Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Student Question:  Is it possible to be in a state of open heart without being vulnerable?

Excerpt:  “In our modern world we have lost the joy of living with nature.  We have become so alienated in these cities with their pollution and there artificiality and now even more so with the internet and the media we are several steps removed from the real of life...  So an Ashram is a chance to get back to our real values….  Soon enough people will come to realize that food doesn't grow in the supermarkets and they will be surprised to find that there is nothing on the shelves…  Only then we will remember that food comes from farms and from people getting their hands dirty in the soil and from milking cows and from living in harmony with nature and following the laws of nature… It is because we have arrogantly tried to deny those and control those - and even genetically modify the products of nature - that we are suffering the karmic blow-back of that arrogance….  So an ashram is a humble effort to come back to our roots….   You have to be very humble to get down on your knees and dig in th

Student Question:  I have something that I would like you to clarify please.  When you are being silent is it that there is no such thing as silent awareness?  Is it rather that when you are in silence you experience awareness.  Is that a good way to think about it?  This came up because I was contemplating if there is a difference between being silent and being aware, i.e. silent awareness versus just silent nothing.

Student Question:  I have noticed that after having spent days at a time in Maya, I become so disgusted with it and am totally exhausted by it, that I don’t even want to bring it up in a session as I am sick of thinking about it.  I understand that this is the censor repressing the problem and it is similar to what I experienced in tonight’s class.  I have been in Maya for a couple of days and I came to class thinking that I am going to speak to you about it, but then I come and hear an incredible teaching and have a very meaningful meditation and then that Maya kind of dissolves as you realize how ridiculous it was.  Now I know that the problem has not been processed and I wonder if it is even real.  What should I do?

Student Question:  What is character and how is it formed?

Student Question:  Is there a distinction between raising levels of consciousness and expanding awareness?

Student Question:  I am in a situation where my parents want me to do a certain thing and they believe I have to do it.  I don’t want to do it just because it is their expectation, although I do believe that it is something worth doing.  If I choose not to do it in order to pursue something else, then I am left feeling bad about not doing both something worthwhile and what my parents wanted me to do.  In this case the feeling of guilt is created by doing something that I think is more important.  What should I do?

Student Question:  What is stubbornness, and when it becomes too intense, does the ego then crack?

In the postulant preparation class we studied the Seven Virtual Matriculations.  The last one was to realize that we are the oneness which dreams the cosmic dream and that that in itself is a dream, and needs be let go of.  I was thinking that if all of these habit’s that we are developing are part of the same cosmic dream, then are these all ways of enjoying it?

Student Question:  What is inverse narcissism and how does it work?

Excerpt:  "In childhood a process begins that the psychologists call socialization… what it really consists of is the stapling together of the pure awareness that is the self with the belief enforced upon you that you are the body (the identification with the body)… that is controlled by the third element which is language… you are given a name and the name sutures consciousness to the body and from then on people can call you and tell you what to do and that is in societies interest… once you buy into that through your affirmation of that socialization process, you no longer have access to the pure awareness that is your eternal self…."  Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 08, 2011.

Student Question:  I was wondering if everything outside of awareness like fears for example, are forms of intelligence or entities that are seeking expression through awareness, or even us as that awareness?

Student Question:  How can I be loyal to myself while the ego’s agendas are still running?  How can I make good decisions when it’s coming from an egoic state?

Student Question:  Why is it so hard to keep ourselves from thinking when meditating, and what can we do to maintain these small gaps of silence?  Is there a practice that can accelerate the process?

Student Question:  What is worry?

Student Question:  Is suffering always accompanied by pain, or can you suffer without pain?  Do they necessarily go together?

Student Question:  In the study group we have been talking about desires as part of a must be logic and I wanted to know if you could expand on that?  I found myself using it recently and it feels like you say “no it’s not that it must be; you must want it”.  Take for example the case of Liberation: you must want liberation, but it’s not that it must happen.

Excerpt:  “Buddhists say that there are three types of desire.  The first one, the lowest one, is the desire for pleasure.  Then they say that more refined minds realize that what the desire for pleasure really was, is the desire to be, and that that’s the real underlying intention of all the various particular desires and objects of demand and lust…  All of those objects that we think cause us pleasure actually do not, but they give us a sense that we are.  They give us a sense that we can control something out there “therefore I am”…  But of course the object is always a disappointment because you don’t really want that object.  It’s not it, and it doesn’t give you the truth of your being, and therefore it is always something that turns into pain rather than pleasure. And so the ego eventually settles for the equation “I am suffering therefore I am”…  But that doesn’t do it either because it [the ego] realizes that it is actually suffering because it is not, but it wants to get out of it suffering so the th

Student Question:  Recently someone told me that chilies are just pain, or rather that what’s in the chili is not flavor it’s just pain.  I have done some study on this and I started tonight’s meditation in a lot of physical pain in one little area of body and then it went away.  I know that obviously it’s not really a pain in the body and I even feel that it’s not a pain in the mind, but for whatever it’s not, I don’t understand what pain is?

Student Question:  I was wondering if at this center, in regards to the running of it, if it is based upon some kind of divine ethics or some kind of divine ethical framework?  What is the logic of the ethical framework for a spiritual community?