Class 6 - Learning, Love and Laughter

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All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small. - Lao-Tzu

The Rocking chair test..

Sometimes we wonder about the decisions we make. Are they from the mind or the heart? We might ask - 'Is this a decision that is unveiling my highest possible destiny or perhaps just an easy, comfortable solution that fits into my outer life?'

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. - Martin Luther King

Just as it is in the physical world we make ourselves physically fit, in the same way, we need to make ourselves emotionally, mentally and spiritually fit to bravely march out into the world and live our spiritual life.

Think back to what we said about the meaning of life - learning, loving and being happy. Each aspect needs careful consideration.

Learning

Real Learning refers to our evolution as individuals. We need to be aware that we cannot progress by staying the same - some part of our state of mind has to evolve, to be different from where it was a moment ago! So do not fear it - explore change!

Ask yourself what is the most important thing for me to learn today? What should I be working on? Use the success spiral to chunk for yourself an achievable spiritual goal and then act on it. (Remember the action is what is important)

Use ‘positive internal dialog’ with the result and create more potential for yourself. Have faith that all the answers to all of your questions are inside you - that you can find the answers inside yourself. Your soul is the window to the Supreme, the highest in all things and as you find yourself, you will find that you are tapping the self in all things.

Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift.- EINSTEIN

If following a Master appeals to you, it can really help your progress. Real spiritual teachers have a free access to these worlds and are able to easily see where we have come from and what is required in our life for our fastest progress at this moment. They actually are able to teach us from within. So along with your faith in yourself, your spiritual teacher, an open mind and some patience and perseverance - there is nothing that can hold you back in evolving towards your highest spiritual goals.

Loving

Remember unconditional, forever love. Practise it. The highest love reaches every atom with unconditional love and connection. This is not just an offering of good will, this is a blazing furnace of deep love for every single soul. Love for no reason and without any expectation of a result. Love your loved ones, but also love your cat or the dog or the sky or the ocean and love them not because they did something for you, but love them really unconditionally, divinely - see the Supreme in the things you love. You might like to imagine the infinite, unconditional love the Supreme has for us as a good starting point.

Reflect on that noble idea that all souls have infinite love within them.

When you can see the Supreme within all things then all things become appealing.- Hazrat Khan

Suddenly a leaf seen with love becomes an ‘aah’ moment that leaves us breathless and in awe. While the same leaf analysed and dissected with the mind is lifeless and dead.

Most of our relationships begin with this wonderful, effortless and unconditional love - our challenge is to begin our relationship with the Supreme with this love and then to renew it every moment, to expand it and realise that is at the centre of all our experiences of love. As we discovered last class, real love is the expansion of our awareness into the love in all things. This love, this energy that flows through all things has a unique and powerful sense, much more powerful than our physical senses that we begin to glimpse in intuition, in meditation.

Being happy

Wanna be happy?

Then be happy!!!

Naturally, we are all infinitely happy and blissful souls. Our attachment to our grosser mind, emotions and body and our ego is what prevents our clear perception of this bliss. As you know, normally our conditioning teaches us that we need external 'things' and 'events' and even time to find our happiness. This is normal but not natural.

Look at being happy as being as important as your meditation, because when you are feeling real joy you are right there in the heart of the Supreme. That is the nature of the Supreme. Be mindful. Watch yourself. If you find that you are allowing yourself to ‘fall’ into depression or ‘unhappiness’ be ruthless in your determination to throw those thoughts from your consciousness.

Don’t let them in for even a moment. Radiate happiness, radiate enthusiasm, your best defence is a strong offense.

Remember your real nature. You are not the body. You are not the mind. You are not your emotions. What you are really is your soul. All happiness. All love. All joy.

And there is one secret to all this. That it is impossible to be unhappy when you are radiating love.

The real secret is that real joy comes from the flow of love.  So again, you can see the significance of how important it is to learn the skill of unconditional loving. Let me repeat this because it is really, really important - the real secret is that there is only cause of happiness, and that is the flow of love.

In me and through me You are manifesting Your Infinity, utilising the finite to express

Your infinite Beauty, infinite Joy, infinite Nectar-Delight. - RABINDRANATH TAGORE

So..

