Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Excerpt: “. . . [Yoga is] the science of consciousness. It’s the science of how to develop the full potential of our consciousness – because we are not born with an instruction manual as to how to do that. But we have many higher centers of our mind, not just our brain but our mind, our soul, our spirit, that need to be activated in a systematic manner in order to be able to unfold the full powers that are latent in us. They call them siddhis in yogic terminology. And there are seven major modalities that emerge, naturally. The first one is an increase in our intelligence because as you go inward you have access to more of the wisdom that comes from the deeper levels of your mind, and you see reality in a more subtle way. . .” Recorded on the evening of Saturday, January 18, 2014.

Shunyamurti addresses the importance of giving thanks - at the Enlightenment Now retreat.

Excerpt: ”Christianity is one of the most potent forces in the world. Both the Christian myth and the Christian teachings are of extreme importance to us all. In some sense I think the world has not even been ready for Christianity until now. A true Christianity may only be beginning to emerge. Much of what has passed for Christianity in the passed has actually been a defence against the teachings of Christ – a fear of them, a denial of them even in the form of worshipping Christ. For one thing Christ taught that the love of money is the root of all evil, and yet we’ve created a society based on the love of money, and we’ve called it a Christian society, something’s wrong with that picture. . .” Recorded in the evening of Thursday, December 19, 2013. 

Excerpt: ”. . . And so this concept of Hanmaum (One Mind) is central to every true path of spirituality. That our individual minds are a subset of a larger mind and then a larger, and a larger, and ultimately there is one single intelligence that flows through all of the myriads of life forms and even what we think of as inanimate objects. They all participate in the same ultimate intelligence. And thus the entire universe is intelligent. And if there are parallel universes they are included in this as well. Everything that can possibly be is part of a single intelligence that includes all the past, the present, and the future – which is all now to that intelligence. Because that intelligence that is beyond space and time creates, sustains, destroys universes, recreates them, it all happens within a timeless instant. But that timeless instant for any given creature within a universe can last centuries or millennia. But time is an illusion from that perspective. But the key teaching about Hanmaum is: you are t

Excerpt: “. . .But what the great yogis say is that in order to see God, your mind has to have been trained, purified, in three stages. The first stage is truthful mind. If the mind is not in Truth with itself, and with God, in integrity, in sincerity, earnestness, openness, transparency, maturity, willingness to let go of ones illusions and delusions then nothing more will happen; then you need a drug. But if the truthful mind is achieved, there will be an automatic flow into the next stage. . .” Recorded on the afternoon of Monday, May 6, 2013.

Excerpt: ”. . .In the same way Christianity says body consciousness is a sin – but really, yogis’ view of it is that it’s worse than a sin; it’s stupid. The idea of sin is itself sinful because it takes place within the same framework of ignorance and duality; that’s the problem. We have to get out of that whole framework because all that does is lead to more judgements, super ego attacks, and a quicksand of self-loathing that is useless for anyone on a spiritual path. So we have to get the fact that what we’re doing when we’re meditating is we are accumulating power. It’s as simple as that: do you want to be powerful or do you want to be weak?” Recorded in the afternoon of Tuesday, June 4, 2013.

Excerpt: ”Carl Jung, in his approach to transformation, had no interest in child development . . . he was only interested in people going through a midlife crisis. He didn’t do child therapy, he didn’t do adolescent therapy — he didn’t even feel it was appropriate to do that. What he felt was missing from Western culture was that process of the cocoon in which the caterpillar would enter to become the butterfly. And he wanted his approach to be that cocoon where the transformation could happen to the ultimate development of human capacity.” Recorded on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 7, 2013.

Excerpt: “The prison that our consciousness is in is made up of the opinions of others. And when you let go of your belief in those opinions, which often comes with anger at those opinions or a seduction by those opinions or any other attitude toward them, then they become the identity of the consciousness with all of the fine print and the limitations that those identifications come along with. And so the spiritual process is simply letting go of those opinions. . . .” Recorded in the afternoon of Monday, October 14, 2013.

