Know Thy Self, it's easy if you try

It's what we do in our daily practice,  seeking improvement through better Understanding of whom we are...          

try it, you'll like it if you keep at it.  It builds and becomes more powerful with every day of trying to make accomplishments.  Success is both positive and includes failures, there is no straight line as everything is made of energy and therefore constantly oscillating back and forth through the flowing passage of time....        

it is why one needs to also acquire virtue to help make one's way through everything, every facet of our live....        

acquiring greater degrees of patience, understanding, humility, grace, appreciation are of paramount importance to the attainment of our goals....         

self illumination is just opening one's eyes as to whom you already are 

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Good morning. What's going on today? It's the weekend. It's a good opportunity to catch up on one's reflecting. Of maybe taking a little more time or making the time to have a nice meditation, to have a sense of allowing your greater being, your being that is in a sense your subconscious, your greater consciousness, to speak to one's ego, one's more surface, superficial consciousness. And that's not a bad thing, it's uh to say it like this, because it is something that's on top of. It's a veneer on top of our greater being. And sometimes the two need to have a little bit of time to acclimate to each other. It's a concept maybe you're unfamiliar with because you think you are everything, but you are the top of a pyramid. You're not the whole foundation. You didn't construct your own DNA, for instance, right? You didn't form your muscles, sinews, bones, flesh, organs. Am I right or wrong? You didn't do this. It is done in your DNA, which is millions of years older than your chronological age of let's say ten to a hundred. So don't think that they don't have to reconcile. And indeed, when they don't, then perhaps this is when one is feeling a sense of dis-ease or disease. Odd how these words are correlated between what we think when something is wrong, a virus or a cough or whatever. We think what disease do you have? And when we consider it for our minds, we are in a state of ease, comfort, calm, or a state of dis-ease, of anxiety, etc. Using the same word. Being here now in a comfortable posture, in such an environment where we can focus upon our greater selves, paying attention to this foundation that we've already begun to discuss. This miracle we share as Homo sapiens. Aware of our body's heat as it is emanated through the activity of our lungs and heart, diaphragm, digestive system, if we've eaten recently. Being aware of our breathing. This is a sense of an activity or a process that is more superficial, one that we can more easily identify with. And so it is easily chosen, and it is in common for all of us, so we can use this as well as our heart squeezing and relaxing, heart pumping, often called. These two processes, and our heating, a third process, because our body is more comfortable in an environment where it is around a hundred degrees, ninety-eight point six. Being aware of this, just relaxing and being comfortable, feeling a sense of calm, a sense of peace growing inside, of one nurturing one's own heart and soul with this time, with this focus upon our own general well-being of our potential, of our possibilities of finding our foundation, of becoming accustomed to feeling the solidity, and the reassuring and the refreshing feelings we receive when we are on our foundations in a sense of peace, a sense of grace, harmony. I like to put my hands gently together as I'm sitting. I'm in a sitting posture myself. My back is upright, you might say, allowing each of the vertebrae to sit in nestled composure one atop the other, up to the top of my neck, the bottom of my skull. Facilitate also the use of gravity because it's pulling us down. So it's pulling each vertebrae down to the one beneath it in a straight line, like a tree, like a great skyscraper, like the Empire State Building. It is a strong structure, a foundation. My friend Will Johnson would say, like a bamboo, being in such a way, allowing one's eyes to shimmer and close, to allow one to visualize, to focus, following can we find our pulse in our bodies? Can one find it in their head, for instance, possibly behind one's eyes or cheeks? Can you find in your hands that we were beginning to discuss, placed gently together, digits to digits, thumbs and palms to palms? Can you feel the activity of your heart squeezing the results as the blood is pressed through one's arteries and veins? Feeling the warmth, of course, easy. And also with practice, feeling one's coursing blood through our vascular system. Beneath these processes of life, you feel your chest rising and falling. You feel this motion, this undulation of one's body, comprising of your breathing and your pulsing. It is a biological miracle, a mechanism of life. It is a battery, it is all of these different things. Being aware, being humbled before the majesty of one's own realization, of one's own illumination of what we are. We talk about self-realization. This is an important and basic aspect of this endeavor. Know thyself, to thine own self be true. Whom are we talking about? It is you and I. We need to enunciate in our own beings, in our own minds, in our own way, of our own creation, to better facilitate our understanding of just who it is that carries your name. Common sense. Feeling beneath these processes of respiration and circulation and the identification of one's thermal energy, something even more subtle, feeling a vibration, a slight shimmering of the organic being that we are, the thirty-seven trillion cells comprising our bodies as an adult. Just to refresh one's memory, when we are born, we have about a trillion cells. When we are conceived, we begin with one. In the nine months from conception to birth, we grow from one to a trillion cells. And as we grow more, as babies and little kids and bigger kids and teenagers and young adults and adults, we grow from one trillion to thirty-seven trillion cells. Each of these cells is hungry, needs to be fed, needs to be nourished, and this is the importance and the responsibility of our respiratory and our circulatory processes. Because this purpose is met by their activity, the activity that we're studying and being aware of right now. It is this important, it is the difference between one's life and death. And here we are, miraculously doing this without any sense of our own, without our tinkering or our surface, superficial, egotistical effort, these events, these responsibilities are being carried on. And as the oxygen is received, the energy, the food of oxygen is being received by these cells. They are in turn exuding energy. And the result is this vibration we're feeling now. If you don't feel it, it's okay too. Yet one can learn to. And an easy way is by placing one's hands gently together. As we just said, digit to digit, or finger to finger, thumb to thumb, palm to palm, gently, feeling a little bit of a vibration. With practice it becomes easier, like with feeling one's pulse. With practice, one begins to feel one's whole body undulating. Because blood is coursing through one's arteries and veins in a wave. In a wave, sixty waves, more or less, in a minute. Ninety thousand waves in a day. It is this miracle we're talking about. It is beneath everything that you contemplate and think about on a daily basis of our society, our culture, our religion, our family, friends, acquaintances, all of the things of this world. This is what we're talking about, beneath them all. This is the foundation of life. Thinking about these things. Being here now, bundles of miracles, being humbled by our knowledge, by our experience in realizing to some degree our depth of our being alive, being humbled before the immensity of creation, of everything there is beyond ourselves. We've just been talking about you and I. But what about everything else, the other creatures upon this world? Insects, birds, fish, mammals, plants, the characteristics of our world itself, the Gulf Stream, the jet stream, the magnetic parameters, the force of gravity. We didn't even speak about these things, and yet all of them are crucially important and part of life, or even our solar system as a whole, or our galaxy, or creation, being humbled before with all of your heart and soul, because feeling awe, reverence, and astonishment or amazement is a genuinely wonderful emotion to know, to have the sense of tears welling up in one's eyes, cleans them, and is a reward for being grateful to be a part of this immensity we share. Lingering for the next minute, if you would please, thinking about these things, they are important, perhaps more important than anything else we can do. Widening our perspective upon ourselves and life, and every facet of it. And of course, being positive, applying self-affirmations, simple, strong. I am strong, for instance, I am patient, for instance, I am kind and understanding. These kinds of thoughts reverberate as much in one's being as the energy that propels us through life. We can and do change in every moment. This represents an opportunity, a positivity, of reinforcing, of creating a better self, seeding in one's own soul garden, self improvement.