<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u7J5d69vDltPs8TnUeVhUzFqQFYNa3Ve/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> Hey everybody! Hey Bob, what's up? What's up? how are you bob i barely recognize you i haven't seen you in ages i know it's been a little bit i'm finally back home settled in somewhat rested yeah how you doing good you must be so oh you must you probably could hardly wait to leave Sedona would have terrible place to be well I have a I have a very nice uh partner at home waiting for me so it wasn't too hard to leave it was hard to leave but it was also not hard to leave yeah I got two cats so what are you gonna do oh good well welcome home thank you do you have animals tracy i do i have a puppy he's like 10 months old and his name is shanti and lately in sanskrit class when he hears us singing shanti shanti shanti he's like that's awesome little does he know it's like stop stop yeah he's like by the way i love that geshlo taught me that understanding yeah dulcie saying the same thing like shanti i thought it was always like peace peace you know but then like guess it was like freaking stop stop just stop i was like wow that's so much better yeah that was amazing yeah that's a real piece dulcie nice hey sarah what's up Good to see you. Hey, nice to see you guys. Familiar faces from abundance. Yeah. It's our tribe. Totally. Last week of financial abundance and last week of Yoga Sutra. Y'all learning and practicing a whole bunch. Yeah. All right, Earl. Tell me what Kavalia Kumbakai is, dude. Come on. Let's have it. Oh, just like that, huh? Yeah, no foreplay. Let's go right for it. I've been waiting all day. No, just kidding. You're using those words in combination or two different words? I have them written down together and I don't understand them. Oh. I know that Kumbakai is a pot of water that you put on top of your head as you walk home. That's pretty much all I got out of that class. Yeah. No, Kai Valley is cool. It's the name of the fourth chapter. It's their word for, it's the word used in the Yoga Sutra for the final state. Moksha or enlightenment. Why did you bring it up today? it comes up in a verse uh 25 oh yeah kaivalya kaivalya is like it's actually a very famous university named kaivalya dam it's very uh in india they do a lot of uh really great research and study but kaivaya that's like one and only and in the yoga system in the in the samkhya system that's the description of pure consciousness it's a it's a state of pure awareness with no object it's just a subjective state of mind so it's kaivaya it's one and only it's that and just that it's uh it's just that pure consciousness just that pure awareness and then in in Vedanta they're like well that thing is they kind of have an issue with the samkhya school because their description of that thing doesn't include bliss so it's this this state of it's kind of kind of like lower school nirvana descriptions it's like just a state of consciousness no subject object no bliss nothing going on and they're like well what the hell how does that sound like an attractive goal yeah yeah that's true in the Vedantic school it's that state is sat chit ananda but it's fairly similar other than in vedanta they would say like that experience once you attain that experience everything becomes that whereas in the yoga school in samkhya it's a dualistic system so you attain that state but everyone else doesn't The gunas dissolve for you. And there's a big withdrawal into pure consciousness. But there's a verse that talks about, well, just because that happens for you. We actually covered it the other day. Just because that's true for you doesn't make it true for everyone else. Gunas are eternal. Just because they withdraw for you or you no longer experience them doesn't mean that everyone else. Just because it doesn't mean everyone else has that experience. And the metaphor is just because one actor dies doesn't mean the play is over. Or just because one actor leaves the stage doesn't mean the play is over. Play goes on for everyone else. Nice. Beautiful. Thank you. Sorry, I just jumped in the deep end there. Hi, everybody. Hey, Chrissy. Hey, Nicole. Hey, Benji. Hi, Lydia. Christy, how did it go leading meditation today? It felt pretty good. I was definitely like, I had the nerves going, but I don't think it like affected the meditation itself. It was more like an internal thing where I had to kind of get through, I guess, because it was like my first time doing something live with all of you. But like, so yeah, like nervous, excited. I'm happy that part's out of the way now I'm like oh tomorrow will be nice I think you did a great job thank you you were amazing I loved it oh thank you anyone have an agenda today or questions to bring up or we could review the kind of get caught up on the text. This is my first time joining one at the, at this group. Um, so is it just kind of open-ended, like whatever that, what you just asked leads me to believe it could be a debate or it could be reviewing questions about the homework or anything we want it to be. Yeah, I mean, generally what we've been doing is trying to connect the homework questions to the text and go through the verses more. Because what Geshe is doing is teaching the ideas of the text, and he's not going through line by line or going through verse by verse so much. So one of the things we've been doing is trying to connect the homework questions to the verses. And also just time to hang out and debate and have fun and answer questions. And it's no real format. Okay, cool. Thanks. I have one behind on the homework. Just like, yeah. So if anybody has homework, I don't have any specific questions at this moment, but I'm up for anything. Cool. I had one little quick question and I'm not sure if it pertains at this point because it's from verse one but when I was reviewing and reading them all over when I read the first verse and it says the three things that you need to do to become whole and it's called like it all begins with ignorance I feel confused because I feel