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Homework & Q&A

I want to suggest this a method the homework assignment for our people out in the online world how could you really remember to do this? So this is called the golden dot you know, um exercise and what I want you to consider doing and invite you to do is go to your stationery store and buy yellow docks on a piece of paper and how they come and you could just peel them off you must write just use them for something here and those dots are now gonna be called little dot civil wakefulness, right? You can't even look at them and sort of little sons. You know how the sun comes up in the morning? Can you go wake on the spot and you placed them? You stick them onto your life first place you need to put it on your fridge refrigerator. You put a golden dot of wakefulness on the refrigerator door, then think of other places may be the mirror that you used to shave or brush your teeth in the morning. Uh, maybe your coffee pot because of your computer like yourself. Cute if your computers had them,...

you know and then every time you look down at the computer and you being okay there's a little sense of a gap coming through all right and, uh um you could put it on your closet door you could put it on your office on your telephone on your cell phone can you imagine the amount of uh so session and speed that's happening all of a sudden you look and you see the little dot there and the dot is only telling you one thing it's asking you a question where is your mind right now? It's a short question with a short answer it's not meant to be like you now, right? You know, uh, four hundred page text about it. Where is your mind right now and then just taste that and continue on what you doing? So this is like a very potent way to introduce the idea of meditation every day life just to kind of um carefully skilfully place you called him dots. These things are like more sophisticated golden dots. You see what? Why did we have a flower arrangement there? Because your mind looks at your mind stops for a moment and your mind opens your mind appreciates the beauty of that so that's kind of a golden dot with ornaments and eventually and this again I keep coming back to this appreciation that I have for particularly japanese culture in particular day there's a sense of space around you see it's not all cluttered like you easy sometimes american flower arrangement has like tons of flowers in it, but there's no sense of of um open space around it this is actually um I don't know if the person who did this was trained but in a certain style of flower arranging cutter there's uh the notion is three elements of heaven earth and human and the heaven one would be represented by this it's sort of first thought and kind of open mind kind of quality fresh on a fresh mind you ceo comes in and just looks goes no let's change everything those people at the top have that kind of view it's called king's view but you see look and say this is not really working you know, very fresh open mind than they the earth element this arrangement is the flowers um they're kind of thie grounded you know like if you run these principles work if you're running a corporation or an organization they're the same or a family or anything earth element like if you have this kind of lofty view of what's possible for creative live and then the people who tell you that that doesn't work because this guy doesn't get in until nine in the morning and you know there's not a not enough room in the parking lot and you know that we don't have enough bod raid on the computers to be running these kind of programs simultaneously each other and we didn't budge it in for you know repairs for the cameras and that's earth earth is always going any I needed the air and it's like really nudging you you know? So then this third dimension would be the human the beings and our job from this morning was to join a connect heaven on earth that's called good leadership principal when you connect those two and harmonize them so this is a very powerful concept um to to work with but if there's no appreciation of the space in which all that's happening, then the whole thing just becomes very cluttered, very overgrown and we're all kind of like scrambling and we feel this is not the true meaning of human life is to create this kind of mad scramble and many messages air coming back from the world we live in saying people, you need to slow down a little bit we're hurdling ahead and cultivation at the individual level recognition of these principles in the sort of environmental sense and then that's how we could work further with our societies and cultures that's very much part of the shambala vision that we're part of. So, um the golden dot method um if you like at home, you could try that, you know, tomorrow or whenever you can get to the store you know the stationery store and see how that works for you and think of it is just a little pause, a little moment of meditation practice right in the middle of the florida of activity that you're involved with then I wanted to, you know, give out a homework assignment for tonight um I hope you understand out out there that and here too in the ordinary workshop like this, we'd be doing more sitting practice, you know, a tte this point we would feel like okay, we're really going to do I'm sitting practice, so if you're thinking there well, we haven't had much time to sit that's because you can take that time on your own and it's a little bit trickier to do it in the video realm you know um and to use this time more to communicate the sort of principles and so forth but we will tomorrow be doing more sitting but at home tonight if you could just sit for ten minutes fifteen minutes everybody here just so you know, we're leaving it for pm sometime before dinner just sit down for ten or fifteen minutes into your meditation practice away you learned it today and put it into the context of your life on dh that's setting and if everybody at home could try that to where if you are start start today to do your own you know, uh, your own practice and then the other uh, situation would be to start up introduced that principle into everyday life your movement through the world you know, we should put the waterways who's, sort of be sort of counter insurgency group here, get some yellow dots and put them into the dining