Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Excerpt: “The obstacle is the ego. With all of its chaotic thoughts, negative thoughts, thoughts of lack, of anxiety, of anger, of lust, fear. The ego is a luxury we can no longer afford. It makes our lives unmanageable, as the twelve-step people would say. You can’t manage your life if your life is ruled by an ego because an ego is inherently chaotic, ambivalent . . . and filled with internal conflicts that get projected as external conflicts, paralysis of will, and self-deception of every sort. And all of this produces: suffering. Suffering is based on illusion because the ego is an illusion, and all of its thoughts are illusory. Once you realize you cannot trust those thoughts, you will accept only the thoughts that come from the Source, and they come as inspirations, intuitions, Aha-experiences, and wordless knowing of the true nature of reality – that leads to spontaneous egoless action.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 7, 2012.

Excerpt: “What the path of Advaita says, that is different from every other path, is: all you really need to do is ask the question ‘What am I?’ And just by asking the question, not even getting an answer – in fact you don’t want an answer –  as soon as you get an answer you get another belief system, another mythology, another symbolic situation that needs to be overcome because every symbolic situation you are in is the obstacle to the realization of what you are. So you don’t want an answer to the question: what you need is a wordless realization of your being, which you can only get by inquiring – not conceptually, not to find some new map or some new symbol – but to free yourself from all the symbolic constructs that have then created the need for some journey or salvation or some grace from a God, whether out there or in here; it doesn’t even matter. So the question is meant to get you out of every belief system and to keep you from creating a new one because what you need to be free of is beliefs…” Rec

Excerpt: “All suffering is caused by identification with an object in consciousness: primarily identification with the physical body, and secondly, identification with language, thoughts. And those thoughts are charged with emotions, impulses, drives—images that create nostalgia, anger, fear, whatever. So there’s a whole cluster of objects, mental objects, that tend to arise that produce effects of suffering of different kinds. And to the extent we’re identified with those objects in the mind, we are on the wheel of karma. . . . And because of our identification with the body, and with thought, we cannot escape because every effort to escape just tightens the noose more: we affirm the illusion that is the cause of suffering. . . .  But there is a very simple way out, and that is nonidentification with any mental objects and instead realization of the Self as the Empty Consciousness in which those objects arise.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, May 24, 2012.

Student Question: How can I love my daughter without attachment?

Student Question: Last week you spoke about the difference between the ego mind and the Sat mind, and I didn’t really understand what the Sat mind is.

Student Question: When one is in a meditative state, in a state of awareness, and then starts to lose that awareness by getting pulled down by the lower death drive and the lower chakras. What suggestions do you have to help prevent one from falling again and again?

Student Question: There is an attachment to lack, which we don’t want to lose it seems because unconsciously it defines who we are as an ego. So the question is, how does one “attack” that attachment to lack?

Student Comment: Last week I talked about the excitement of different activities, and there are many of them that I feel so excited for. But then it creates this sense that there’s not enough time: I can’t do everything and I don’t know how to prioritize. Then I get this overwhelming sense because I want to do them all and the anxiety is coming up from that.

Student Question: We have talked about a healthy super ego. For example, recognizing where one has been inaccurate, even if it’s subtle, and not wanting to repeat that behavior again. I can see how that recognition could escalate into more of a negative attack but, how do you discern the difference?

Student Question:  What is the relationship between karma, transformation and the supreme will of God?

Excerpt:  “There is an inherent and eternal love between the soul and God.  Sita is the signifier of the soul and Rama of God - and Sita and Rama are always together - and when Sita does become separated from Rama, through Sita’s ignorance and stupidity – karmic enmeshment with the phenomenal plane – Rama always comes to rescue her – and Rama is always victorious – and Rama is always able to build an army of monkeys to be able to help him.  Monkeys are just a signifier for yogis – because yogis are those who are coming out of the monkey stage into the divine stage through their love for Rama – our love for Rama….  And so all meditation is, is the act of love between Sita (that’s you), and Rama (that’s also you)… and that’s what love really means - that you meet yourself - that love is union with the source of your being…  the soul is that part of yourself that wonders into this dream field called the universe to have experiences and challenges, delights… all created by Rama for the benefit of Sita, but then w

Student Question: What is the superego? If you dissolve the ego, will the superego still be there?

Excerpt: “Philosophy in the modern West . . . distinguished religion from science. Religion was mythical, and science dealt with facts. . . . Postmodern Western philosophy now conceives that science itself is a myth. . . . When it comes to ultimate questions, science has no answer to them; it has to presume an origin, but it doesn’t even attempt to account for it because it cannot account for anything ultimate because that would be religion. But if, in fact, there’s no difference between religion and science, and if they are both mythological constructs, then it’s important to understand what myth is. And as Joseph Campbell has explained very clearly in all of his works, myth is metaphor. But what is it that’s being metaphorized?” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, April 26, 2012.

Excerpt:  “We are here to realize the true self.  The implication of that is that we have not been living in our authentic self, but in some false - unreal - persona… and if we are not living in our real self then we are not living in the real world either…  and if the world is false and the self is false, then things are going to happen that are unsustainable because the false cannot survive the test of truth… and because so many on this planet are now living in the false self, we have a false world that is collapsing… you cannot live in that state of hypocrisy without karma hitting you pretty hard….  So everyone is getting lessons in karma nowadays but we are not here to worry about the political issues of the world and their karma… we are here to work out our own karma…  to make sure that we are not secretly killing elephants when we are pledged to protect them… to make sure that if we are Sat Yogis, we are living up to our vows and living a yogic life and living as what Linji - the great Zen master - the

Student Question:  What is déjà vu?

Student Question:  How can I know if my meditation practice has stagnated?

Student Question:  How can we guide children from a very early age to find their awareness?

Student Question:  Is the body a reflection of the mind?

Student Question:  Something that I have been thinking about recently is this idea of “the third.”  I know you mentioned before when we were talking about the “I of the Statement” and the “I of the Enunciation” that there is also the “Third I”; the “I of Awareness” or the “I of Shiva.”  We have also studied a module in which the father comes in as the third to break the mother and child dyad, and I am sure there are many other examples, but I was just curious about the significance of this idea of the third and what it really means.

Excerpt:  "Most religions are the worship of a yogi - they are constituted by that….  Christ was a yogi – Buddha was a great yogi – Mohammed was a yogi – Moses was a yogi… and so most of the religions today are either worshiping the yogi or worshiping the book that the yogi wrote, or was channeled through him… but religion was originally simply the act of becoming a yogi… so the religions that we have today are indirect and there is certainly benefit in worshiping a great yogi, but that is very different from attaining the state of consciousness that Christ attained or that Buddha attained….  And so merely worshiping and trying to imitate the life of a great yogi, while an important step, keeps one within the ego… it doesn't transcend the ego into direct God realization, and that is what we are here to do… to become the goal that those great yogis pointed at for us….  Christ would have considered Christianity to be heretical – he never said worship me – be one with the Father – I and the Father are one - you