Excerpt: ”. . .And by doing that we have kept our heart closed. And the power of our heart’s energy of love emerges in a state of devotion. Devotion is what realigns us with the universe so that the power of attraction will become manifest. But we have to be first attracted to the source of what is real in the universe for that source to feed us with grace and blessings. And our devotion to that True Self is essential, and that is what nourishes us, because the more devotion we give the more love we receive, the more light the more flow of divine energy of shakti moves through us. And people are afraid of overdosing on that light and that love; there is a terror of love. Because the more devoted you are the more you find that the defense mechanisms that you created to protect yourself against others have to fall away. You become more vulnerable, you become more open, more transparent. But through that devotion, you are then able to speak Truth, you are then able to act courageously, and to triumph over all ne

Excerpt: ”We’re like people who own a mansion with a hundred floors and a thousand rooms, and we’re living in the entrance hall. And we feel like we’re impoverished and we’re stuck in this tiny little space. And we don’t dare to look at the whole place we have! Our consciousness is infinite. We have so many latent powers, that if we knew about them, we would be in astonishment right now, in bliss, just exploring the treasures that are there waiting for us to start using.”  Recorded on the evening of Thursday, October 3, 2013.

Excerpt: ”Many people don’t know that Bobby McFerrin got those words from a poster he saw of Meher Baba, who was one of the great spiritual teachers of the last century. . . .And the full message was not just ‘don’t worry, be happy,’ it was ‘do your best, then don’t worry. Be happy in My love, I will help you.’ This is of course being spoken as the voice of God. And so out of context, the ‘don’t worry be happy,’ is like whistling past the graveyard. But if you’re happy in God’s love, then you will receive power, grace, support, energy, shakti, to succeed in what you’re doing. And if what you’re doing is an act of karma yoga, is an act of service, is not simply for the ego’s pleasure or benefit, but to serve God and serve the world, then you will be happy because you will receive God’s love, and you will receive God’s help.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 12, 2013.

Excerpt: “. . .But the reason that religions have holidays is to express symbolically what can otherwise not be understood by the ego mind – using actual conditions of the physical universe in order to express some very deep insights into the nature of reality that were conferred by the Supreme Being. So there’s a little known Shiva cult that was a late arrival on the scene in human history that left India and entered into the Middle East, and the people who were Shiva worshipers became known later as Jews. And the name Jehovah and Shiva, one derives from the other. And this happens to be the main holiday of this Shiva worshiping group, called Rosh Hashanah.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 5, 2013.

Excerpt: ”In the west, since the ascendence of the roman church there has been a sense that humans are distant from God, from ultimate reality, and that you need som kind of intermediary, you need a priest or you need someone to advocate for you and you need some kind of rituals and a prayer book to know what to say to God. It’s a very formal thing you know, it’s some distant king that you’re suppose to get to visit via some, help by someone else but you never get to have direct contact. And then of course from that point from there it goes to the point that he’s so distant he doesn’t even exist. And the idea of an ultimate reality has been eclipsed and eliminated in the modern western mind set. Which leaves the ego in hedgeomanic control of our societies, untamed by the higher power of goodness and the ego that doesn’t surrender to a higher Truth and a higher level of integrity and sacrifice, then creates a world of the kind we’re now living in.” Recorded in the evening of Thursday, August 29, 2013.

Excerpt: “What is the ego? It is simply the mind operating according to two valued logic… that's all it is…. Two valued logic is absolutely absurd, and we can blame Aristotle for it... but he was the first philosopher who maintained that you need to analyze reality according to two valued logic… before that everyone was in infinite logic – it was totally different…. Two valued logic is recognized in the bible as the cause of the fall of man – why Adam and Eve got kicked out…. What was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? That’s two valued logic. That this is either good, or evil… This is true or false, up or down. Everything is this or that, and once you are caught in believing that then you are caught in a prison in which you can no longer be whole, because the truth is that you are this and that… and neither of the above… and all of the above… and beyond any of the above… that’s the truth, and so when you have to follow two valued logic, you have to cut off and split most of your mind a

