, lasting serenity. You can totally ignore your anger, pride, and envy and fool yourself into thinking you are serene. Many people do this. You can run off to the woods and isolate yourself from humanity. You might start to feel a little serenity because there is no one there that will poke at your pride. There is no one there that will make you feel envy or lust. If you just run away from all these unacceptable, uncomfortable, and painful qualities, you will never change them. Observe an addict. The addict who simply avoids their addiction might be sober for a year, but if they do not comprehend that addiction it will come back stronger and will overwhelm them and destroy them. Probably some of us have observed that, or may even be living it. The only way that you can really be free from the suffering caused by pride, anger, envy is to deeply understand them. They are deceptive. They can never bring real happiness. It is only by directly confronting them that we can achieve that. Serenity, peacefulness, contentment, and acceptance are our goal, but they are not something that we try to fake, just trying to act that way, because that is a lie. Many people act serene but are not. They are lying to themselves. Happiness emerges spontaneously as we eliminate that within us that prevents it. What prevents happiness is not external, but internal. The obstacles to happiness and wisdom are within us. When you eliminate your anger, when you really comprehend your anger, you will not feel anger. You will feel love. Even when someone is being terrible towards you, you will not be angry with them because you will understand their suffering. You will feel compassion for them. That is how this works. Through comprehension we develop the ability to access serenity. The method is to combine the skills of the consciousness. How to Meditate on Something The goal of meditation practice is to reach comprehension and understanding of the qualities that make us suffer. The only way to fully and deeply comprehend them is to cultivate and use the powers that the consciousness has. They are very nicely synthesized in this simple equation. Concentration + Imagination = Meditation Concentration combined with imagination leads to meditation. This very simple equation will help you to develop your meditation skill to the perfect degree. If you have studied meditation with any tradition you may find that they only offer part of the equation. Some traditions only teach concentration practice. Some only teach imagination practice. It is rare to find those that still teach the combination of the two. It is the combination that utilizes the full power of the consciousness to change. That is what we teach: how to unite them. The method that we worked with before the lecture today is a method to effortlessly utilize those skills in harmony with each other. To do that successfully, you need to have already developed some skill. To utilize the technique that we call retrospection, you need to already have the ability to concentrate. Did you find when you are trying to do this practice that you could not concentrate? Were you forgetting that you were meditating or were you caught up in thinking or caught up in remembering things and you got distracted for a while? If so, that means you that you need to work with techniques to develop more concentration. That is what is mapped in the nine stages. When we get distracted easily, we are still in these lower levels of meditative serenity. What we need in order to use retrospection effectively is the ability to meditate and not forget that we are meditating. Whether you are sitting for ten minutes, twenty minutes, or an hour, we need the ability to be aware of what we are doing throughout that time. If we are forgetting that we are meditating and we get distracted and drift away for a while, then that shows us that we need to develop more concentration. It is advisable then for that student to daily work on concentration practices until they develop the ability to not forget what they are doing. This is called mindfulness: to remain mindful of what you are doing. When you are mindful, you are not distracted by anything. You remain aware of what you are doing. This is necessary to practice all day long, in everything we do. It is the most basic skill in meditation practice. Mindfulness is to be present and be aware of what you are doing at all times and to not be distracted. When you are driving your car, just drive your car. You are not thinking about other things. When you are cooking, you are only cooking, and you are aware of what you are doing. That continuity of awareness is what builds your concentration to be very strong. Secondly, you may find that while you may have some degree of concentration, when you try to remember the scene or the events that happened throughout the day, those memories are not clear. The memories are fleeting. You may be able to recall an image and it comes briefly and then goes away. Or it comes briefly and starts to change into something that did not really happen. That shows that you need to develop the skill of visualization more profoundly. In synthesis, once you develop concentration and imagination in combination with each other, we learn to use them in meditation practice, and retrospection is one of the purposes of that. It is the most significant, because it leads to comprehension. We sit to meditate, put the physical body to rest, and we direct and utilize energy to stabilize mind and body. We disengage from emotion. We disengage from thinking. We place attention and willpower on visualizing the event that we want to understand. Everything below visualization and imagination is suspended. The body, emotion, and thought are still and silent, and if something happens there we do not pay attention to it. We ignore it. You may be aware of it but you do not want to engage in it. This is the goal at this phase of practice. You will place attention on the thing you want to understand and visualize it. This thing you want to understand can be anything. It can be a memory, an experience, it can be an emotion, it can be a thought, it can be a scripture, a teaching, it can be a mantra. What we want to do is place that element that we want to understand there in the screen of our imagination and hold it there, and then we wait. You might wait a long time. If you are patient and your concentration is good, and your visualization is good, and you watch that element patiently, at some point something new will emerge. It can come out in a lot of different ways. Whatever that new thing is, we need to observe it in the same way that we are observing everything else: with indifference, without excitement or desire. For example, you are meditating on an event, and you are imagining it, and then some new scene or new image emerges, so you get excited. Instantly, everything is disturbed. The emotion clouds your vision. Or some image emerges and your minds starts thinking “oh, this looks like this and it reminds me of this.” That is intellect. That is associative thought. The experience is interrupted. The conscious aspect that was able to see without the interference of emotion or intellect is over. Now you are back into emotion and intellect, meaning your perception of reality is limited again. What we want to reach is the ability to not react, physically, emotionally or intellectually to anything that emerges, but to simply continue observing. With sustained practice, our internal vision will become more and more clear and stable, and new information will emerge more easily. When we start acquiring new information in this way, how do we evaluate it? How do we interpret it How do we know if it is reliable or just our mind play tricks? What should we measure that experience with? It is not emotion. It is not thought. It is conscience. It is that ability of knowing the truth, right from wrong. We have a word for it. It is really misused nowadays, but it is intuition. Intuition Intuition is knowledge in the heart that knows without thought or emotion. That is how you reach comprehension of something. Intuition is profoundly related to conscience. Intuition is a profound power. In the beginning, it is very delicate, like a baby growing. It has to be treated as such, with a lot of caution, respect, and a lot of gentleness, so that it can develop and become something strong. If you are growing roses or flowers in your garden, you do not want to go jumping around and beating on them. You have to be very respectful, very nurturing, very patient, and it is the same with intuition. If you approach it with this gentle nourishment and respect, it does grow into something very beautiful. Overpoweringly beautiful! Magical even. But it does not arise by force. It emerges with patience. This is what meditation practice is for. All of the techniques that any of you have ever heard of fit into the roadmap to reach this ability. Observing a breath, meditating on chakras, doing energy practices, doing pranayamas, doing yantra work, or visualizing the gods – all of those techniques are preliminary practices. They are just training exercises. They exist to develop your abilities so that you can in turn reflect on yourself and see the truth of who you are inside and change: so the conscience can look at the mind and see the mind without interference of body, energy, emotion, or thought. The conscience is rooted in the human soul (Tiphereth). This is where we experience it as an impulse in us. It is related to the human soul. It is that beating in the heart, that consciousness that says something is wrong don’t do that, or do that, and you do not have a thought as of to why, you may not be able to explain it logically, and it may contradict your emotions, but you know it is right. Conscience when it is developed becomes your connection to divinity inside of you. It becomes far more than just a beating in the heart, a little impulse in the heart. It becomes a torrent of knowledge that emerges out of the Divine. That little spark that we are experiencing as conscience is connected to the upper reaches of the Tree of Life. It is how we access knowledge (Daath), intelligence (Binah) and wisdom (Chokmah) and the crown of life (Kether). It is all reached through the conscience. You cannot hear the conscience when the mind is overactive and when we are identified with the physical body. That is why all these aspects — thought emotion, energy, body — need to become passive, receptive, so that the conscience can express as knowledge in us, real knowing. This is why we need meditation. The process of learning meditation is not linear. It is not limited to the moments you are sitting in meditation or sitting in your cushion on your bed. It is a living dynamic that pervades your entire life. The impulses that you get, the intuitive insights that you get from your meditation practice, will come throughout the day and night, not only in the time you are sitting in meditation. This is a dynamic that you establish through practicing at all times, in all activities. You will get visions in dreams. You will get impulses doing the dishes or in the shower walking the dog and you will suddenly feel it. Everything will change for you. You will just see it, you will know it, you will understand it, and you may not be able to put it in words, but you will know. That is the value of this lifestyle. Meditation is not simply an hour per day or ten minutes per day or an hour a week or whatever it is. It is a whole way of living. It changes everything you do and everything you experience. When you are really dedicated to it, it reveals life to you in an incredible way. Unfolding life right before you. Seeing layers and layers and layers in yourself and understanding traumas and pains and sufferings and peeling them back and liberating yourself from the suffering of those things. Every time you understand a knot of suffering that you experienced, you are liberating energy from that place it was trapped and that liberated energy grows the conscience. It expands it. Step by step, day by day, that skill is expanding and expanding and expanding and you are capability to understand expands not only to understand yourself, but to understand others. Not only are you reducing your anger and developing more patience, but you are developing more love. It is a simple thing, a beautiful thing, a difficult thing, but also effortless. Exercises With every lecture we give you exercises to do. At this stage of the course we want to continue to develop our ability to observe ourselves through the day. This is a sense, not just a skill. Self-observation is a sense; it is a way of perceiving and feeling. It is a way of experiencing. When you are observing yourself, it is based and rooted in being here and now and observing actively. You can know you are sitting there, but it is another thing entirely to consciously know that you are sitting there. You can know you are driving, but it is completely different to observe you are driving, to actively watch. What needs to happen in that observation is simply the inquisitiveness of looking, but not to add thought or emotion. Does everyone notice when late at night you hear an unusual sound in your house but you do not know what it is and that first instant you have that inquisitiveness? Only afterwards comes a thought, “what is that?” Then the mind starts analyzing the sound, and puts together that sound with things you have experienced in the past. That all happens very fast. The very first thing that happens is the inquisitiveness. There is an openness to mind, but the intellect rapidly narrows down all of the possibilities to what it is already known, and says “it must be the cat, or the neighbor, or the wind.” You see how the mind does that? We need to suspend that in meditation. Stop that when you are meditating. Instead, be the one who is simply looking and does not know the answer. No longer let the mind put labels and names and compare with its past experience, because its past experience is extremely limited and conditioned entirely by suffering. It does not know reality. If you want to know reality, you have to be willing to look objectively, and accept that you do not know the truth already. Self-observation should be the same. Observe yourself as if you do not know who you are. Be looking as though, “there is this strange thing, I am in this weird machine that is walking around and saying things and doing things and I do not know who is in charge of it. Sometimes it has these emotions and thoughts coming out of it. These words coming out of it and I do not know what it is doing and who is it that is running this machine.” This is how self-observation becomes broader. If you are going around thinking that you know yourself and you know who you are and what you are then you are narrowing your range of perception. Open it up and let go of all those notions of “I know who I am” because you do not, none of us do. The second practice is that to begin working on this retrospection daily. All day long observe yourself, and at night remember what you observed. Not analyzing, not labeling. We do not want the intellect saying “I did this and this and it was all very logical.” That is not how you retrospect. Retrospection is simply to recall the memories of what happened. No labels, no names, no analysis. It is where you just gather the facts. You are simply putting together all the available facts. Finally, after you do the retrospection, pick a fact that you want to investigate further. Meditate on that, but do not speculate on it. Do not let your emotions color it. Do not be distracted. Just observe it as it is and be patient, and wait to see if something new emerges. If not, don’t worry. Eventually, something will. The exercises for today, even though described in a simple way here, they do require that you have already developed some skill. You need to have sufficient concentration, you need to have sufficient relaxation, and you need to have sufficient imagination. You have to be honest with yourself and really recognize the level of development that you have and what you need. I do not expect that everyone listening to this lecture will be capable of doing these practices today. I am explaining them so you know what you are working towards. There is a goal and a purpose to all of this. Start where you are. If you have a completely wild mind that will not obey you and your body will not obey you at all, start at the beginning and train it.

