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What's on my Mind

Hello Everyone

As you may be aware, this has been an exceptionally snowy winter in Western North Carolina. Bill, our site foreman, and his crew have done an excellent job keeping the roads clear and while construction is challenging in such weather, I have been enjoying the view from my Mount Soma home office of a campus-housing duplex going up.

I am delighted with the Ashram Program. The love and happiness we all share is wonderful. The lunch get-togethers we have remind me of my childhood days when my family had the tradition of coming together on Sundays for a huge family pot luck. They usually started in the morning and people came and went, often late into the evening. The feeling of love and caring filled the room. That sort of feeling is permeating Mount Soma more and more. Even getting into my car and driving by the homes is an exquisitely heartwarming experience. The thought goes through my head… “This is what community is all about.”

The meditation hall is magnificent. Those who were at the recent three-day retreat enjoyed the sublime feeling. I like to go over in the middle of the night to meditate. The thought always comes, “Wow, this place is incredibly powerful. People with definitely get enlightened here.”

I do hope to see you all here soon… perhaps at one of the upcoming events in April.

Discuss (2 posts)

Susheela

Hello Everyone
Mar 08 2010 10:34:24

Looks Spring is around the corner, enlivening.

#57

Susheela

Re: Hello Everyone
Mar 08 2010 12:39:24

Looks like is around the corner, enlivening.

#58

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Stages of Society

Economist Marc Faber's stages of society are of course only the financial facet of the multifaceted cycle that cultures go through. The spiritual essence underlying the cyclical process is shown below. 'Spirituality' here means the vessel that holds all aspects of the society: moral, religious, economic, scientific, artistic, etc.

Marc Faber's Stages of a society:

initially successful and frugal
then becomes well to do
then becomes powerful and rich
then becomes arrogant
then overspends
then to maintain standard must borrow more and more money
then debt level becomes so excessive starts to print money
then the disaster gets underway

Spirituality underlying the cyclical process:

a small group of people purify the knowledge and bring it forth
as a result, the society blossoms in wisdom and abundance on all levels
as a result the society enjoys the full sunshine in all aspects of life: morally, economically, culturally, etc.
the society becomes complacent with respect to upholding the delicate knowledge in it's purity
the understanding distorts to an astral echo of what it was.
Astral and left handed tantric approaches take over as a quick fix or alleged equivalent (I get it syndrome) in an attempt to maintain abundance without sufficient regard to the subtlety of natural law.
Alignment with natural law is strained to the point of abuse of nature
The society implodes as a result

At stage 8, the society meets a critical time, when the knowledge must once again be purified (stage 1) or the society completely collapses. Historical examples of such collapses include the Romans, Greeks, Mayans, Egyptians, etc.

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Idealized Notions

Deep within your psyche lies your ideal notion of life. People spend lifetimes pursuing it. While that pursuit is futile, it is the thing dreams are made of. Runway models try to attain it with their looks. Businessmen pursue it through wealth and power. Some seek it as the ideal relationship, the perfect home, or the ultimate lifestyle.

Yet, all of these things are unattainable. Their pursuit leaves one wanting, lifetime after lifetime. They are but mere echoes of a higher journey, the inner journey leading to perfection that does not dwell within the world at all. Instead, it dwells within you. It is the Transcendent.

You would do well to review the past five years of your life in this context. What have you been striving for? Could those five years have been better spent? I encourage you to pursue that which is lasting… eternal. All else is fleeting. The door is now open wide for all of you.

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Thinking and Destiny

Someone was recently talking to me about Percival’s book, “Thinking and Destiny”. He said that in a nutshell the message is that your thoughts determine your destiny. That is a lovely notion if it is understood. The question is, “From how deep within you do your thoughts arise?” Do they emerge untainted from the depth of your being or are they more an expression of the karmic winds that blow within your awareness? Either way, your thoughts do determine your destiny.

With the former. your destiny is your dharma, the divine song of your soul. In the latter, your destiny is determined by the karmic winds, which push you in whatever direction they do. Very few can tell the difference. Thoughts born of free will and predetermination feel the same.

It is said that one enlightened person sitting in a cave does the world more good than an army of good deed doers. In other words, it is better to think untaintedly from the depth of your soul and do little, than to do ‘good deeds” while thinking and therefore acting superficially.

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Who Cares?

I had a startling experience the other day. I met a guy who I think very highly of. He lived in a Christian monastery for 4-1/2 years and has a number of advanced degrees, including theology. Becoming curious about the depth of his knowledge, I began to ask him questions: Which is it, Darwinism or Creationism? Are we run by free will or predetermination? What does it mean to be free of desire, to be unattached? He summarized his attitude to all those questions by simply saying, “Who cares?”

For me, that was an incredible wake-up call. In that moment, I realized very few people connect the dots or see any reason to. Most don't realize how essential it is to understand the mechanics and structure of creation and how that affects their spirituality and daily life.

Suddenly, I realized why, after giving what I consider to be incredible introductory lectures, some people walk out unimpressed. They simply don’t care. Who cares if the world is flat or round? Who even cares if there is a God? Who cares why your television or car works? Can that really be the way most people function? In that moment, perhaps for the first time in my life, I got it. Most people don’t care.

I feel certain that the reason people don’t care is because they don’t understand how relevant those answers are to understanding everything, from their daily life to their cosmic existence and purpose. To me, it’s a little bit like looking out a fast-moving train and having the perspective the trees are moving. It is life without a reference frame, life without a context, life with an inverted image of everything you see and experience. It’s like looking at a mirror and thinking the virtual image is real. It’s like looking at a television set and thinking the people are actually inside the box, moving around, and living a life.

Human evolution/spiritual growth is all about sorting out your awareness, your heart, and your mind. It’s about discovering within you the context, the vessel, that holds everything. Deeply understanding answers to all of these questions unravels distortions within your awareness. It enables you to cultivate a relationship with life that is in harmony with the true nature of life, that is to say, in harmony with nature. That is what spiritual growth means.

From this point forward, I intend to help you connect those dots. I intend to help you understand what human evolution is and why the exploration of those fundamental questions are essential to your personal and spiritual growth.

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What's on my Mind

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What's on my Mind

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