like if nothing is self-existing of its own from its side, then why is it that you need to do these three practices that are external and internal to become whole? So when I was reading it, I was just, I don't know, I was debating within myself trying to understand, like when I look at regular study, it feels like I'm looking to things outside myself, like a book and these ancient texts from 2,500 years ago or what have you. And if they're not self-existing then why is it that i need to do all those three things to become whole earl or lydia or bob or anybody um well i think that patanjali gives actually several different systems and several different chapters so you don't necessarily have to do those three things it's a it's a practice manual of practices probably you're going to have to do something right like it's unlikely that enlightenment is just going to suddenly manifest that doesn't seem like a good game plan like we're going to have to create the causes for it right it's a cause thing so we're going to have to create the causes so what are the causes of that thing and there's a whole bunch of answers to that that Patanjali goes through in chapter one he mainly is talking about samadhi but um you know then he presents a kriya yoga system then he presents a ashtanga yoga system and then he presents a internal chakra system and then he gets all philosophical in the fourth chapter so i don't think that um you know just because practices aren't self-existent doesn't mean that we don't need them right good answer thank you one of the ways i see it is like um if you're if you're like in handcuffs you're like but in my mind i'm free it's like okay great but you're still in handcuffs so you got to meet the problem where it's at to then resolve it and then to embody that that freedom and so there's a bunch of different systems like if you're evil Knievel, you might do one thing. If you're Houdini, you might do another thing. You know, if you're somebody else, you might have it. So these are all different ways to get out of the handcuffs so that what you're perceiving matches what you're believing. And so those are like the different paths. And that's why, you know, when Geshe-la talks about going to the Shivananda ashram, and someone was like, how do you reconcile other people's systems? And he was just like, hey, there's a lot to learn from a lot. And if you think about Master Taranatha, you know, I know, Tracy, you were in the Lady Naguma course. Master Taranatha was able to accomplish great things because he learned all these different systems. You got it. So it's like, what is your style of getting out of the handcuffs? And that's the way I see these different practices. Thank you. That helps. question um and i've correct me if i'm wrong but i can't remember if it's um once you become an aria or once you reach some kind of level i remember hearing that uh you can basically pick up any religious text and understand it and actually you could be like You could just go to a bodega and whatever the cashier says to you is a dharma. Like you're learning from that. And that speaks to the emptiness of all of these teachings. I don't remember the details. Maybe you guys know them, but is that true? Yeah, Geshe-la talks about that in the yoga sutras. There's a verse that goes, Sarva Bhuta Ruta Jnana. And I think it's in the third chapter. And he talks about that experience. He relates it to Christianity. Something about the disciples go off and they speak in their own language and then everyone understands them. Something like that. And that there is a point, he talks about like a Buddha speaks in Sanskrit and everyone hears them in their own language. But I can't remember if it's like a Arya or Arhat or where that, what you're talking about, where that happens, I can't remember. But he talks about it in that verse, Sarvabhuta, something like that, where we're able to understand even like the speech of animals, or we'll hear teachings in the wind. someone who's way less smart than Earl, one of the ways that I'm thinking about it is that if the greatest cause is wisdom, if the greatest cause is to not see something as coming from its own side and to have that wisdom and match it with compassion, then everything could be a teaching because it's not because the words are empty, you know, and if we just go through our entire worlds living in this state of remembering emptiness and seeds of compassion, then everything's a teaching in that way. Because if you think about it, let's say that you just achieve the state where you can help all people. We can't force anybody to do anything, but what we can do is create opportunities for people to practice. Like let's say that we achieve this state, right? Where we can just like pop in and be like, oh, hey, now I'm going to create the opportunity for you to to sow the seeds to create the causes for your ultimate uh potential uh then who's to say that's not happening all the time for us so it's not necessarily well yeah I'll leave it at that yeah what if we're the last one to get enlightened and what if I'm the last one and every all of you guys all of these little squares you're just trying to teach me oh gosh you figured it out earl what do we do now this is so awkward thank you thank you keep going please stay i was having the same feeling sarah so i'm glad you said it a lot of cheerleaders um do you want to go through the verses yeah i have a question about pratyahara when we get there just just i'm letting you know all right let's kind of fly through a whole bunch of verses and get the flow of the text and and get up to speed to what's going on in verse 20 he's talking about well here's 19 and 20 he's talking about um seeing emptiness directly pretty much and the seer seeing by simply by seeing experiences purity and then later against these objects so i guess we'll talk about the two parts of the direct perception of emptiness um the part where we're in that experience and then when we come out of it and he talked about the discrimination between as Chrissy is doing when