In this tradition we study the scriptures of the great religions, we study all of the sciences, the arts, and the philosophies. In synthesis we study the whole breadth of knowledge that humanity has developed over the course of the centuries. But all of that study, knowledge, and information is useless if we are not able to apply it practically and produce deep changes in our personal lives, now. There is no value of getting an education if you remain the same. Knowledge must be capable of producing change, otherwise it is a complete waste of time. In our approach to meditation this is especially significant because the teachings of meditation are very subtle, and very difficult to understand with the intellect. That is why it is so easy to become confused by the philosophies and theories of meditation. It is easy to get tangled in the debates between schools and groups, to become attached to one group or tradition over another, to get lost in a labyrinth of competing ideas about meditation. For the student who is serious about making serious changes in their life, it is necessary to cut through the tangled mess of theories, philosophies, traditions, and ideas, in order to find that which actually results in change. The purpose of studying meditation is to change, so we must measure our study and our practice on that basis and that basis alone. Are we changing? That question cannot remain theoretical or philosophical. It must be answered in facts: observable, provable facts. Change Changing theories or beliefs is not real change. Changing our religion or our clothes, changing our hair cut or our diet… these are not real changes. They are superficial. We need real change, fundamental change: deep, profound, permanent change within. We need our mind to change permanently, for the better. To measure and confirm genuine, lasting change, our attention must be focused on facts of what is observable in our mind, heart, body, and behavior. Real change is measured by who we are inside. Our modern culture insists that material wealth brings happiness, yet the wealthy are as miserable as the poor. They simply have more money to spend on plastic surgeries, vanity, selfishness, etc. Yet, fundamentally, their external circumstances do nothing to change their fundamental suffering. They still die alone. They still get sick and suffer old age. They still suffer the loss of their loved ones and the loss of their wealth. We tend to measure our life by our external circumstances: our appearance, our age, our material possessions, our home, our family, friends. Yet, none of these things are reliable indicators of anything at all. We do not realize that the circumstances of life constantly change and are subject to forces that are beyond our control. Changes in our external circumstances are not a reliable measure of our spiritual status. The measure of our success in spirituality is the quality of our mind, the quality of our heart and how we respond to the circumstances of life. We all admire the poor man who in spite of his poverty is happy, content, friendly, patient. His attitude, the quality of his mind, is a choice he makes, and it gives him strength no matter his external circumstances. So, rather than just admiring this attitude, why not adopt it and make it a part of ourselves? It is possible to have happiness, peace, and contentment. The great masters have shown us it is possible. Isn't that the change we want? That kind of change comes from changing inside, not outside. Everything in existence is the way it is because of laws. If we want real change, we have to learn about those laws and work with them. This is why we are studying the facts of our lives: to see how those laws are in motion in our lives. The chief among those laws is the law of cause and effect. Today we are going to study how cause and effect are put into motion, and how additional laws direct the causes into effects. In this way, we learn how to produce causes and guide them to the effects that we want. To do this successfully, we first have to understand that we do not see reality, as discussed in the previous lecture. When we begin to look past appearances to see the forces that are actually at work, we come to understand that this modification to our internal behavior changes our external circumstances. Yes: we have always had it backwards. We mistakenly think that if we change our external circumstances we will then be happy and content. That idea is mistaken. Internal happiness does not come from external circumstances. Those who seek contentment and happiness in external things — people, places, possessions, status — are always and inevitably disappointed. The truth is that if we change internally first, then not only to we find a real and lasting happiness that does not depend on impermanent and unreliable external circumstances, but then our external circumstances also change. Everything that is happening in our lives is simply a reflection of our quality of mind, our level of being. People spend their lifetime trying to change their external circumstances, and they all die having failed. No matter what one acquires or how great ones external circumstances, all of that is lost at death: but you take with you your quality of being. If you live life attached to possessions and people, you will continue to be that way after death, thus you will never find contentment, happiness. When you study the great spiritual achievers, they did not focus on changing their external circumstances, but changing their internal circumstances. By changing their mind, changing their psyche, then their external circumstances changed as an outcome of that internal change. Then we must ask ourselves, and know how to answer: what is change? Genuine, deep, lasting change has three characteristics or three aspects: something dies, something is born, and something is sacrificed. When a change is profound, not only do we see these three aspects, but the consequences of the change fundamentally change everything around, as well. To understand change, we need to understand these factors and the environment they occur within. Change in levels We study the tree of life because it helps us to understand the laws of nature. One significant fact that the tree represents is that change flows from the subtle to the gross. To create something, first you have the inspiration, the idea, then the plan, then the process of figuring it out, then the building of it, until finally it becomes a reality in the world. Nature exists in a similar way: before anything happens in the physical world, it happens in the subtle, internal worlds. This is why our dreams can show us what will happen in the future. In dreams, we can see what is in formation and may eventually appear physically. We can use this knowledge to help us change. If we want our physical life to change, then we must change internally. It follows then that if our knowledge and understanding is deeper, more internal, then the change we can expect will be greater. That is, understanding something in the physical world is not difficult since it only requires observation by the physical senses. Yet, that level of knowledge can only lead to fairly superficial change. Compare that with knowledge of energy, or emotion, or the mind, or will… the deeper your insight, the more powerful it is, and the more it can change on the levels below it. When you comprehend something at the emotional level, it has the power to change you deeply. But when you comprehend something in the consciousness, in your willpower, that is far deeper and far more powerful than emotion. Deeper still is to comprehend something in the higher levels of the Tree of Life within you. The Tree of Life is a map of the external universe (our external circumstances), but more profoundly it is a reflection of ourselves internally. The primary value of the Tree of Life is what it reflects about our internal circumstances. The Oracle at Delphi said: “Know yourself, and you will know the universe and its gods.” The point is: do not look outside to fix the longing that you have inside. Do not go outside seeking external phenomenon to try to deal with your internal phenomenon. The pain you have, the emptiness you have, the doubt, the fear, the anger — all of those qualities that we have inside us — cannot be solved through any external influence. They can only be solved by working on them directly, inside. That is why we learn to meditate. Meditation is the science of understanding ourselves so that in turn we understand “the universe and its gods.” When we really understand reality, change happens. With real understanding, the illusions die, knowledge is born, and our old way of being is sacrificed. This is how we raise our level of being. Yet, the opposite is how we lower our level of being: when we fail to understand reality, we act mistakenly, and those three factors of birth, death, and sacrifice result in deeper suffering. Comprehension Simply looking at oneself and studying oneself is not enough. We need to acquire knowledge, comprehension, to consciously understand ourselves. It is not enough to simply look at ourselves. We already look at ourselves constantly; we are fascinated with ourselves. We are true narcissists, always looking at our own reflection, feeling our pain, pleasure, pride, shame. Yet, we continue to suffer, and continue to be deeply ignorant of reality. So, merely looking at oneself is not sufficient to produce change. What produces real and positive change is understanding, comprehension, in other words, real knowledge. This is why Sri Shankaracharya in his writing Atma Bodha (which we gave a course on a few years ago) said that knowledge alone leads to liberation. Nothing else, but specifically self-knowledge. That is the only thing that can lead to liberation. No God, no deity, no church, no religion, no master, no book, no nothing outside of us can give us freedom from suffering because that suffering is inside. Only by knowing what causes it can we become free of it. That type of knowledge, self-knowledge, only emerges through comprehension. We may have gathered a body of facts, but if you do not understand the facts you cannot solve the puzzle. Gathering the facts are good, it is necessary to observe oneself, to study oneself and learn about oneself and recognize the facts about oneself, but that is not enough. We need to comprehend them, to understand them. The word comprehension is very precise and scientific, and we use it in a very specific way to refer to conscious knowledge held by the heart, by the soul, by our essence. Comprehension has nothing do with the intellect, memory, beliefs, or traditions. It has nothing to do with what we have studied or what anyone else has said. That is intellectual information, not comprehension. To read a lot of books is an intellectual exercise. To go to a lot of lectures and teachings is good but it is intellectual and not comprehension. By comprehension we mean knowledge acquired by the consciousness. Knowledge that is part of a soul, part of our essence. Comprehension is the part of knowledge that does not leave you when you die. The kind of knowledge that you have when you are born because it is a part of you. It is a knowing that does not have a thought, it just knows. You cannot acquire comprehension simply through reading books or listening to lectures; you can read every scripture and scientific treatise on the planet and memorize them all, and yet have no comprehension of them. Observe how many so-called educated people there are, yet they remain terribly stupid and capable of the worst crimes against themselves and others. Education, memorization, imitation, do not mean anything if we do not have understanding. And yet, an illiterate person who has never read anything can have incredible understanding, comprehension, wisdom, which is intuitive, conscious knowledge about reality. Any one of us can acquire comprehension; it is not a matter of education. Rather it is a matter of using the consciousness in the right way. Comprehension is a type of knowledge, a type of understanding, that we develop when we learn to use the consciousness to understand reality. Yet, comprehension combined with education is even more powerful. Primarily, with both education and understanding, we need to focus on the facts. When we observe the facts and then understand them, we change profoundly. Someone who has heard about the suffering of war is very different from someone who has experienced it personally. That is the difference: on one side are our ideas, theories, beliefs