room here and we don't we can only explain it to people what they ask otherwise just don't even do it unless somebody says what's this yellow dot doing here, then you could give them your version of reality and the moment of appreciation, moment of softness, a moment of wakefulness and so that's what I'm suggesting people home start to do some kind of regular practice if you can just start with a simple ten, fifteen minutes of sitting as we've learned it today and put some dots around and begin to from your own point of you work with the gap in the daily life and appreciation of the moments that we have. So I think mostly that's what I want to cover this afternoon, I feel like I want to lean a little bit towards the online audience because there's a lot of folks out there who are tuning in it may be a little bit harder to I get the feeling or not, but it's interesting. The dots concept is clearly interested, different people, and while we have preferred to a few times today, michelle in rvs still with us. Thank you for staying with us today, she's asking, can you small photos perhaps of loved ones or petra peas instead of the golden dots? Who was the specific specificity? I can't even get that right compromising the nature of the ideas specificity that will do yeah, not easiest word to say three times in a row. Yeah, sure, as long as the person who's planting the seed is the same one reading it there's no problem, you know? And in fact, even you could say, uh, this is how many people do spiritual practice they put picture of their teacher up or something like that it's not the worship somebody writes to remember what those teachings were for them, so yeah, whatever whatever works would be how but the principle is to just kind of put something up that's a reminder because we will walk past, we will open the door, the refrigerator we will grab something to eat without ever having slowed down even to the point of appreciating how miraculous the whole situation is in the first place. So the principle is the point they're not what you used and your other homework is great as well actually I'm going to put this on kelly because you made a great comment over lunch, she said it's kind of like logging in training hours when you're learning how to fly you have all these great analogies, you know, that's. Another one for you? Yeah. That's a good one. Yeah. Callie logging in training. Wait. Did have a question much, much earlier on which I think this might be an appropriate time to austin's been coming towards the end of today's session way had a question from kenna cases basically asking what is the difference between the mindfulness meditation that were being taught in them today? And that's cos on the other methods are out there? Would you be able to give a distinction? That's a very good question. Thank you for that. Um, mindless is probably the most, um, universal practice among the buddhist world. Practice mindfulness and even would leak over into. As I said, other people are sort of using that kind of training, uh, yoga teachers who might use that kind of notion of mindfulness, even sports, the notion of mine once it's really very universal. And I would say particularly comment all the buddhist schools, that sort of ground zero, you know, howto work with basic sort of situation, uh, beyond that, you know, other traditions, maybe used prayer or contemplation, but I think you know the idea of explicitly pointing to the mindfulness practice and saying that's, you know, kind of the you know, most grounded kind of dimension of the practice probably we gotta thank the buddhists for being for like, you know, if it was the olympics or something like that they'd be doing very good in the mindfulness category thank you okay, I think you have a question that well I was just going to say is I've logged my sixteen minutes of meditation officially today isn't now to be fair we're actually asking you to go home and do it I don't have to do ten more and allison staying with me so we can practice this group manager yeah it's gonna be great it's a good start teo uh hopefully yeah and it's not that long a time have you gotten that idea yet? It's really? We've made such a drama about it, but it's actually becomes very organic it's not that long a time it's just this kind of little settling um and we'll talk more about going deeper into it a certain point for those who want to but at this point that's what we're talking about just touching it. So I think maybe it would be a good way to close just can we just close with a period of sitting practice and just sort of thought I think I'll be a wonderful way to andi I'll guide us through it a little bit all sort of sketch and outline it um and then maybe we could just close for the day and um let's just even just er just a short period cause we need a minute to talk about tomorrow too, so we'll just we'll just sit for like, three minutes together and just sort of taste this so um go ahead and take your seat and um um so how are you pointed out that if you can kneel also I didn't include that but the way she's kneeling on the cushion there is fine too you can put a cushion on dude on your use a bench you know something like that neil posture that's in the kneeling posture it's fine so take your seed no stand your spine up hood long gauge his spine that's joining heaven on earth and with a soft downward gays just soften your sense perceptions so that's step one take your seat step to place your attention on your breath natural breathing feel the breath going in and out the tip of the nose feel the stomach a rising and falling with the breath feel the flow of breath throughout the whole body when your mind wanders off and you notice that without any kind of harshness or judgment or further analysis just labeled thinking and then bring your witness back to your breath what thank you all so much for being present today and also uh longing to meet all of you out there on the online world that we're connecting with, um, wanna re invite all of you to come if you want to meet in person and going to be teaching a crip pollo institute in massachusetts, november tenth to fifteenth, and we'll really be doing some practice together, okay, for beginners, okay, for more seasoned practitioners. But in the flesh. Good food, nice environment. So wanted. Just definitely invite you two to look into that if you'd like to.