we're in that direct experience the glasses come off for a second and then we come out of it and then the glasses come back on so that was perfect timing Chrissy thank you um we coordinated that perfectly so so that's kind of that that verse and in those two realities uh ultimate reality and and deceptive reality so we come out of that that direct experience and then deceptive reality reasserts itself and even though we know the glasses are out it's still deceptive so then in verse 21 this kind of this whole section is like talks about the nature of suffering and how to get out of it and so he's talking about here the thing can only be seen by the one who's seen it meaning it's indescribable we can't talk to somebody and and explain it in a way where they would be able to go and have that experience themselves in the immediate future it's an indescribable it's that experience of being without able to distinguish a subject and object is beyond words so how are you going to describe that with words right So it's a bit of a problem. And so we explain it with metaphor. It's like a diamond. It's like water pouring into water. The Tao, which can be described as a Tao, stuff like that. And what is destroyed for that person, that ignorance, that glasses have come off. Those glasses come off for a second. The glasses come off for a second. And it's just for you. a personal experience it's not like ignorance is destroyed for anybody else it's it's uh they still possess the foundation of ignorance and then the next verse talks about you know the problem is that interaction of of us master and and servant swa swamin which reflects to the second kind of ignorance the ignorance of seeing um asmita a self-existent me and a self-existent mind so even on the the path of preparation um the classes come back on and we're seeing a self-existent me and a self-existent mind and then and here's where kai value comes in i think yeah so then we have to stop that ignorance and when we do we reach kai value but we're not there yet on that on that fourth path the path of habituation we come out of that third path path of seeing onto the fourth path the deceptive reality glasses come back on things appear one way exist another way and that's what we're trying to get rid of that habit that misunderstanding that interaction all the way up to up to up to the final end that's what we're working on on that path of habituation we're habituating ourselves to what we saw on that path of seeing the next verse says when we have that discrimination where we know that the glasses are on we now have a method we know how to destroy the tanopaya we know how to destroy the ignorance we we know what we need to do and this continues on through the seven first seven bodhisattva levels at which point uh we hit nirvana and the the main negative emotions are eliminated by the end of the seventh path so then at the eighth path what that means is do the glasses come off at the eighth path yeah yeah so then so then what's left so what's the what's the next verse yeah okay it doesn't flow quite how i was hoping but so we've talked about the seven you know the the the process along that seven levels of getting rid of ignorance getting rid of ignorance getting rid of ignorance and then we we stop having that experience of ignorance where we're no longer the ignorance of of seeing things existing in one way but they exist in another way that ignorance ends right at the eighth level so then if there's no ignorance what are we left to work on at levels eight nine and ten whatever's left over our seed omniscience yeah so it's like the seeds for it's the it's the seeds for omniscience all right removing the obstacles so there's obstacles mental affliction obstacles and obstacles from missions so the first seven levels we're working to remove the mental affliction obstacles remove those at the eighth level attain nirvana the world appears in accordance with the way it exists as empty and then we eliminate the the subtle seeds that are left that are blocking total omniscience and then inverse the word i'm sorry omniscience omniscience means to be able to know all things as opposed to omnipotent which means to be able to do everything okay thank you and actually we'll see in this text where Patanjali says you get both so it'll be interesting to see how Geshe translates that because in Buddhist philosophy you never become omnipotent but in this text it comes up so that'll be an interesting discussion you'll be able to control all things and and uh yeah so then in this this verse is cool it says so now we're like we've discussed suffering right we said that the it's the future suffering that we're trying to eliminate and then there's this discussion of like the there's a discussion on the nature of seeds the nature of suffering the suffering that we're trying to eliminate then it kind of goes through the path to eliminate this that talks about the direct perception of emptiness um talks about you know draws correlations to the path of preparation again we're reasserting that ignorance is the problem and then we get to this verse here and it says if we engage in these practices two things will happen impurities are destroyed and we get the light of wisdom and so he's saying like how do we take those glasses off like let's talk about a path and and a lot of commentators are like what's going on here like um patanjali is kind of known as somebody that systematizes spiritual ideas um he's like a synthesizer of ideas and so it looks like like some of the commentators are like why is he throwing in another whole system like we've talked about kriya yoga now why is he talking about the limbs and why is there overlap between them like has he is he just kind of merging two systems and then other commentators say kriya yoga is like the first wash of some really dirty laundry and then then you move on to ashtanga yoga and it's like the second wash and there's some overlap in those practices the three practices of kriya yoga also come up in the niyamas so there's you know the text