about something, and another is comprehension, understanding, from experiencing, observing, and understanding the reality. We need comprehension of ourselves if we want to change profoundly. If we want our life to be filled with love, peace, contentment, altruism, and understanding, then we need to become free of anger, envy, greed, lust, pain, etc. so first we need to comprehend those defects. What does it mean to comprehend something? Let us analyze this a bit. Everyone knows that drinking alcohol is bad for your health. Yet, observe how many people drink alcohol! Similarly, everyone knows that it is bad to lie, gossip, cheat, steal, yet everyone still performs each of these actions. So, having the idea that something is bad is not the same as comprehending it. When you sit by the bedside of a person who is dying of a disease caused by alcohol, and you consciously witness their suffering, you will comprehend the reality of alcohol. You will stop drinking. When you are robbed, when your house is broken into and your personal things are taken or destroyed, if you consciously observe your pain, you will comprehend how stealing causes suffering. Thus, you will think twice if you are ever tempted to steal. Yet, someone who does not comprehend will want “revenge,” or “what they are owed,” and they will steal from others to “get what they deserve.” Of course, this only causes more suffering for them. Similarly, when you are caught lying, and you consciously see how your lies hurt others, you will resolve to tell the truth. You will have comprehended that lies cause pain. In this way, by experience and conscious observation of the facts, one acquires comprehension. Yet, it is possible to acquire the comprehension without having suffered through those situations. You do not have to die of alcohol poisoning to comprehend the danger of alcohol; instead, you only need to become conscious of the reality of alcohol. To become conscious of a reality like that is to become so thoroughly clear about it that there is no temptation to drink. Even if you were surrounded by all the most expensive and incredible alcohol that exists, you would feel no temptation to drink it. Therefore, if you feel temptation, it is because you do not comprehend. Instead, you still have desire. Through meditation, by activating the consciousness and observing the facts of our lives, we can acquire deep comprehension of the truth, seeing into the difficulties and problems in our lives, and understanding how they originated, and subsequently, how to change them. This is the value of comprehension: it shows us how to rise out of suffering. Moreover, once you truly comprehend something, that knowledge remains with you. It cannot be taken from you. When you discover that a person you have known for a long time has been lying to you, or done something really horrible, everything is changed then. You can never go back to seeing that person in the same way. This is similar to what happens with comprehension: when you see that the behaviors and qualities you have been trusting throughout your life are actually the causes of your suffering, you will never see them the same way, even if you want to. Comprehension changes you. How Understanding Arises Thus you can see that comprehension does not arise by accident or by a gift from the gods. It is subject to laws. So, if we want to fundamentally comprehend the reality of our lives, we need to work with those laws. Firstly, comprehension is a result of the law of cause and effect. Since comprehension is a function of consciousness, it is impossible to have comprehension if the consciousness is inactive, asleep. Therefore, the first step is to place the consciousness into an active, attentive state from moment to moment. That is what the whole of the course has been encouraging you to do: be awake from moment to moment. Be here and now. Observe the facts with full awareness of what you are doing in each moment. If the consciousness is actively observing the facts, then that cause is capable of producing the result of understanding, comprehension. This may sound very simple and logical to you now, but do not be deceived: it is not happening unless one is trained to do it. We are asleep and fascinated by illusions. We are not awake and seeing reality. So, first we have to train ourselves to be awake and cut through the illusions our mind is constantly weaving. In general, we have already studied the essential process that leads to comprehension: Ethics: by adopting beneficial actions, avoiding harmful actions, and sacrificing for others, the consciousness is stabilized, calm, serene. Samadhi: when serene, the consciousness can escape what conditions it, then it is free to experience its true nature Prajna: now having clear perception, one can see what is real, and understand it. The word prajna literally means “knowledge beyond.” This describes knowledge that is beyond the “small knowledge” (jnana) that we have in our intellect. Prajna is conscious knowledge, comprehension, that resides in the very essence of our consciousness, and is knowledge that we retain even after death. Prajna also indicates knowledge of the beyond, knowledge of the dimensions beyond the physical world, but especially knowledge of the Absolute, the Emptiness, the fundament. For our purposes today, prajna is knowledge of reality that is unfiltered by anything terrestrial. As we already explained, to acquire prajna one needs samadhi, and to acquire samadhi one needs ethics (sila). Let us put this structure into common english words: 1. From a foundation of ethical behavior (internally and externally), we set the stage for real meditation. Ethics allow the body and mind to relax and concentrate. 2. With meditation, we extract the consciousness from all the conditioning factors: body, energy, emotion, thought, etc. When the consciousness is extracted, it spontaneously experiences its true nature, which is bliss (samadhi). 3. In that state, by perceiving any given thing, it can see the truth of that thing, and understand it. This is prajna, comprehension. It must be understood however that the consciousness begins to comprehend in the moment it is active. When you are observing yourself consciously, you are in a position to understand what you perceive, and that understanding is comprehension. However, at our level it is filtered, influenced, by the presence of all the conditioning factors: physicality, personality, emotions, attachments, etc. Comprehension is possible anytime the consciousness is present and active. Yet, to really understand something, one has to be able to fully perceive it. Therefore, to fully perceive the causes of suffering — which are the desires and impulses in your mind — it is necessary to see them where they reside, and they do not reside in the physical world but in the internal worlds, inside of you. That is why it is necessary in meditation to leave the body behind, so the consciousness can go into those worlds and see those causes face to face. Liberation from suffering is only possible through comprehension of the causes of suffering. Thus, to acquire that comprehension one must become very skillful with meditation. And to become very skillful with meditation, one needs very good ethics. Once we establish the causes and conditions — ethics and meditation — how does comprehension arise? It arises by the action of the consciousness. The intellect alone cannot bring comprehension. Emotion alone cannot bring comprehension. Physical senses cannot bring comprehension. Each of them can participate, and provide their own point of view, but comprehension is a manifestation of the consciousness. In fact, since our intellect, emotion, and physicality are so corrupted, it is more likely that they will interfere with comprehension or even prevent it entirely. That is why it is best to learn how to meditate without the interference of intellect, emotion, or physical sensation. In all levels, whether during our daily life or during meditation, what brings comprehension is the conscience: that sense in our heart that knows right from wrong, that knows how to act even when it cannot explain why. The conscience is connected with the divinity within us, and if we learn to listen to it, it will lead us out of suffering. Our problem is that we do not listen to our conscience. Instead, we listen to our desires. Our conscience knows we should not cheat on our spouse, but our desire wants sex or attention, and when we find it, our desires drown out the voice of our conscience. We do not listen to it. And when we the storm of desire calms down again, we are overwhelmed with guilt, and have to deal with the aftermath of our adultery. We suffer, and cause others to suffer. If we had listened to our conscience, we would have avoided all of that. The conscience is a small spark of intelligence that does not reason or succumb to emotion or sensation. It is an observer, a knower, and a herald of knowledge. It expresses the will of divinity. It expresses the path towards liberation. It knows the way out of the darkness. We simply need to learn how to listen to it. Meditation is the way to learn. Through meditation, by stilling the body, mind, and emotion, we activate the consciousness, and sustain its activity. In this state of active observation, the conscience can be heard clearly. Where? In the heart. Not as emotion, but as intuition. The conscience is the embryo or seed of intuition. As we liberate the consciousness from conditioning, the conscience expands and becomes a very powerful sense that perceives and understands in a way that is far beyond the mind, emotion, or body. So, when we access the state of meditation, stilling the body, mind, and emotion, we place before the active consciousness any given thing — an image, a problem, a memory — and intuition can then penetrate into that thing in order to understand it. This is how we acquire comprehension, understanding. The mind cannot do this. Emotion cannot do it. The body cannot do it. Only the consciousness can. Thus, it is necessary to learn how to put the consciousness into an active state at all times. For this to occur, the consciousness must be the one in charge of everything within us: that is, we must use the intellect consciously, we must use emotion consciously, and the body consciously. We must use the senses consciously. This is all day, all night, in all actions. With this dynamic, we rapidly expand the consciousness and strengthen the presence of the conscience. We get accustomed to feeling the sense of the conscience (intuition) that knows what to do and when. And eventually, from this dynamic, comprehension arises. Comprehension emerges naturally, and cannot be forced. It does not respond to demands, to intensity or violence. Instead, it emerges that way a flower does: naturally, through nourishment and proper conditions. When you want to understand a problem, observe it steadily and patiently, with great attentiveness and serenity, and without speculating, guessing, believing, or analyzing; instead, just observe it with renewed freshness, like observing a sunrise. When you observe a sunrise, there is no need to intellectualize about it, or label it or describe it; words interfere with the beauty of it, and obscure its poetry. In the same way, when you want to comprehend something, you have to see it as it is, without your mind or emotion interfering. When you observe phenomena in this way — without trying to change it or take anything from it — comprehension will inevitably emerge. But if you are demanding, impatient, frustrated, intense, comprehension will flee from you. Furthermore, comprehension will emerge on its own, when it is ready, just like the flower that blooms in your garden. It may not bloom while you are seating in formal meditation. It may bloom in a dream, or while you are walking or working. It may bloom as you are reading or washing. At the moment it is ready to emerge, it will appear within you, and you will suddenly understand, and feel that wonderful feeling of “A-ha!” What causes this to happen is the continuity of conscious action in our daily activities and in our meditation practice. If you are always striving to observe yourself and be present, and you are meditating daily as much as you can, the dynamic of comprehension is put in motion. The more energy you invest into the continuity of conscious action, the more dynamic your comprehension will be. It is simple physics: action and consequence. So, use the body, intellect, and emotion consciously, but let the consciousness be in charge.