Excerpt: “All of us are travellers through space and time, eternal travellers, and yet eternally never moving at all, but enjoying the illusion of the dream that brings richness and joy and learning, even through pain and suffering, the learning of the lessons that bring about wisdom and freedom and re-empowerment as we go through the labyrinth forgetting we are the One Self and then remembering again – playing peek-a-boo with the Self. And there’s nothing really to do in this act of remembrance except to let go of the forgetfulness, to let go of all of the thoughts that are based in the illusion and not in the Witness. And when one returns to the self-luminous, infinite intelligence that is pure consciousness all of the suffering of the dream falls away, all the fears, desires, egoic identities drop away very easily without any struggle.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, August 1, 2013. 

Excerpt: ”Meditation is the practice of melting away the ego. What we are melting away are the fixed thoughts that create patterns of suffering, repetitive patterns of behavior and emotional states that produce pain for ourselves and for others. And so as we melt it down we free ourselves and the world from that pain and the energy that was locked up in those painful patterns is liberated. We are not liberated, but the pain is liberated – because we are not the ego, it’s a mistake to think you are the ego. But the ego is a structure, that has grown, in the psyche, in the mind, that needs to be dissolved in order for there to be the full freedom of the potential of the ground of your Being to emerge with all of its creativity and love and will.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, July 11, 2013.

Excerpt: “As you all know the Sat Yoga Institute is a school. It’s not just a place to come to meditate, but to do more than that. And the process begins with the Trivium which is a braid of three different processes that have to happen simultaneously for the process to be effective. It involves Translation, which is a paradigm shift – which is the conceptual understanding of the spiritual path so you will at least be able to explain to yourself why you’re going through this ordeal – because unless you can justify this to your own ego mind, there is no reason to put up with the suffering that it entails. But when there is a clear conceptual understanding of why you’re going through this experience, and what the benefits are, then the ordeal actually becomes very joyous, and not really filled with that much suffering. The transformational dimension of the Trivium is where the suffering is located. . .” Recorded on the evening of Thusday, July 4, 2013.

Excerpt: “. . . But in the spiritual field in India they do talk about four powers that are latent within you that must be remembered in order to realize the freedom that is your true nature. And they talk about this in mythological terms. And often they refer to them as the Power of Rama, the Power of Sita, the Power of Hanuman, the Power of Mrityunjay. You all know these powers because you have them, you use them on a daily basis – but we can go over them since we have to talk about something. The Power of Hanuman. . .” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, June 13, 2013.

Excerpt: “. . . And so to know the Unknowable Self means to allow yourself to be – without moving, without distraction, without shifting your attention from the Self to any object or any thought, idea, image, emotion – anything that would take you away from the knower – until the very sense of being a knower dissolves in the knowing and there is only this energy that is awareness but without any source and without any object – it is the ground of the field of Being itself. And the reason that the ego mind has difficulty doing this is that it always wants to grasp onto certain attributes that it can objectify. And the awareness has no attributes, all the attributes have been projected into the world, which is a reflection of the Self, but the Self is attributeless, ‘Nirguna’. ‘Emptiness’ in the Buddhist terminology. . . .” Recoded on the evening of Thursday, June 6, 2013.

Excerpt: "... But there is a command, within the ego itself, never to silence the mind, never stop thinking, always got to produce thoughts; if you don't produce you're a failure. And so you got to be willing not to produce anything, but to be. Without putting any demands on yourself, or on anyone else, or giving in to anyone’s demands on you. Create a space of freedom to rediscover who you are without starting from any programming, whether that programming has to do with the gender of the body, or the age, or the nationality, or the religion, or the culture, or any of the other factors that determine the stream of thoughts in the mind – but prior to any thoughts, to when there was pure presence, when you were really aware of being, when the world really had this heightened presence, for you, and everything was new and astonishing. Let's return to that state. And it's very easy to do because you don't do anything, just be. And if the production wants to happen, just go back with the question ‘What is the I,