Be aware that our fulfilment comes from the flow of love. It is not enough to have good intentions or to be perhaps a better person than the next person, we do not get fulfilment from that. We are fulfilled when we are all we can be and this starts by loving our potentialities, our dreams, by loving our selves.

When we stretch every limit that we had set for ourselves, and then finally see that there really aren’t any, that is the moment of merging with the Supreme, when we really do live the mantra ’be still and know that I am’.

It is not enough, however, to say or even to believe that we have no limits, it is impossible to really know we have no limits until we actually stretch them.

We cannot really know ourselves until we have pushed over every barrier, every limitation, every old idea that had restrained us and then only is it possible to know our unlimited self for sure, for it is not a mental idea, but a spiritual realisation.

If you are unsure that a path is the right path for you, imagine yourself having followed that path your whole life, sitting on a rocking chair looking back at from where you have come. See your evolution and reflect on would there have been another path you would have changed to be happier, more loving and more wise? Is there another path you could have chosen that would’ve allowed you to evolve faster?

Rock on that chair and see!!

Then reflect on this - down through the ages, throughout history, men and women of greatness have been those that have not done the usual, the normal. They have trusted in themselves and believed in their own little inner voice and followed it with a heart full of conviction. This is true of any field of endeavour, but it is an absolute imperative for the spiritual seeker.

Our path, the Path Of The Heart is meant for those wishing to travel spiritually as fast as possible. You came to the classes because something inside wanted you there, now it is for you to do the rest.

Faith awakens us to see the truth. Wisdom helps us to live the truth

A story...

There was once a monk who spent all his time following the rituals of his particular religion. One day he noticed a lady over the other side of the road employed as a prostitute. He decided to go and explain to her the error of her ways.

"Don’t you know that what you are doing is sinful” he explained, “you surely will go to hell”

“No, I am so sorry I didn’t,” she’ replied “I will stop," she assured the monk - However, a week later, the monk noticed there were still men coming to her house and mortified, he began to place a pebble for every customer on a pile. Soon there was quite a heap and so he went over to her house again.

“You see that pile of pebbles over there," he proclaimed, “they are your sins. They will surely weigh you down to the fires of hell. You assured me that you would change your ways ”. Crying the lady managed between sobs - “I am so sorry, but this must be fate. After you spoke, I stopped, but then there was no food for my children. I love my children and I can’t bear to see them hungry so if I have to go to hell, so be it.”

Anyway, they both died. At the Pearly Gates the monk watched as the prostitute went straight to heaven. He couldn’t believe it, but he reassured himself thinking that all his life had followed the scriptures so he must be going to an even higher plane. So he asked the gatekeeper, but the gatekeeper only pointed downstairs. He was aghast. “How can this be?" he demanded, “all my life, I have lived according to the scriptures.” But the gatekeeper just shook his head and said, “I am sorry but all her life she was focused on the love of her children, while all your life you were focused on her sins.

Her love is transporting her to heaven, while you, I am afraid, still have some work to do.”..

Exercise 6 - Cliff Visualisation

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Prepare for your meditation as usual

