Wisdom Teachings - Sat Yoga, Costa Rica

Student Question:  How can I know if my meditation practice has stagnated?

Student Question:  How can we guide children from a very early age to find their awareness?

Student Question:  Is the body a reflection of the mind?

Student Question:  Something that I have been thinking about recently is this idea of “the third.”  I know you mentioned before when we were talking about the “I of the Statement” and the “I of the Enunciation” that there is also the “Third I”; the “I of Awareness” or the “I of Shiva.”  We have also studied a module in which the father comes in as the third to break the mother and child dyad, and I am sure there are many other examples, but I was just curious about the significance of this idea of the third and what it really means.

Excerpt:  "Most religions are the worship of a yogi - they are constituted by that….  Christ was a yogi – Buddha was a great yogi – Mohammed was a yogi – Moses was a yogi… and so most of the religions today are either worshiping the yogi or worshiping the book that the yogi wrote, or was channeled through him… but religion was originally simply the act of becoming a yogi… so the religions that we have today are indirect and there is certainly benefit in worshiping a great yogi, but that is very different from attaining the state of consciousness that Christ attained or that Buddha attained….  And so merely worshiping and trying to imitate the life of a great yogi, while an important step, keeps one within the ego… it doesn't transcend the ego into direct God realization, and that is what we are here to do… to become the goal that those great yogis pointed at for us….  Christ would have considered Christianity to be heretical – he never said worship me – be one with the Father – I and the Father are one - you

Student Question:  If Jesus and Buddha were both great yogis then why did they both reach different conclusions about God?  Jesus spoke about his Father yet Buddhism denies God.

Student Question:  Do Vāsanās and Sanskaras have the same meaning?

Student Question:  Do we just have to sit in silence long enough to dissolve the discomfort that arises, or do we need to analyze it?

Student Question:  Why is it that when I have a deep or a good meditation I sometimes want to cry?   Aren’t I supposed to be experiencing bliss?

Student Question:  In meditation when I finally reach some silence it is common that I will then be immediately disrupted or thrown out of it and I don’t really understand why that happens?  I even experience the sensation of losing balance.  Do you know why that is?

Student Question:  In your talk tonight you spoke about going through this mirror of unbearable knowledge, but do you go through it or do you witness it?

Student Question:  How do we learn when on an everyday basis we are in this whirlpool of being aware and wanting to transcend the ego but then at other times being really chaotic. Sometimes that chaos manifests itself physically and then the next day you can be peaceful again so how do we learn to stay in the silence?

Student Question:  Is it possible that Gods Lila is really creating all the suffering in the world?

When you talk about missing your window of opportunity and synchronicity I don’t really understand how that fits in with gods perfect plan.  How is it that you are able to miss a window of opportunity if at the end it is only one step in the path of the perfect plan?

Student Comment:  At the beginning of your talk you said something to the affect that in reality we don’t control anything and in what I would call the ‘business world’, people get so stuck in their power struggles and beliefs and certainties.  They believe that they are going to make something happen in a certain way but often they actually make the situation much worse.  It seems common for negotiations to be full of tensions and bad feelings and lower emotions when in reality what’s really going on or how the situation can be resolved has nothing to do with the emotional and egoic eruptions that people in business most of the time knock against each other.

Student Question:  What is dharmaraj in a more formal sense?

Student Question:  I felt your teaching tonight was very appropriate.  I have been thinking a lot this week about a question which I have always had with Christianity.  Even though I know it is a very devotional religion, I have never had that kind of experience with it.  Ironically, it was this week sometime that I was listening to one of those gospel songs and all of a sudden I just broke out in tears.  The closest thing that I could put it to was this feeling of being saved by Christ or God, but it was this very strong feeling of sin having been taken away by another.  I know I have heard you speak in the past about how certain religions have niches or specializations or accentuations in certain areas more then others and I have just wanted to know where this fits in and what its value is?   I think you kind of spoke to that tonight in how it can be used as a stepping stone and not as a hindrance.

Excerpt: “If you read the old Vedanta literature . . . they tend to divide the path into two forms: one they call ‘The Path of the Valiant’ and the other ‘The Path of the Fearful.’ And they say that those who are in fear come to God looking for refuge. . . . And they say ‘The Path of the Valiant,’ on the other hand, is not taking refuge in some god or supernatural force or supreme power or as an other, but one who has the courage to recognize that God is the Self. . . . But I tend to think that in these postmodern times that’s too simplistic a dichotomy, and that, in a way, it takes more courage to admit that one need’s help than it does to believe that one can do it all on one’s own. And it is that pseudo-valiance that may actually hold one back for a long time on the path, believing one can do it on one’s own, but being in denial of the fact that one is using a lot of props in order to hold one up. . . . But in truth, the sadhana is always a combination of the two. And when we are in our daily lives, ther

Student Question:  Sometimes I have archetypal dreams where a person will tell me about something I have to do and even though when I wake up I can remember what it is, I have no idea how to do it.  I feel like this happens to me a lot.  During the day I worry because I am not sure how I can do what was told to me in the dreams.  Because of this I get stressed and feel guilty about not doing what my unconscious is telling me to do and it feels like I am ignoring it and that somehow it is going to affect me in some way.  I am not sure if this is correct because they never tell me in the dream but it is frustrating me to think that it is going to affect my karma.

Excerpt:  “So if God made you an offer, that all you would have to do to help save the world, would be to silence your mind and immerse yourself in the divine presence within consistently, completely, once and for all, and that that would be the greatest gift you give to the universe and to yourself, would you do it?  Because that is the offer that God has been making for thousands of years…  it is what every spiritual tradition teaches….  Surrendering to God means surrendering the attention, the thoughts, the mind, to the presence that is already within you, at the core of your own consciousness, which is a very sweet blissful silence…  and that energy that can radiate through the channel of your own mind’s focus will fill the world with peace and divine love and that energy is so powerful, that if the flow of it is continuous, it will change the course of history; it is that strong.  We just need a critical mass of beings who are dedicated to that supreme holy work, and a Sat Yuga is born…  a