Break Time

I'm taking a break before moving on to the next topic: brahmacharya. It is the Holidays and time for some relaxing. Although, interestingly, I have been finding that I am dreaming about this practice from time to time and contemplating it in my waking state. This feels like a good thing.

Something seems to happen to me when I take the bus from the ferry to downtown Vancouver; I sometimes fall into samadhi - a really low level samadhi - but samadhi nonetheless, the fourth state of consciousness. On the heels of that, interesting insights occur. After this last busride, I started recalling one of my students and how ultra negative she was in our last session. That led to recalling that, even when she is "positive", she has a tone of negativity that hangs over her head. Thoughts of her led to thoughts of other students who are in the same pattern of living. This then led me to be aware of how much negativity remains within me and how horribly harmful that is to me and to everything around me.

This last set of thoughts led to a totally clear message from buddhi (the intuitive aspect of the mindfield): STOP "PRACTICING". MAKE A COMMITMENT! MAKE IT PERMANENT! So, when I start back up in January, I would like to make a 5 year commitment (with options to renew) to:

1. Refraining from speaking anything negative.
2. Refraining from speaking anything untrue.
3. Maintaining purity of body.

While these are just gross level practices of ahimsa, satya, and shoucha, I have found that the gross level is best way to train the subtle levels of the mindfield. This feels like a really good thing!