is so short and concise that it leaves a lot of questions and room for interpretation so um you know those are some of the arguments at the at the world at large but he it's interesting he talks about do these eight practices and the light of wisdom will will come meaning the result is perfect wisdom prashna paramitan i think i talked a little bit about this today i wasn't there but um like wisdom is the result but i think bob was saying he talked about prajnaparamita as like the the efforts towards attaining that perfect wisdom so we get to that perfect result of wisdom through applying wisdom through these eight steps so it's the practice of wisdom in the eight steps that makes the wisdom perfect so in the six in the six perfections wisdom is the result but it's also the thing that's applied to the other five to bring us to that perfect result wisdom makes the first five perfections perfect but the first five perfections bring us to the sixth so they're like they reinforce each other we can't have wisdom without the first five but we can't perfect the first five without wisdom yeah reverberations i like that so here he's got you know a second system that he's describing as a path how are we going to get the glasses off and it's a eight-part system and um there's other you know ex-anga systems like but Patanjali is not the first person to call his thing a you know an x amount part system there's a there's a text called the Maitrayana Maitrayana Upanishad that has a six part system and the six parts in that are pranayama prachahara dharma dhyana samadhi and something called tarka which is reflection so a lot of it is the same pranayama prachahara and then focus concentration perfect meditation and then reflection tarka and i'm not totally clear what what tarka is and time to look it up and i think there's a five limb system in the mahabharata and so patanjali is kind of known as this person that systematizes or or um or takes like the milieu of spiritual ideas and puts them together into a codified system and that's exactly what the yoga sutra kind of becomes it becomes this codified system that becomes known as the yoga school so there's six schools of hinduism much the same as there's schools of buddhism and one of those schools of thought is yoga the yoga school is very close related to the sampiya school but that yoga school is formed around this one text patanjali takes these ideas and concretizes them and systematizes them and that text becomes known as like the bible of the yoga school and there's a guy named shankaracharya that does the same with the upanishads and takes the teachings of the upanishads and systematizes them and and creates vedanta so the vedanta system is the anta the end of the vedas which chronologically is the upanishads and so he takes the the wisdom teachings of the Upanishads and puts them into a system and that's what that's how Vedanta is born I'm not sure how I got way off on that tangent but anyway we're now up to to the verse that we were hoping to get to I was hoping to get to which is the one Geshehla talked the most about but I wanted to get the flow of the the text a little bit hopefully that quick run through was helpful yes thank you that brings us to the next one oh no here we are yeah yeah many i'm awesome So that's all I got. You know, we could go through those eight or... You want to go through the homework? If there's questions, look at the homework. Well, I had a question about Pratyahara because I was thinking about that cloth that he was, the muslin cloth that he was describing today. Can you just get that on Amazon, Earl? I'm just kidding. That was not my question. uh so if if you're withdrawing your senses um where are they going because if you're withdrawing something you're taking it from one place and putting it into another uh and so is it is it that you're like concentrating all of your senses into your uh diana or your dhanani because there's there's a transportation like it's moving it's going somewhere so what what is where does it go is it focused into focus nicole you look like you're going to jump in there no actually i had a really bad service so i just switched to uh putting it on my phone hot spot so I missed part of the question sorry Earl so so if we if we take something like eye consciousness or the the eye sense sight uh and then you you close so then you close your eyes so you're like it's beginning to withdraw your your eye sense uh does the eye sensation just simply dwindle away and disappear or does it transmute into a different kind of thing or does it go into like a visualization where you're having like this kind of mental eye sensation thing like where does it go well i feel like maybe it's the seeds stop for that vision and then other seeds are activated then we're not activating the seeds for sight anymore where we can activate them the seeds for visualization is visualization also eye consciousness or eye sensation i would say no yeah i would say no also okay so it's vision without vision got it Yeah, because you're not using that organ to perceive it. So that makes sense. Like I can think of a smell, but I'm not smelling it. Okay. So you're simply dwindling them away, but you're not like transmuting them necessarily. You're not with the cloth that's going from somewhere to another. Whereas it's more so like you're just dwindling away the cloth until there's no more cloth. I'll read the, here's what it says in the Yoga Sutra. Prachihara, withdrawal of the senses, occurs when the senses do not come in contact with the respective sense object. So you're withdrawing the senses and restraining them. You're not allowing them to come in contact with their object. Okay. That makes sense. So you're not moving it. you're not shifting the focus inward. You're simply just shutting off the tubes. Like you're shutting off the valve on the plumbing. So just ain't nothing getting through. This is accomplished through the mind. When the mind is under control, says Vyasa, the senses are automatically under control. They do not need to be