This is the tenth lecture in our course examining the most essential facts about meditation. We have explained some of the basic terminology and philosophy to help you guide your meditation practice, specifically how to focus on facts. Throughout the course we have been utilizing a variety of tools, especially the Tree of Life and the nine stages of meditative stability. These tools are based on facts, confirmable truths, experiences that anyone can confirm for themselves. I hope that the course has invited you to confirm those facts for yourself. In this tenth lecture we are going to talk about what all of this leads to. Why meditate? What is it for? What is the purpose? What is the result? What is it that we are seeking? And if we are not finding it, why? If we are not achieving it, why? In some sense we can say that the subject of today’s lecture, even though it is based on facts that have been proven by an uncountable number of meditators throughout history, it is also the most elusive, difficult, and contested, precisely because few people are willing to work exclusively with facts. Few people are willing to cut away that which is extraneous, an obstacle, or a veil, such as beliefs, traditions, theories, and philosophies that we adopt and hold fast to, but which in reality are based on nothing. As an example, we all have a sense of self, a sense of identity that we clutch onto with great strength, which in fact is meaningless, illusory, based on nothing but lies we tell ourselves. Because we are unwilling to cut that away, we cannot see the truth. Just as we do this as individuals, this is done by groups, schools, religions, countries, and civilizations. We clutch at illusions believing they are real, believing they are a defining characteristic of who we are as a person, as a people, but which are in fact nothing but smoke. The subject of today’s lecture, bliss, is the result of an effective meditation practice, and it is an inescapable result, unavoidable: it will happen if your meditative practice is true. This is because bliss is simply the natural state of the unconditioned consciousness. Every living creature has that. We all have that within, but it is veiled in us. Consciousness is the ability to perceive and to understand what we perceive. In it’s natural state, it is free of anger, unblemished by lust, pride, envy, greed or gluttony… in other words, it is bliss: happiness, contentment, joy, love, wisdom, beauty. All of us has seen it, and experienced it, but only fleetingly. When we look into the eyes of a baby, when we experience the pure and innocent atmosphere of a baby, we are sensing the unblemished, unconditioned consciousness in that child that radiates love, joy, happiness, contentment, purity, being in the moment, that quality of simply being content in the moment, happy and engaging with others. Observe the purity and innocence of a child, a baby: they have no worries, they are not thinking about the past or the future, but are very much in the moment, very imaginative, very expressive, very connected, but of course only at the level of a baby, as a child. Those qualities are the seed or essence of the angel, buddha, master, etc. We all have that inside of us. But as we grow up it becomes veiled and conditioned very heavily by our personality, by our experiences, by our mind, by our habits and tendencies, by our culture, by our language, by everything that we vest ourselves with, like layers of clothing to supposedly protect ourselves from pain, yet which in fact are the causes of our pain. The meditation practice that is rooted in facts and based on this proven ancient structure seeks to remove all those layers of lies and expose that primordial purity that we have inside. It is blissful, content, happy, and serene, spontaneously and naturally, on its own. That is why we study the Tree of Life, because it illustrates all of those layers in a symbolic way.

Meditation is a state of consciousness; it is not a behavior to imitate; it is not a posture; it is not something that can be bought. Meditation is a state of experience; a state of perception; a state of being in which the very essence of what we are as a living creature is freed of its conditioning, and is then able to perceive reality as it is. In other words, meditation is the consciousness in its natural state. This is supremely significant for us to understand if we want to understand life, suffering, and happiness. We experience everything through perception, but we do not realize that our perception is modified and heavily conditioned by layers and layers of factors. On a superficial level, our perception is modified by the body, by the senses — we may have eyes that are imperfect, ears that are imperfect, a sense of taste or touch that is imperfect; we may have a brain that is imperfect; we may have a nervous system that is imperfect, and all of these factors are merely on the physical level, the most superficial level of experience. What about the imperfections we may have psychologically that also modify and influence our perception? Those modifications are much more profound than the physical ones. They influence us in much deeper ways than physicality does. So to understand meditation, we have to become aware of all those conditioning factors. We have to learn about them; we have to learn to see what they are, to know what they are, and to learn to see clearly in spite of them. The essentials of meditation begin with understanding what consciousness is. Every living thing has consciousness — it is what defines life. Even though modern science is struggling to explain consciousness, to understand consciousness, there are many human beings who understood it very well and have taught how to use it very well, but unfortunately their teachings have been misunderstood and misapplied. If we study the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Padmasambhava, Milarepa, and many other teachers who understood consciousness, who taught how to use consciousness, we can learn how to use our consciousness in a better way. Fortunately, modern science is now trying to learn about consciousness and is even learning to listen to the carriers of those ancient traditions. We see dialogues opening up between physicists and meditators or doctors and meditators, because they are recognizing that meditation is a valid scientific experience of what the consciousness is. Consciousness is a living thing; it is what gives us life, it is what gives life to everything that exists, and it has certain qualities that we need to understand with explicit clarity if we want to understand religion, dreams, meditation, and even science. Science has recognized that consciousness affects science. If you have studied quantum physics, any of the new mathematics, dimensionality, anything that has been recently worked on scientifically, they have finally admitted that the observation (consciousness) of an experiment changes the experiment. Consciousness How do we define consciousness? The state of being conscious; knowledge of one’s own existence, condition, sensations, mental operations, acts, etc. Immediate knowledge or perception of the presence of any object, state, or sensation. An alert cognitive state in which you are aware of yourself and your situation Summary: a state of being, something experiential. Perception is experienced in the present moment. We are a perceiver, a consciousness, perceiving the experience of being. That itself is simple to understand, but we forget this all the time. We forget that we are a consciousness. To be conscious is to be here and now, to be aware of perceiving; that is what it means to be conscious, and that is the bottom line for any real spirituality or religion - to be here and now, to be awake, to be aware. That is the kindergarten of religion, of spirituality. Nowadays we hear “mindfuness” talked about everywhere. Everybody thinks this is some new thing, like a great breakthrough, but in fact mindfulness is the ABC’s and 123’s of every religion in the world; it is the “kindergarten” of real spirituality. Mindfulness, being present, is nothing new, but if you do not know how to be here and now continually, then you do not know religion because everything in religion and spirituality — especially meditation — cannot happen without consciousness active in the present moment, and the ability to sustain that active, watchful presence in the moment - to be present continually from moment to moment. It is to be an observer, to be in an alert, cognitive state, perceiving your state of being. That is to be conscious. That is the basis of all the lectures we have given up until now, and all of that is visually depicted in what we call the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life The Tree of Life is simply a map of consciousness, and it is mentioned in every religion of the world under different names. In the Northern European traditions they call it Yggdrasill. In the Asian traditions they call it the Bhavachakra (some people call it the wheel of Samsara) and Kalachakra. In the Bible it is called Etz Chaim (which, if you know Hebrew, you know that it is plural). In the Book of Genesis and the Book of Revelation (two of the most important books of the Bible) we find this described repeatedly: the Tree of Life. Unfortunately, most people who study those scriptures think it means a literal tree somewhere in the world. That is not the meaning. The Tree of Life is a symbol, it is a map of your Being, of your potential. It maps everything that exists. It is infinite, and it is a map of everything. At the very top, it depicts what is called the Absolute Abstract Space. In Buddhism, in Hinduism, that is called Brahma, Shunyata - the void, the emptiness, the potentiality from which everything else emerges. The Buddhist calls this Samantabhadra. From that abstract level there is gradual condensation into everything that exists. There are levels and levels of subtle nature, through multiple dimensions, that gradually descend and crystallize into materiality., which is the physical world represented by this very low sphere on this tree. This sphere is called Malkuth, which means the Kingdom. That is the physical world and our physical body. Everything that is more subtle than our physical body does exist, but outside of the range of our physical senses. What is the proof of that? You can prove it right now: where are your thoughts? You can experience your thoughts, you can perceive your thoughts, but not with your physical senses. They do exist, they are happening, but not physically. They are registered in the brain, the brain senses them, the brain translates them, but we do not perceive them with any physical sense. They are happening in the other dimensions. This is the case with emotions as well. What about dreams? We perceive dreams, but not through our physical senses. What if I ask you to tell me or to remember what you had for breakfast? The image comes there, right? You see the image? You see your breakfast? That is not physical, but you can see it. Remember your car? Remember who you live with? Remember your house? Remember your room? Those images are there, but they are not physical. The Tree of Life maps that for us. Malkuth represents physicality, while there are subtle, superior levels above it, and below it are inferior levels that are more dense. Classically these are called heavens and hells, but more specifically they relate to all the different parts of our psyche. The abstract emptiness, the primordial space, first expresses as a trinity that is described in every religion. A trinity has the power of creation. The power of three — represented by the sephiroth of the first triangle — gives rise to the fourth sephirah, Chesed, which represents what we call Spirit or Atman. This is what is often called “the Self,” the Inner Being, and “Our Father” in Christian terms. That in turn unfolds into Geburah, divine consciousness, which unfolds into Tiphereth, willpower, then