Imagine yourself sitting on the edge of a cliff looking out across an ocean. It is just before the dawn on a warm summer’s morning. All around you is still and soundless. Just slivers of starlight sparkling off the waves below saves a pitch-blackness. A warm breeze drifts across the ocean and wafts up the face of the cliff and into your heart, and this breeze is not so much a movement of air but a feeling; a feeling of peace. As you focus out towards the horizon you notice the first purples and crimsons of the morning dawn spilling out across the sky. And you begin to get a feeling of the sunrise...  Newness... Beauty... Warmth... Innocence... All the time the sunrise is changing - purples turning to crimsons, crimsons to oranges and yellows - the feeling of the sunrise intensifying, soaring across the vastness into your heart-breath. And now the sky above and behind you is being overwhelmed by the colour and feeling of the sunrise until the very air around you is tinged by the wondrous purple hue of the morning dawn. It fills the air like a fragrance; you breathe, and the sunrise enters. The crescendo builds. Finally, the first ray of sun explodes into the sky straight to your heart. Filling you like an electric charge with peace and light. You feel as though if you were to just stretch your arms they might become like wings and you would be able to soar down over the ocean. And so you do.. You stand and stretch your arms and lean ever so gently against that breeze drifting up the face of the cliff. You find yourself becoming lighter and lighter until just your big toe on your right foot is the only link to the earth - and then a moment later - a gentle puff lifts you off. Letting go you glide down over the face of that cliff and soar inches above the surface of the ocean, one wingtip every so often just dipping into the water making splashes that sparkle rainbows across the sky. The gentle breeze that had wafted up into your heart at the top of the cliff, has now become a great gush, rolling over your wingtips, splashing against your face inundating your heart with peace. And in the distance, or perhaps deep inside your own heart you hear two words whispered, ever so gently over and over again. “ I am.” “ I am.” “ I am...” I am the sky. I am the ocean. I am the sunrise. I am the bird. I am freedom. As you look down across the waves you feel the whole ocean vast, horizon to horizon. You feel it. You have become the sky, as far as you can see. It feels as though you could stretch your wings from horizon to horizon and engulf every little part of this magnificence. And it’s shown to you in the next moment that it is the love deep inside your heart that is allowing you to connect with all that is around you. Your love is so full, so all encompassing that you understand and feel what every part of the creation is feeling. You glide in this love, you float in this love, you soar in this love - all the time it expanding within you, welling up inside your heart. Then with just a whim you decide to dive deep to the very depths of the ocean. And as you splash through the surface you feel that this ocean is so deep it is almost unfathomable. deeper and deeper you dive; past the turbulent waves crashing about on the surface, deeper and deeper to the silent, still depths of the ocean. And you feel that you are diving in some parallel way deep into your very own soul. Plummeting to the centre of your self. Past the worries and fears and doubts and limitations crashing about on the surface of your life. Until finally at the bottom of the ocean, at the still centre of your soul, you sit cross legged in perfect silence, in perfect stillness and there at the core of your existence - you explore your self in perfect meditation. Light beams stream through the water and as you glance upward you see the noon day sun, powerful and bright. Drawn like a magnet your heart pulls you upward, and focusing on the light you accelerate through the surface of the ocean into the sky. The more you concentrate the faster you accelerate and the intensity of the light satiates you, your every atom. Your heart like a beacon propels you higher and higher. And you realise that this light is not just a physical light it is also a spiritual light. The light of wisdom, of truth. It is as though, all of the millions and billions of people that have ever been here on the earth, and all of their experiences, their wisdom, their revelations are flooding the very core of your being with light, truth, wisdom. All the time the light welling up inside you until finally it seems as if you were to look out to observe your form all you would see is light. You have become the light and all that it touches and it fulfils you. Finally relaxing and drifting across the sky you allow yourself to return to where you started your journey and observe this time the setting of the sun. Yellows turn to oranges and crimsons and purples and for a time the whole sky gasps in wonder as the colours permeate the twilight. The last moments brightening into a dazzling showcase with kaleidoscopic reflections off the ocean. As the last ray of sun steps off the horizon your struck by the eternity of it all. The sunset of one day here - but somewhere else the sunrise of another. Tranquil, at peace, you feel calm, contented and fulfilled.

Now to finish this meditation, sit quietly for a moment, assimilating what you have felt, and remember to use the core of this experience as the starting point for your next meditation.

Class 6! Well Done!

It’s been six classes since you began. Have you noticed any difference in how smoothly you get through the day?

Review the events of the past week. Did situations that used to bother you not affect you as much? Did you generally feel a greater sense of inner peace and poise?

Just for a moment total up how long in total you have been meditating. If you have meditated ten minutes every day for the last six weeks than that is a total of 420 minutes - seven hours. So if you have noticed changes in your life already fantastic especially since you have just begun. If not, don’t worry about it - you’ve just begun! In either case, our advice is the same as always: meditate regularly, meditate sincerely, keep your dialog positive and have faith in yourself. You are definitely making progress.

 You may say that I’m a dreamer - but I am not the only one... All we are saying is give peace a chance. -JOHN LENNON

Summary During this sixth class you will have; explored more the principles of learning, loving and laughter, and how you can practise them in your life Notes on mp3's To save to your computer right click and "save target as" any problems downloading click here Radio quality is free for members (membership is free) and is a smaller file size, CD quality is for Premium Members.

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