restrained separately. Okay. Just as when the queen bee flies up, all the other bees fly along with her. And when the queen settles down, all the other bees automatically settle down. So the mind and senses are directly interconnected. That kind of makes me think of why withdrawing the senses is so important. we're using up so much karma all the time to see to feel to taste smell and by stopping that we're kind of like saving the karma and dedicating it to seeing emptiness directly does that make sense i like that it's like the 65 seeds of uh finger snap aren't being distributed across five senses you're just focusing all 65 in one direction i like that my practice i use like i don't know like doing the gumas practice you bring the awareness and your inner gaze to the chakra right like our intention is to come to the neck in the center point so you close your eyes and you bring it to the or like at the level of you know the level of the throat or even to the tip of the nose and i feel like closing your eyes you now have a lot more energy and you have a lot more focus and so i also feel like there's a certain degree of patyahara like if i sit there long enough then my focus can be more attuned to the spot in which i'm focusing because of there's less thought but like what you're saying is like i think it does become more empowered the more um it becomes attuned nice i think that i don't know for me i think about it in the sense that even part of our ignorance is thinking that we're our body and we're our mind and for me i think about it more from an experiential place where when your mind you have this awareness that you get so expanded that you lose all sense of even being in your body and being your mind the senses go with it so that's how I look at it I could be totally wrong but yeah just different way I have is like are we negating our senses completely or are we simply using our senses for internal purposes to go into the koshas and to go into the deeper and to like see the mechanics of how our reality is created i think it's the first i think we're cutting off the senses by concentrating the mind and that seems to be what the commentaries are saying like the by focusing the mind so intently it's not like the ear doesn't function it's like the prana like bob said the prana is cut off where there's some sort of disassociating from that sense power so that we're not distracted by the sound coming in the ear we're not distracted by the smells you can put mcdonald's french fries under someone's face and they're not gonna gonna notice them and then one of us just looking through some of the the notes and there's this progression of in asana meaning in meditation we still the energies of the body the five different pranas and then in pranayama we're stilling the breath and then in pratyahara we're stilling the senses and then in samadhi we're stilling the mind so there's this progression of things that we're stilling wasn't the pratyahara something about a door opening that geshla talked about they talk about the senses as gateways or doorways so the eyes as a door to perceive an object so you're shutting the gateway off is our awareness part of our senses yo benji can you get closer to your mic somehow would you say that our awareness is our would you say that that's a sense or would you say it's the mind i think both i go both i had one teacher who would always tell me like you know to reverse your senses and just see, look for what you can't see, which initiates this kind of thing of like, almost like seeking with the awareness, ultimately to the middle of the onion, you know? And so I'm wondering, like, if we bring our attention and our awareness to the level of the throat, are we moving an inner eye or would you just consider that to be the mind being awarenessed? I think that what we're doing is we're putting our awareness in different places within our body but I think that there's there's there's different awarenesses I think there's awarenesses of like awareness is is one catch-all term but there's different kinds of awarenesses which is why Pratyahara works because we can shut off all these different awarenesses and then just leave just the mind. And so I think like the awareness of our, of a smell, and then what we do is we shut that valve off. So the French fries don't distract us. And then we shut off the awareness of our, of our eyes and of our ears and of our, of our skin and sensory. But then our awareness of our mind and our awareness of self is then what's And then from there, then we can start this like taking that one apart. But it's hard to get to that part unless if everything else is jittery and chattering. So we got to shut off all that off so that we can get into, I think of like that game of operation where you try not to touch the sides. It's like, if there's an earthquake happening, you're screwed. If you want to do that super sensitive surgery. Man, that game, Dulcy. Talk about Kaleishas, bro. So you're saying that the valve, shutting off a valve, is not connected to the smell right in that moment? You're disconnecting that becoming connected to your awareness. So the smell still exists. It's still there. The molecule is hanging in the air, but you're no longer perceiving it because you've withdrawn that sense. So it's not a seed that's closing the valve. It's the actual sense of the smell that makes you say, I need to shut off the valve and then it no longer perceives it. I mean, it's all seeds. Like smelling or not smelling is a seed. Yeah, I think it's kind of like a power to not use your seeds for that. and I don't think it's like you just turn it I don't think it's a conscious thing of turning it off I think it's just a natural progression like he was saying about the suspension of breath like there's just a natural progression of like I when I do my practice that I'm trying to teach on video like I'll start to do it and I'll forget to talk you know and then there's like an awkward pause of me trying to teach yoga and I've like withdrawn all my senses and I forget to speak