into Netzach, thought, then into Hod, emotion, then into Yesod, energy, then into Malkuth, physicality. All of that is inside of us, in densities, subtleties, and layers. Here physically, in our physical bodies, we are not really aware of any of that. We are very much identified with physical sensations, physical experiences. We may have dreams. We may have fantasies. We may occasionally have an unusual experience that makes us believe there is something more than physicality, but since we cannot produce spiritual experiences at will, for us religion and spirituality are just beliefs, theories, concepts, ideas; maybe interesting, but we do not see it as real, because we do not experience it. We do not experience divinity, spirituality, because our perception is so conditioned, so filtered, and very heavy. The Tree of Life help us understand how to experience the other levels of nature, how to understand them, master them, how to change. Instead of merely believing in the Divine, we can experience it. Instead of theorizing or guessing about it, we can know, see, talk to the Divine, experience the Divine. All of that is entirely possible. It is strange how religious and spiritual people believe very much in their religion, they honor the saints and great teachers from the past and venerate the scripture, but as soon as we start talking about talking to an angel or talking to God, they think we are crazy. They believe it was possible in the past, but not possible now. But it is - it is our natural birthright. In fact, it is our purpose. Our purpose is to know the truth, to realize the reality. To do so we need to become conscious of the fact that physicality has its place in nature, but it is only a fraction of what exists. In the same way, light is a huge range of energy, but we only physically perceive an extremely narrow band of light. We think that what we see with our eyes is all that exists, but it is not. Light has an incredibly wide range and diverse complexity, and that is what is depicted on the Tree of Life - the whole range of light: the ultraviolet and the infrared and beyond, mapped. We have senses that can perceive the entire range of light, but they must be developed. Right now, those senses are asleep in us. Though meditation you learn to restore those senses and expand them.

Today we are going to talk about specific obstacles that the beginner faces in meditation practice. There are many obstacles to meditation, and in the previous lectures we pointed out some of the most fundamental ones: Not knowing what the consciousness is, and not knowing how to work with it. We all have ideas about consciousness, but we need to know experientially in the moment what it is and how to use it. That is why gave this lecture: Meditation Essentials 02: Consciousness Lack of energy. Usually, we do not have energy, because we have wasted energy, we have squandered it; we have invested it into harmful action. We need to learn how to save, accumulate, and transform energy in order to nourish our consciousness daily. That is why gave this lecture: Meditation Essentials 03: Energy Committing actions that impede meditation. We tend to act in ways that contradict our spiritual goals. We need to set up the prerequisites for good practice; we need good ethics; we need to know how actions lead to consequences that if we behave in certain ways, certain consequences always result, and our ignorance of that is a big obstacle for us. That is why gave this lecture: Meditation Essentials 04: Action and Consequence In today's lecture we are going beyond those preliminary obstacles. Now we are going to talk about obstacles the arise when we are practicing: either doing our preliminary exercises or in the actual practice of meditation. We previously explained that the state of meditation is a precise state of consciousness that we access when we learn how to harness concentration and imagination at the same time, together. To do that requires training, so most beginners start with developing concentration first. Preliminary Training of Concentration In the first six lectures of this course we have encouraged you to practice daily: Self-observation Concentration Self-observation is mindfulness of one's actions. It means to always be aware of yourself, to be present, to be in the moment, to be aware of your body, to be aware of your heart, to be aware of your mind, and to be cognizant of what you are doing at all times. That is the first exercise and that exercise establishes the very beginning of meditation. If you are not doing that, you will never learn to meditate. The second exercise is to develop your concentration daily by doing preliminary concentration practices. An easy practice for this is the observation of the sensations of the breath. If you have been following this course you would have been doing these exercises now for twelve or fourteen weeks. Now we are going to go into a new phase of work, where we are going to leave behind the preliminary exercises and go into something that is perhaps more difficult but also incredibly important: visualization. Deeper Training of Concentration Serenity is a result of how you put your consciousness and energy into action. That is all that determines your progress through the stages of concentration. This means that if you are not experiencing a change in your concentration, it is simply because you are not yet producing the cause that creates the result you want. The Defining Characteristics of Concentration In this tradition we learn that concentration as a state of consciousness has two important features that we need to be able to identify in our practical experience, specifically in meditation practice. Those two distinguishing features are: Vivid intensity, intense mental clarity Stability, one-pointedness Stability, one-pointedness, is the ability to remain focused on something without wavering. Vivid intensity is visual, imagery, that is something perceived; it is not imaginary, this is not just metaphorical. This means that real concentration is a form of visual perception. Thus, to develop real concentration, one must use visual imagery. This underscores the fact that most practices that people call "meditation" are actually just preliminary training exercises for relaxation or the very beginning of concentration. Real concentration utilizes the full power of the consciousness, whose very nature and function is the perception of imagery. The words "clarity" and "vivid" indicate the ability to perceive something without any obscurity. If I ask you to remember what you had for breakfast, an image pops up in your memory and you can perceive that, even it is only for an instant. How clear is that image? How vivid is it? Can you sustain it without being distracted? The qualities of that recollection are a reflection of your concentration ability. If that image is dim, fleeting, and hard to perceive, then you have work to do.

As people who are interested in meditation, we want serenity. In most cases, when someone is attracted to studying meditation or spirituality, it is because some suffering afflicts them and they want relief. Meditation is a known solution, a proven science that directly changes our suffering and gives us an opportunity to discover what is serenity really is. Serenity cannot be given as a gift. It is not something that we receive from the gods. It is not something that can be bought. If you have had some experience in this world, you may have encountered very poor people and very rich people, and you may have seen for yourself that serenity is unknown to them all. Wealth does not solve the problems of suffering or discontentment, since you can find poor people and rich people who are equally unhappy. You can also find poor and rich who are equally content. The difference between them is not their material possessions or their social status, it is their attitude. The difference is not material, it is psychological. Our attitude is really significant in spirituality. Serenity is a Result of Action When we use this word serenity, we are using it in a very technical way. We are describing a very specific state of mind, a state of being. Serenity is something that one experiences and lives. Serenity is not in the future or the past; it is something that can only be known in the present. Serenity refers to a mind that is at peace, stable, and calm, not in chaos or surging with thoughts, emotions, cravings, or fears. centers male 2015This image illustrates our five centers, also called three brains. These are psychological tools, machines that we are using all the time. However, we are not aware of them. We do not pay much attention to them. The quality of energy that passes through these psychological machines is what determines our experience of living in the moment. Your experience of life is the result of your psychological actions. The state of the energy that is flowing through the intellect is what we experience as mind or thought, and it has a range of qualities, yet one dominant characteristic: our state of mind is out of our control. It is a chaos that we seem unable or unwilling to control. We all know how our mind can be in constant movement, thinking, full of voices, thoughts, demands, questions, over which we seem to have no control. Anyone who has tried to learn to meditate knows this for a fact. Your meditation instructor tells you to sit and empty your mind of thoughts, and you cannot do it because thoughts just keep happening. That demonstrates a lack of serenity, and that is the result of not using conscious will to control the mind throughout our daily life. There is also a state of mind that we can call dullness or laxity. This is a state in which the mind is very dark, dull, and heavy, like molasses, like mud. It is like something thick and impenetrable. We can also experience that in our daily lives or in our attempts to meditate, when our mind just seems sluggish. In this type of state, we cannot think clearly. Usually, when we feel that, we run for coffee or we run to bed. This state of dullness is also a consequence of our psychological attitude, the way we use out mind from moment to moment. The extreme of excitement, agitation, stress, and high energy oppose the other extreme of dullness, obscurity, mental fatigue or mental laziness. That same pendulum swing between extremes happens in the other centers. Emotionally, the dominant characteristic is here as well: our emotions are out of our control, too. Our emotions just keep happening, and we cannot or will not control them or how they control us. We swing from one emotional extreme to another. We get emotionally excited, attracted, interested, wound up, with stress, anxiety, fear, excitement, and lust. This includes all forms of desires, where we become very fixated on something and our emotional craving and urge to have that is overwhelming. Why do we binge on tv shows or music? Because of the emotional states they provoke; we want to provoke those emotional states in order to avoid others. Why do we binge on Facebook or texting? Because we want to constantly feel the “emotion” of feeling like we are loved, included, valued, wanted. We do not realize that those emotions are illusions. Each of us has emotional addictions, emotional habits, and we do not seem to have any control over them. Worse is that our emotions — as chaotic and out of control as they may be, or as cold and lifeless as we may feel in our heart — do not correspond to reality. What we feel emotionally is subjective. How do we know this? Observe yourself. When a tragedy happens, notice the cold heart you have. When something wonderful happens to someone, notice the cold heart you have, or the anger or envy you feel. We can go to a party, everybody is happy, but we are depressed and miserable. We may even not know why. We just feel bad. If you pay attention to yourself, you will see that it is very common that your inner state does not match your external circumstances.