I forget to go outside. I don't know. I think it's different if it's intentional or unintentional. Is that withdrawing the senses or is that, you know, going into your mind about something else? I'm not sure what you mean. Like if you're withdrawing and you're in concentration and you're withdrawing your senses, just single pointedly concentrated on your object. I think it's different than forgetting to be on the object, like speaking in the class. Lydia keep jumping in yeah I mean okay I'm going a little different direction but I'm kind of like trying to get this idea so I remember when Geshe was talking about the senses the thing that made like really good sense to me. It wasn't today. It was like the day before. And he was talking about not using our senses during meditation. And he goes, yeah, that's why we close our eyes. Like you just, you know, shut the gateway. And that way you don't have more distractions during meditation. And it was just kind of such an obvious, I was like, oh, that's why we do it. Like, oh, like, so I'm thinking, okay, so yeah, we want it to be quiet. So we're not, you know, being distracted by things that we hear. We want to be in a place, you know, that's conducive to all this so that we can focus our concentration on our object, on something important. And what I'm doing now is I'm going back to, because I've been stuck on the, on the chinchilokshi, the four things that we mistake back to the ignorance. So I'm wondering, like I shared the other day, as your practice progresses, things that you used to like, things that like used to bring you joy or like that you used to do now you're kind of like, or at least for me, I'm like, no, that's not really like doing it for me anymore. I don't really want to do that anymore. That's not something that's, you know, so I'm thinking about withdrawing our senses too. Like you kind of get to a point where you're like, no, I don't really want to watch TV anymore. I don't want to watch violent movies. I don't want to be bombarded with like social media all day long. I prefer, Earl, you know me too well. Stop. Good thing this, the chat is not shared with, with the world. So, so you want to stop doing certain things because you want to have, you know, that better concentration. So I'm thinking that it's not necessarily something that we're, you know, like harnessing and really like struggling with but over a long period of practice you begin to not use those senses in a way it's going to like drain your energy does that make sense maybe it makes a lot of sense to me and i think that's such a great way to look at pratyahara like when venerable maroot uh taught it for those that know him he would just say turn it off like the practice of prachihara is turn it off turn off the tv turn off the radio turn off the spotify turn off the phone turn off the email turn off them and there's like the grossest outer forms of prachahara and then we progress in that um that idea into you know stop reading so much stop putting so much stimulus in your brain and be more selective about that and be more selective about our activities and be more selective about our friendships and do the activities that serve our what reflect our core values and then you know i like to think about it in terms of yeah okay develop a meditation practice develop a mindfulness practice and then what we would do with john yates was once a month we would go out there and you know have a whole day of intense meditation meditate for an hour walk for an hour meditate for an hour walk for half hour meditate for an hour walk for a half hour you take one day kind of devoted to prachihara and then the next thing you know you're in three-year retreat Well, like here at YSI, we believe in circle days that I know everyone on our team is devoted to our circle days, but yeah, we've talked about it, right. About taking that day where you are not connected right now, at least like to the computer screen and you're not sitting in front of, you know, your meetings and your phone and doing that. And you're taking a moment to cut it all off, go outside. And it's not that I'm not seeing or smelling or, you know, feeling outside, but you are like removing it because I don't know what other people can relate to this, but like during the pandemic, we've kind of all retreated into our houses. And I don't know if you guys feel it, but like when you go out to a store, like I went to pick up food at a restaurant, we didn't eat there, but I was like overwhelmed by the people sitting in the tables. I was like, oh, we used to do this like it was just so many like people and talking and chattering and it was just like so overwhelming and I actually thought about you Earl that you've shared such beautiful stories and when you came out of three-year retreat you were like whoa there is like so much going on you know and I kind of felt that I was like oh I like stepped into like a new like there's too much you know stimulation coming at me so I just want to jump in and say that I got to go teach so signing off um i love hanging out with y'all look forward to it see you all tomorrow thanks oh i'm just catching up on the chat here i i was like bob what you want to go on to the next thing like you want to like move on to the next topic and then i realized you were like answering dulcie no no earl was like next thing you know you're in through your retreat i was like oh yeah that's just you're walking for half an hour next thing you know you're in three year retreat well no for real like you know you start taking some asana classes and then you realize that it's a couple years later and you're in a teacher training and then you're teaching a class and then you know then you're like well maybe I should do that meditation thing and then you're in a meditation teacher training and you know like I think you know that that constant practice over time is the thing that really takes us to the next thing it's never just kind of that like burst of like oh I'm now going to do this thing you know it's I took yoga and now I work at the yoga studies institute yoga not even once I took yoga once and I'm here say no to yoga no friends do yoga yeah i think uh it's really interesting when you don't scatter like i i try to try to do a pretty i try to focus on product management like how am i how am i spending my energy and then what things give me like endless energy and what things like deplete my energy and pratyahara is for me just like, I mean, everyone says, says charge up your battery, but that's exactly what it is. It's like, instead of like scattering it in a different million places across all my different senses, it's really nice to have just a super quiet day where what you do is you just, you withdraw. And I love to fast. I love to fast because I eat a lot of food. I know I don't look like it, but I, I, I was just out with Connie and Connie's like, do you realize that you've literally been eating for two hours straight. I was like, dude, you're telling me it takes so much time. And so to not eat for a whole day on a circle day, as part of my Pratyahara is amazing. Because it's such a sensation. And then I feel like even like the idea of digesting my food takes away from my mental clarity, where it's like my body, my prana is being used in this very interworldly way which i gotta do that to keep the car running you know i gotta do that to keep the water pumping and like the body moving but every once in a while not engage with that and then you have to hear about people who have these really intense practices where they hardly eat at all and it's just like man once you get down to a really deep pratyahara you know i mean those people probably aren't partying every night and you know popping mollies and doing all that stuff because that's such an overwhelming sensation where if you're just in this constant state of like Pratyahara. And then I think the next thing is to be able to be in these chaotic states still keeping your Pratyahara. That's something that I really aspire to is like, how are you in the center of Times Square and you're still totally, you've never left your Pratyaharic state. I think that's cool. you you make me think of of like being not in times square but just like being at home like with my kids like have my kids be like a whirlwind you know and like life like going you know all like crazy and then just being like okay you know like that zen moment of like i'm not gonna engage like I can do it yeah that's a good one can I jump in with something um this this is probably a question to like take to another place to discuss but I just on the subject of circle days does anybody in this group have like a full-time job somewhere normal I don't know or office job or something that has negotiated a circle day I'm just curious oh I did that before yeah like before I was UISI person yeah I I have a background in sales who would guess and I I was I said hey listen I need a circle day. And they said no. And I said, well, you're going to see that my results are going to increase. And so they said, well, if your results increase, then I don't care because it's sales, right? So it's just pure production or revenue. And by taking a circle day, I actually increase my sales so I worked less and made more because what happened was I have a well so that's what I did I can tell you about like kind of how it worked but it was so wild and the biggest the biggest obstacle was me which was wild because I was like you know I'm like top top one percent sales in the entire organization and I'm just like dude if I take a day off I'm gonna you know because I got all this ego attached to like being a high performer and so I'm like and then what what people think of me they'll think I'm lazy and like all this stuff and then I was like I was like dude why am I so attached to these results like I'm not practicing like I'm not serving others as well that's the real sale that's the real goal and so uh and I have a very supportive partner and a really nice cat and so with with those two uh oh a circle day what is a circle day a circle day is a day where it's, it comes from the Tibetan word, Sam, Lydia could probably pronounce it better than me, which means border. So essentially, you put a border around yourself and you say, all the normal things of the day, they can't enter the border. And so it's a day for you to go deep into your practice and to serve others. So there's a really nice agenda for it that Geshe-la writes in his book, The Diamond Cutter, The Buddha, Managing Your Business. Thank you very much, Sarah. And so, and it's a really, really, really, really, really sweet way to spend time. So that's the circle day. And so then after that, I worked less and made more after I did my circle day, which I was just like, dude, why was I so held up? Like it's all seeds anyway. So it makes sense that if I'm planting more causes, you know, and like, like putting more prana in my central channel, then I'm going to be seeing a better result. So that's what I did, Sarah. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm might be taking a full-time job again soon and I'm going to do that. Nice. And you know what Geshehla wrote in his book, because he wasn't in sales, is that he took a pay cut. You know, and he started with once a month. And then he went to twice a month. And he went to every single week. And then he went to making a bunch of money instead of less money. Because he proved his worth. I mean, like in his story, during his Circle Day, he had this flash of insight where he came up with something that saved millions of dollars for the organization. How worthwhile was that Circle Day? Ask the management. They'll let you know. Yeah. thanks Sarah I have a success story not about a circle Dave but I got five weeks off of my corporate job to go to India paid totally unheard of um that's awesome and the way I did it is I used the four steps I knew someone who had their own job their own skin their own business actually my yoga teacher. I was doing Ashtanga. So I was like, I have to go to India. I have to go study with Sharad. Like that's