This image, a traditional teaching tool from Tibetan Buddhism, depicts a person beginning the path to meditation who starts at the bottom as a total beginner, and scientifically, logically, practically, step by step, moves through a progression of stages in order to reach the state of meditation. We are going to explain those stages so that all of us understand where we are in our meditation practice and what is needed to advance further. shamatha lg As we explained in this course, meditation is not an idea or a theory; it is not a belief. Neither is it a practice or a behavior to imitate. Meditation, properly defined, is a state of consciousness. Meditation is something any living thing can experience, because the state of meditation is the natural, unconditioned state of the consciousness itself. When the consciousness is able to perceive and understand without the influence of any trauma, desire, fear, anger, pride, lust, greed, gluttony, avarice — all of those limited, conditioning factors: aggregates, samskaras, kleshas, egos, defects, sins, or whatever you want to call them. When those veils are taken off of the consciousness, it is able to perceive reality and understand. This is a natural capacity of every living thing in its own level, because consciousness has many levels. That is what is depicted in this other image, called the Tree of Life. Tree of Life 2.0 plain Every living thing has consciousness at its level, from the simplest organisms to the most sophisticated and most beautiful. From the tiniest atoms and molecules and particles — even including light itself at its most basic level — has consciousness in its level. The whole Tree of Life represents levels of consciousness, from the tiniest and simplest all the way up to the levels of angels, buddhas, gods, and those beings that we from our perspective admire because of their perfection. Of course, we want to be like that, perfect, beautiful, serene, happy, powerful, and wise. The capacity for us to become like that is the consciousness itself. If we remove the filters that condition the consciousness and cause us to suffer, and likewise expand and grow the consciousness, we raise our level of being. That is what meditation is for. The state of meditation is essential for any person, who is interested in developing themselves as a human being. In the state of meditation you experience what it is to actually be human. Since most of us lack that experience, we are left knowing only the conditioning factors that cause us to suffer: desire, lust, anger, pride, greed, jealousy, fear. Therefore, we mistakenly believe that these conditions are normal. These conditioned qualities that we know as life are not normal, nor are they real “living.” Instead they are states of conditioned experience, limited experience, which we can call “suffering.” We can remove those veils through the process of meditation, the science of meditation, and thereby experience what it means to be a real human being, and then from there grow and expand to become something more than human, something truly incredible. That process of change is scientific. It is not about beliefs; it is not about accepting or rejecting, disbelieving, believing. It has nothing to do with our concepts or beliefs. This is a scientific and experiential process that anyone can utilize and understand through their own experience, if they work with the facts. The process is outlined simply by the Three Trainings: Sila: Ethics Samadhi: Ecstasy Prajna: Profound Wisdom Naturally, we all want to understand our suffering, understand the purpose of our life, understand why things are the way they are. To have that understanding reflects a type of wisdom that our intellect is not capable of. In Sanskrit, that wisdom is called Prajna, while in Greek it is called Sophia, and in Hebrew it is Chokmah (wisdom) and Binah (understanding). The consciousness cannot access that knowledge while its perception is filtered by pride, anger, lust, and all the other qualities that afflict us. So to reach that profound wisdom, we need to liberate the consciousness from its conditioned state. When the consciousness is liberated from those conditions, that state is called in Sanskrit Samadhi, which is translated here as ecstasy, because it literally means the ecstasy of the consciousness when it is not conditioned by discontentment, anxiety, fear, and the other qualities that make us suffer. That state of ecstasy or liberation can be attained in a temporary sense at any time if we know the causes that produce that liberated state. Samadhi can also be made permanent, so that that state of liberation becomes our normal way of being. To reach that level is a huge work that some call “self-realization” or “liberation.” That is what the spiritual path is all about. It is about liberating ourselves from the conditioning factors within us. The path to reach that liberated state, that ecstasy of the soul, is through ethics (Sila). That is why every scripture in the world emphasizes ethics: do not kill, do not steal, do not lie, do not commit sexual misconduct, do not ingest intoxicants, do not do this, do not do that. At the same time, they say we should adopt positive behaviors: sacrifice for others, become humble, become pure, become like those beings you want to be. In short, purify yourself of all your animal behaviors, your animal desires, and become something better, something human. Simple cause and effect produces the liberated state of ecstasy. When all of our harmful actions have been abandoned and we adopt beneficial actions, beneficial behaviors, not just physically, but emotionally and mentally, then by simple cause and effect we become happier; we are producing happiness around us in our family, in our friends, in our communities. By simple cause and effect our consciousness is no longer afflicted by the results of our previous bad behaviors. So we start to experience that ecstasy, little by little, as happiness, contentment, joy, diligence, the ability, the energy to work hard, especially on behalf of others. That in itself starts to develop the wisdom, Prajna, understanding, not only about ourselves and our own condition, but about the state of the world. So you see, to reach wisdom, there is no belief needed. This is very practical. Meditation is a state of consciousness. Experiencing the state of meditation becomes a possibility when we remove the conditions that prevent it. This is our focus in this tradition. We are not focused on chasing a state of ecstasy; we are not focused on trying by some method, by some trick or another, by some technology or some particular practice to provoke a state of ecstasy or some kind of pleasant sensation. That is a fool's pursuit, like chasing a rainbow; rainbows happen naturally when the conditions are exact. Similarly, samadhi happens when the conditions are right. That is why we do not chase samadhi: instead we are focus on removing the obstacles that prevent samadhi from happening on its own. What prevents samadhi are our behaviors, emotions, tendencies, psychologically. So by placing attention on working on those conditions, changing our behaviors, changing our psychology, changing our way of being, the samadhi will emerge spontaneously by simple cause and effect. And from samadhi comes wisdom. Ethics The first step of the three trainings — ethics — is explained in every tradition: the Ten Commandments, the Paramitas, the Vinaya, the vows and observances of each tradition. The results you achieve in meditation are directly proportional to how serious you practice ethics. If you only consider ethics as something optional or something occasional, then your meditation practice will precede in exactly the same lukewarm way. It either will not develop at all or only intermittent and shallow. If you take your ethics very seriously and focus yourself very intently on uncovering the secret causes of your behaviors, the secret motivations that lurk in the depth of your psychology, and you work very seriously every day to change, your meditation practice will develop correspondingly rapid, very fast. Ethics and meditation are totally dependent on each other. They are absolutely interdependent. You cannot separate ethics from meditation. The reason meditation does not happen for most students is because their ethics are poor. If your ethics are very strong, meditation is easy, spontaneous. Truthfully, meditation does not take effort. The reason people struggle is because their ethics are poor, which causes the mind to be disturbed. In the traditional lineages that study meditation, the beginners are always isolated from the world. They are taken from their families, villages, towns, cities. They live in an isolated place, like a monastery or a temple, and they adhere to a strict set of rules about their behavior. They do not associate with people who are drinking, smoking, or sleeping around; they do not pursue money, fame, comfort. They live day in and day out doing prayers, mantras, all types of observances to focus 100% of their energy on developing themselves. In other words, they isolate themselves from all temptation, with the result that their ethics are firm: they do nothing harmful to themselves or others. In that environment, someone who focuses seriously and works hard can access the state of meditation in a reasonable amount of time, because they focus intently on renouncing all the harmful influences that prevent it. Let us compare that with our lifestyle now, and the way we live in society today. If you observe the influences that we have around us, the types of behaviors that are encouraged by our family, friends, communities, television, actors, actresses, and pop stars — none of that has anything at all to do with improving our ethics or learning how to enter the state of meditation. In society, everything is focused on getting money, getting famous, getting materialistic things, being focused entirely on our external appearance and having absolutely no concern at all for our quality of mind or heart. Observed in this simple way, you can see why the vast majority of people who want to learn how to meditate fail. Therefore, if you want to learn to access meditation, start with ethics. Concentration We have to train the consciousness. Right now it is at the level of a baby or a child. It is very weak, unskilled, untaught. First we teach it how to pay attention from moment to moment all the time. We call this process “self-observation." Consciousness is that which pays attention, which perceives, which can observe and receive information from what it perceives. Consciousness can understand what it perceives. The perception of the consciousness is not limited to the five physical senses. It begins there for us, because we are here in physical bodies and the physical bodies that we have depend on these five physical senses in order for us to survive. But we have more senses. How do you perceive your thoughts? How do you perceive your emotions? You are able to perceive them, but not with taste, touch, hearing, sight. You sense thought and emotion with the consciousness. That is a type of perception. You can perceive thoughts and emotions flowing through you, and you perceive those in the same way that you perceive images and your memory. So if you remember where you were two or three hours ago, you perceive images and sounds, but not with the external senses. That is not physical. Those images are being projected, but not physically. No one else can see them. They do not exist physically, but they do exist. You perceive them with your imagination. We are discussing two capacities of consciousness: concentration, shamatha, calm abiding imagination, vipashyana, insight Most people who study meditation only learn preliminary concentration practices, such as observing the breath, repeating a mantra, observing an image and concentrating on that image, repeating a secret name. These types of practices are fundamental. They are important, but they are only preliminary exercises. They are not meditation itself. They are training practices. In some schools, like Tantric Buddhist schools, you also find techniques to work with imagination, where the student is taught very sophisticated visualization exercises. They have to study very deeply in advance a whole sequence of stages of imagination. They are developing concentration and imagination at the same time. This is the approach that we teach here. We teach a variety of preliminary concentration practices, such as how to observe the breath, how to observe the mantra, how to focus on any particular thing. It does not even matter what it is. You can concentrate on anything. If you want to concentrate on a rock or a flower, it is perfectly valid, because it is a preliminary technique for you to train your concentration. We also teach preliminary imagination exercises, such as to visualizing what you have read, to use imagination to visualize what you are studying. So for example, during lectures like this, some students will visualize everything that is being discussed, because that power of visualization is the power of the consciousness and by studying that way they learn much deeper, because they are utilizing the full capacity of the consciousness to study. Ultimately it is necessary to learn to combine concentration and imagination. When you learn to use them together you can access the state of meditation very easily. In different traditions the beginners are taught about this in different ways. Unfortunately, some schools discard imagination completely. They are able to develop very strong concentration abilities, but they are not developing the full capacity of the consciousness, because its ability is to perceive. Without developing visualization, imagination, they are discarding half of their abilities. We do not teach that way here; we teach how to use the full power of the imagination and the concentration in harmony with each other. This process of the monk ascending this winding path is illustrated as nine fundamental stages of concentration. That does not mean there are only nine states of concentration. There are many more. These are the nine fundamental ones that lead to the beginning level of concentration. These stages are not dogmatic, theoretical, or a matter of belief. They are states of concentration that all of us can experience. This image was created and given to us as a way to help people like us develop our concentration without having to guess or proceed blindly. With this teaching we have a map that guides us in the process of developing very robust concentration.

This image, a traditional teaching tool from Tibetan Buddhism, depicts a person beginning the path to meditation who starts at the bottom as a total beginner, and scientifically, logically, practically, step by step, moves through a progression of stages in order to reach the state of meditation. We are going to explain those stages so that all of us understand where we are in our meditation practice and what is needed to advance further. As we explained in this course, meditation is not an idea or a theory; it is not a belief. Neither is it a practice or a behavior to imitate. Meditation, properly defined, is a state of consciousness. Meditation is something any living thing can experience, because the state of meditation is the natural, unconditioned state of the consciousness itself. When the consciousness is able to perceive and understand without the influence of any trauma, desire, fear, anger, pride, lust, greed, gluttony, avarice — all of those limited, conditioning factors: aggregates, samskaras, kleshas, egos, defects, sins, or whatever you want to call them. When those veils are taken off of the consciousness, it is able to perceive reality and understand. This is a natural capacity of every living thing in its own level, because consciousness has many levels. That is what is depicted in this other image, called the Tree of Life. Every living thing has consciousness at its level, from the simplest organisms to the most sophisticated and most beautiful. From the tiniest atoms and molecules and particles — even including light itself at its most basic level — has consciousness in its level. The whole Tree of Life represents levels of consciousness, from the tiniest and simplest all the way up to the levels of angels, buddhas, gods, and those beings that we from our perspective admire because of their perfection. Of course, we want to be like that, perfect, beautiful, serene, happy, powerful, and wise. The capacity for us to become like that is the consciousness itself. If we remove the filters that condition the consciousness and cause us to suffer, and likewise expand and grow the consciousness, we raise our level of being. That is what meditation is for. The state of meditation is essential for any person, who is interested in developing themselves as a human being. In the state of meditation you experience what it is to actually be human. Since most of us lack that experience, we are left knowing only the conditioning factors that cause us to suffer: desire, lust, anger, pride, greed, jealousy, fear. Therefore, we mistakenly believe that these conditions are normal. These conditioned qualities that we know as life are not normal, nor are they real “living.” Instead they are states of conditioned experience, limited experience, which we can call “suffering.” We can remove those veils through the process of meditation, the science of meditation, and thereby experience what it means to be a real human being, and then from there grow and expand to become something more than human, something truly incredible. That process of change is scientific. It is not about beliefs; it is not about accepting or rejecting, disbelieving, believing. It has nothing to do with our concepts or beliefs. This is a scientific and experiential process that anyone can utilize and understand through their own experience, if they work with the facts. #meditation #yoga #love #mindfulness #spirituality #healing #spiritual #peace #selflove #motivation #nature #selfcare #inspiration #life #spiritualawakening #wellness #happiness #mentalhealth #energy #health #art #positivevibes #consciousness #fitness #wisdom #quotes #meditate #awakening #gratitude #soul

Meditation is a state of consciousness; it is a state of being. In that sense, it is something that is natural and inherent to all living things. It is the state of consciousness when it is unfiltered, unconditioned, and its natural state, without any interference in its ability to perceive and understand. That is the real nature of the consciousness. As we are now, our perception and our understanding are filtered. They are conditioned by many factors. In order for us to experience the state of meditation, we need to remove the consciousness from its conditioning, and when we can successfully do that, we then spontaneously and naturally experience the state of meditation. Therefore, you could say that the correct attitude to develop the skill to meditate properly is not to focus attention on trying to reach the state of meditation, but instead to focus attention on removing the obstacles that prevent it. This is a very significant difference. Most people who study meditation are seeking the state of meditation. They are seeking an experience or a sensation. They want to feel something or not feel something. Some people go to meditation studies and practice meditation to escape their life, to escape from themselves. Those who are chasing after a sensation or an experience will always be disappointed, because truthfully, real meditation does not work that way. In the first few lectures we explained that. Today we are going to take those principles a little bit further. We are going to talk about action and how through our constant action from moment to moment we create a trajectory or a movement across the whole of our life. If we become conscious of our action from moment to moment, we can become very skilled at accessing the state of meditation. It has to be approached in that way, because the state of meditation cannot be accessed unless one devotes everything to it; that may sound extreme, but it really does work that way. Meditation is a lifestyle. Meditation requires a very fundamental change in how we behave from moment to moment, how we engage the consciousness in each moment, how we utilize our energy in each moment, and how we utilize our perception in each moment. All of that united and working together is what makes our circumstances change, so that the state of meditation becomes more easily accessed, more easily experienced. If we do not make those fundamental changes in each moment, we will never be able to enter the state of meditation at will. If we are attempting meditation regularly anyway, we might be able to enter that state occasionally by accident, and this is what happens with most people who learn meditation practices. They may learn how to sit properly, they may learn a mantra, they may learn a posture, and they may learn certain type of techniques and rigorously work with them, but because they do not modify how they use their consciousness and energy during the other twenty-three hours of their daily life, they cannot access the state of meditation at will, but only occasionally by accident. They may go months or years of trying to meditate, even on a daily basis, but fail to access that state. As a result, they may become frustrated and abandon their practice. This is extremely common, however it does not have to be that way. If they learn to train their attention for the remaining time of the day that they are not actively sitting and practicing meditation, then when they actually do sit to practice meditation it will be easy because they have already been training all day and all night in preparation. That is why today's lecture is called "Action". To understand what we mean by action we are going to look at this image from Tibetan Buddhism of the stages of meditative concentration.

Meditation is a state of consciousness; it is a state of being. In that sense, it is something that is natural and inherent to all living things. It is the state of consciousness when it is unfiltered, unconditioned, and its natural state, without any interference in its ability to perceive and understand. That is the real nature of the consciousness. As we are now, our perception and our understanding are filtered. They are conditioned by many factors. In order for us to experience the state of meditation, we need to remove the consciousness from its conditioning, and when we can successfully do that, we then spontaneously and naturally experience the state of meditation. Therefore, you could say that the correct attitude to develop the skill to meditate properly is not to focus attention on trying to reach the state of meditation, but instead to focus attention on removing the obstacles that prevent it. This is a very significant difference. Most people who study meditation are seeking the state of meditation. They are seeking an experience or a sensation. They want to feel something or not feel something. Some people go to meditation studies and practice meditation to escape their life, to escape from themselves. Those who are chasing after a sensation or an experience will always be disappointed, because truthfully, real meditation does not work that way. In the first few lectures we explained that. Today we are going to take those principles a little bit further. We are going to talk about action and how through our constant action from moment to moment we create a trajectory or a movement across the whole of our life. If we become conscious of our action from moment to moment, we can become very skilled at accessing the state of meditation. It has to be approached in that way, because the state of meditation cannot be accessed unless one devotes everything to it; that may sound extreme, but it really does work that way. Meditation is a lifestyle. Meditation requires a very fundamental change in how we behave from moment to moment, how we engage the consciousness in each moment, how we utilize our energy in each moment, and how we utilize our perception in each moment. All of that united and working together is what makes our circumstances change, so that the state of meditation becomes more easily accessed, more easily experienced. If we do not make those fundamental changes in each moment, we will never be able to enter the state of meditation at will. If we are attempting meditation regularly anyway, we might be able to enter that state occasionally by accident, and this is what happens with most people who learn meditation practices. They may learn how to sit properly, they may learn a mantra, they may learn a posture, and they may learn certain type of techniques and rigorously work with them, but because they do not modify how they use their consciousness and energy during the other twenty-three hours of their daily life, they cannot access the state of meditation at will, but only occasionally by accident. They may go months or years of trying to meditate, even on a daily basis, but fail to access that state. As a result, they may become frustrated and abandon their practice. This is extremely common, however it does not have to be that way. If they learn to train their attention for the remaining time of the day that they are not actively sitting and practicing meditation, then when they actually do sit to practice meditation it will be easy because they have already been training all day and all night in preparation. That is why today's lecture is called "Action". To understand what we mean by action we are going to look at this image from Tibetan Buddhism of the stages of meditative concentration.