the next step. Like that's the only thing that I want to do. And so I went to cover for her on Saturdays and I was like, okay, I will be the receptionist at her work. So she can like go and like do her things and I'll like open and close. And like, I would go one day a week and I did my thing. And then my boss who was, you know, completely traditional, like you get 10 days of vacation, maybe gave me five weeks to go to India paid. So the circle day will give you great, you know, insight, but just plant it, just make it happen. Like find someone else and, you know, do your thing and your job will definitely let you do it. Thank you. This is inspiring. yeah i i want to i kind of want to just do this one little thing um it has nothing to do with the yoga sutra well i mean it kind of is but it's uh it's very related to what lydia just shared i was talking with jb actually i was observing jb talk with somebody about this really entrenched issue it was like super sticky like the kind of thing where like you really never wished that upon anybody and he just said everybody is so attached to fighting results that they forget to plant causes everyone is so attached to fighting results that they forget to plant causes and you're just like so basic right and so you're like no that can't apply because look how complicated my look how complicated my situation is if you were in my situation you would think that you need to fight the result and he's like by the and guess what did this teaching literally the next day it was incredible the next day he goes the way light works remember when he taught on the theory of relativity he's like the way light works is that you're already seeing the past so if you're trying to change your scenario by the time the light hits your eye bulb it's already happened so you could never change it anyway because what you're perceiving is already the past so how silly would it be for you to fight what you even observe in the present moment because it's already passed ah like come on that's so crazy awesome so then the only thing that a logical person would do is to plant causes because the results already have happened and you can't change them it's dried cement so lydia is like how do i overcome this impossible by planting the causes because what's more logical is to plant causes them to fight results and then we do our practice to accelerate the ripening of those seeds that's one of the main reasons we practice it's one thing to like have the awareness it's another thing to totally manipulate how what what what geshla always says is like it's like airplanes on the tarmac getting ready to take off like you have the ability to choose which airplane goes first if you have a really stellar practice yes dude do not forget the rejoice you gotta go to the to the tartouk because not only here if you if that wasn't enough right like if it wasn't enough that I went for five weeks no seriously single mom with two kids living in Mexico like I had child care work paid for. And I went to India for five weeks and I came back. I was like, yeah, that was great. Thank you. Like, I mean, something that you would never imagine is possible. So just pick your things. Okay. I need childcare. All right. I took care of my friend's dog. I was like, okay, bring it on. I will be, you know, your refuge for your dog. Here's their house. Okay. I need to have, you know, a job. Okay. So I did, you just got to figure out what you want, plant it and you got it. Just do your coffee meditation. Thank you so much for bringing that up because I've been thinking about that story a lot. Actually, the story that Gessie and Michael told about the, and I know where I passed time, so I will be fast, about the guy that was complaining about how depressed he was. And then the monk was like, be happy. And that's all he said. And it's like, the seed's already planted. You know, he wants to be happy today, but like you know there's nothing the result is happening from a long time ago and that's the the flip side of it is like oh man you know there's nothing I could do about this that will fix it now and um so thinking about it that way like I wrote that down everyone's fighting the results so much and they forget to plant the causes that is a very nice way to flip where my mind was kind of going to the negative place. So thank you. John Brady, ladies and gentlemen, the master practitioner, he is OG. And then Sarah, I just want to say one other thing that this is something I've been chewing on for like ever since he said it. Because for me, I'm like, what? Like this was way cool. The way that you bend light is with a massive body. And so if you want to think about how to bend time and space and even light, it's by becoming a massive body. And so when we think about like these greater beings or these greater, you know, people who have made really amazing commitments and are really beautiful practitioners like JB, you know, or like Gashay Michael, obviously. and then if they want to see something happen you know i've just been thinking about like just this idea of like time warping and if you're this if you're someone who's just had such a stellar practice that you've accumulated and you've become so pure because you've purified so many of your negative seeds that it's just like ten dollars here and then i turn around and literally a hundred dollars hits me in the face you know like that's one of the things i'm when i think about how to manipulate uh my like the way that i see the world it's like man i just got to become better and better and better as i become this like bigger and bigger and bigger like practitioner bigger is a weird word in this sense but like hey what's up sasha yo i hung out with sasha for like a half an hour once it was awesome she's like every sticker on earth in our chat of course of course dude she's like you said six o'clock mom it's six oh five yeah all right sorry mom massive beings been time space and light that's it that was the whole thing yeah very inspiring thank you guys thank you everyone thank you bye bye