How Relaxing Music for Meditation Makes You Healthier and Happier 1. It Can Invoke Positive Emotions People meditate for a variety of reasons, but regardless of what they are, you can enhance the good effects by also listening to relaxing music. One of the impacts of soothing music during meditation is it brings out positive emotions, according to a 2018 Scientific Reports study. The research further said these types of emotions became much stronger when the participants associated the sound with their personal memories. The emotions remained positive, even if the music was already unpleasant and melancholic. This is important in meditation because, at the end of the day, you want to feel good about yourself and the entire experience. 2. Calm, Relaxing Music Can Enhance the Quality of Sleep If you suffer from sleeping disorders or problems such as insomnia, know you have many options for help. For example, Relax & Unwind can help reset your body clock so you can get your sleeping patterns back to normal. It’s ideal for people who are transitioning from nighttime to daytime work, as well as those who are constantly traveling. Meditation is also another way, especially if you combine it with relaxing sleep music. A 2019 survey among students showed it can help improve the quality of sleep. So far, no study can clearly explain how meditation music for sleep works, but a potential reason is it helps to slow down your breathing and heart rate. 3. Relaxing Meditation Music May Decrease Pain Perception meditation at the beach | Benefits Of Listening To Relaxing Music During Meditation | relaxing piano music | relaxing music A woman meditates at the beach while listening to music. Meditation can be beneficial for people who are experiencing pain whether acutely or chronically. The process can help them detach from the source of the pain, as well as reduce the feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression. When you meditate and listen to relaxing music, it may also decrease your perception of pain. 2019 European research even suggested it can be a low-cost pain management therapy after surgery for both adults and children. That may explain why you can deal with emotional pain, including heartbreak, better when you listen to music. 4. Music for Meditation Can Improve Brain Function Meditation is one of the best ways to enhance the brain as it boosts focus and concentration. A healthy brain, meanwhile, makes meditation easier. The question is, how does relaxing music improve your brain? A 2011 study said listening to music can actually light up many regions of the brain such as those related to creativity, emotion, pleasure, and even movement. Like the rest of the body, the brain needs exercise, and the way to do that is to engage its many parts as often as you can. RELATED: Meditation Tools 5. Relaxing Music Can Reduce the Levels of Stress You can never underestimate the impact of stress on your health. Not only can it weaken your immune system, but it may even boost your risk of developing an autoimmune disease. Stress is also a major risk factor for many chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and obesity. It may lead to changes in your gut and metabolism. Meditation can slow down the heart rate and ease body tension. Relaxing music for stress relief can also complement these effects. A 2013 experiment showed listening to relaxing piano music can help you recover from the stressors faster. It also impacts your endocrine system by reducing the production and release of cortisol, a stress hormone. 6. Music Can Help You Focus woman with headphones | Benefits Of Listening To Relaxing Music During Meditation | relaxing sleep music | relaxing music A woman with headphones around her neck Contrary to popular belief, meditation doesn’t mean the absence of distractions. The unnecessary noises and thoughts, though, may make the process more difficult. To maximize the effects of meditation, you can listen to yoga meditation music, Focus Urban Monk Audio Track or Gregorian chants. These types of relaxing meditation music can draw you in so you become less receptive to other forms of distractions. 7. Relaxing Classical Music Can Take Care of the Heart Meditating over the long term can have profound benefits to your heart. You can significantly reduce disease markers such as cortisol, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing. Classical music can do the same thing as well. In a 2016 experiment, those who listened to the sounds of Mozart and Strauss experienced lower blood pressure and heart rate. The works of geniuses like Puccini, however, are not the only relaxing music. Even the upbeat songs of ABBA have benefits such as controlling cortisol levels. 8. It May Decrease the Risk of Cognitive Impairment Changes in the brain such as mild cognitive impairment or dementia can affect your ability to meditate. While the mechanism of the disease is still subject to studies, music seems to be a possible preventive option. Studies such as the one published in Psychology of Music in 2013 showed music can improve cognition as it demands memory, technical ability, learning, and data processing. 9. Relaxing Music Can Be a Therapy for Depression woman meditating | Benefits Of Listening To Relaxing Music During Meditation | relaxing classical music | relaxing music A woman meditates on her bed while listening to music. While meditation can reduce the symptoms of depression, the condition can make you less likely to practice it. To help, try listening to relaxing music. In a 2017 review, 26 out of 28 studies that related music and depression showed a significant reduction in symptom levels. These effects occurred even when they were passive participants —that is, they only listened to music. Playing some relaxing music while doing your meditation may take getting used to, and it may not work if you choose the wrong tracks. That’s why you have to be patient and learn what sounds work best for you. Either way, music can boost the benefits you get out of meditation, and you can come out of every session feeling more satisfied, happier, and more mentally and emotionally balanced.

To understand today’s topic, which is energy, we need to remember that in the previous lecture we talked extensively about consciousness. Consciousness is that which gives us being. Every living thing has consciousness in its level. We have the consciousness of humanoids, but our mind, our psyche, is almost indistinguishable from the level of the animal kingdom, because we are still ruled by instinct and desire. The only difference between us and animals is that we can reason. We have logic, intellect. We have the humanoid body, but psychologically we are not very different from the other creatures that live on this planet, specifically from the animal kingdom. We have not moved much beyond the animal level. Just observe the world around us; observe our behavior. This world is being consumed, destroyed, by our instinctual, animalistic behaviors: instinctual possessiveness, endless violence, theft, fighting over territory, fighting over sex, the instinctual domination of one group over another… The mindless destruction and poisoning of our own food, air, and water. The decimation of all species not our own. In our instinctual drive for security and survival, we are killing ourselves and killing our planet. This is crude, base, animal behavior. It is not the behavior of elevated beings. We would all like to have an elevated level of being, and we all think of ourselves as elevated and evolved, but the reality is — when we are honest and look at the facts of the situation on our planet right now — we have to face the fact that our level of consciousness is very low. Our interests as a humanity are power, sex, money, materialism, and sensations. We want to get as much, accumulate as much, stand out as much as we can before we die. We are convinced that we live once, and during that time we want to dominate others, to be recognized, and enjoy ourselves as much as we can and go out in a blaze of glory, no matter what it costs. This is our modern ethic. Obviously, we are completely mislead and misguided. If we use the power of logic that we have, the power of reasoning, and we use it with our consciousness unfiltered, our intellect can become an incredibly powerful tool. Some examples that you can look to of how powerful it can be are people like Buddha Shakyamuni, Jesus, Moses, Padmasambhava, and Milarepa. There are many examples of great enlightened humanoids that went far beyond the animal level. Our goal in learning meditation, learning about our state of being, is to become elevated, to escape the animal level and become something more than "intellectual animals." This is really the purpose of being alive: to become something more. To do so requires that we first recognize what we are now. As you know, any action requires energy. In this very instant, you are consuming a great deal of energy through how you are paying attention. Where you place your attention expends energy. There is a change that happens, not only in the one who is expending energy, but where the energy is spent. Modern science has already stated (even though humanity does not understand it) when you observe something, you change it. This is known in physics. It is proven, and yet we the common people of the planet do not understand it at all. We think that we are in a psychological "cone of silence," a place of psychological isolation in which we can do whatever we want and our actions in thought and emotion do not affect us or anyone else. We mistakenly believe that we can think whatever we want, feel whatever we want, look at and observe anything that we want, fantasize whatever we want, and there are no consequences from those actions. We are wrong. The use of attention is a use of energy. The use of attention is an action, and all action has consequence. Why? Because energy and matter are just two forms of the same thing. This is also known in science. Einstein explained it well, but once again, no one understands this fact. (We might intellectually understand it, but we do not comprehend it consciously: this is revealed in our actions. Our actions prove that we do not comprehend this fact at all.) The Tree of Life is a map of energy, matter, and consciousness. #energymeditation #energyhealing #meditation #reiki #tarotreadings #tarot #intentionsetting #healingplants #sistership #guidedmeditation #kitchenwitch #greenwitch #remotehealing #womenworkingtogether #reclaimyourspace #hearthealing #moonalignment #wellwomancircles #quantumtouchhealing #chakraspinning #energyreltrieval #natureshealinggifts #spritualinwiltshire #meetyourguides #mediumwiltshire #usuireiki #animalhealing #meetyourangels #horsehealing #moonmeditations

Dr. Joe Dispenza guides you in meditation.

Dr. Joe Dispenza guides you through a meditation to Bless the Energy Centers In this updated version of one of our most popular guided meditations, Dr Joe guides you to place your attention on each one of the energy centers of your body to influence them from a state of incoherence (disease) into a state of coherence (balance and harmony). You also learn how to change your brainwaves and enter into the autonomic nervous system so that you can program your body into health. This first fundamental meditation of the series teaches you the process of identifying your energy centers and the practice of convergent and divergent focus.

Dr. Joe Dispenza guides you through a meditation to break the habit of being yourself.