1. Life is not random, or out of our control 2. Everything we experience is a result of a cause. 3. The Outer World is a reflection of our Inner world 4. How we treat others & ourself is a behavioral reflection of our Inner Landscape 5. The Inner & Outer Landscapes are a perfect soil that will grow any Seed we sow into that soil. 6. Seeds are planted in our Inner & Outer Landscapes through every Action of body, speech & mind 7. Every experience, harmful and beneficial, is a ripening of these Seeds as the experience itself. 8. Our actions are dictated by our behaviors in the form of a reaction or response 9. Every experience is an Opportunity to plant beneficial mental seeds by acting with Compassionate Wisdom 10. If the outer world is a reflection of our Inner World, then we have all the power to change this world. 11. Your Destiny is to become a Steward, cultivating a beauty within you to see it reflected outside you 1. Dependent Origination, a perfect form of justice, cooperation. Ecosystem vs Egosystem. 2. Emptiness cooperates with Karma 1. Four laws of Karma 2. Deeds Never fail 3. Personal Responsibility 3. What you experience in your world, is a reflection of who you are inside. 1. My inner landscape: five layers of being 2. Is there any experience you have had that didn't first start as a thought? 3. Everyone is perceiving the outer world differently. In a group of 10 people having a similar experience, there will be 10 unique perceptions of that experience. Everyone is having their own personal experience. 4. Proof: You don't see the Pen the same way the Dog sees a pen. The pen is just a collection of parts, assembled together in your mind as a Pen. Some people see this as more than a Pen. You are creating your world in your mind. 4. Who we are Inside is a result of how you have acted in the past. 1. Like the Pen, we are mentally associating names and concepts to everything we experience. Really though, these names and concepts are mental images of our mind, projected out onto the world and objects. These projected mental images are what we call Mental Seeds. 5. Every time we act, we sow a seed. Everything we are reacting to, is a seed that has sprouted. Everything we do sows seeds in our Inner Landscape. One day these seeds ripen and force us to experience pleasant or unpleasant results. 6. In every moment, we have the opportunity to interact with our world and ourselves. How we interact with our world is what we call behavior. * Behavior means: the manner in which we conduct ourselves (whether good or bad. Conduct means to guide, accompany or to show the way. What are we guiding ourselves to? We either guide ourselves to Pollution (Samsara, Cyclic Pain), or to Paradise (Beauty, Medicine) by how we interact with our world. What is pollution? It is the result of poor or improper conduct. * What is Beauty? It is the result of beneficial conduct? What is improper? Harmful. What is Beneficial? Compassion. * So, if you are the conductor, are you running the show? Who is running the show? Your emotions, reactions, fears, traumas, other people? Stewards take control of their own inner landscape to run the show. They start to design their Inner Landscape and thus shift their whole reality into beauty & medicine for themselves and others. Identity is merely a pattern of events in time & space. Change the pattern & you have changed the person \- Nisargadatta Maharaj. What is the inner landscape? * **First we need to discuss what an outer landscape is:** * Land: "a definite portion of the earth's surface owned by an individual or nation" * Landscape (non-artistic definition): "tract of land with its distinguishing characteristics" * **What can we say the Inner Landscape is?** * A definitive portion of invisible reality with distinguishing qualities owned & governed by an individual. * But we also have an outer landscape right? Thats not invisible? * **In Permaculture, we say there are layers to a forest. According to Yoga, we have Five Layers of our Inner Landscape...** * The Physical Body, this is our outer landscape, what we interact with in our outer world, our food and drink, all the physical components of the body * The Breathe: at this layer we begin to go within, 50/50. We inhale & we exhale. We can also notice how changes in our breathe changes how the body feels. * Prana: we go a little deeper within to the vital energies that give us life force. Surely we must see that just because something is invisible, doesn't mean it can't have an affect on us. How is it that my voice, can go from a thought, to my mouth, to your ear, to your mind? * Thoughts: in yoga tradition, we say thoughts ride upon the prana, they are always together, riding in tandem like a horse and a rider. Energy flows where attention goes. Bring your awareness to your big toe. Where is your mind when you think? When you are having fun? When you are in love? * Seeds: Everything we do is recorded by the mind. * how come some of you will understand deeper meanings of what I say and some of you won't. How come some of you work hard and don't make money. And then some of you don't work hard and make money? * Mental Seeds sprout every 1/60th of a second and force you to perceive the objects in your world. These seeds were sown in your Inner Landscape in the past, by you, through your actions. * All of the layers affect each other. If the body is hurting, what can we do to help it? From every layer, we have an opportunity to heal ourselves. Solutions from the outer to the inner: Stretching, square breathing, loving intent/inner smile, recalling memories of helping others who were in pain, helping someone else who is in pain. * **What is it that shapes our Inner landscape? What are these qualities?** * All of the ways we interact through our five layers of Being. We can interact from the outside, inwards and from the inside, outwards * The way we interact with our body, changes our breathing, changes how our energy is flowing, changes the thoughts we have. Example: if I go do something really rewarding like help someone in their garden, I physically go help them, it changes how I'm breathing as i start working, I am having energy flow to certain parts of myself and I'm rejoicing about my time and then I'm sowing mental seeds in my inner landscape. * We can also begin with our mind. We have a good seed ripen inside of us, and thoughts of happiness seem to overcome us. This happiness shifts the prana to flow smoothly and easily. The breathe relaxes and our physical body appears happy and beautiful. * **Let's explore our Inner Landscape!** * I can't force you to think anything. I can't force you to believe anything I'm saying. I can't force you to be smarter or more hygienic or more considerate to your peers. * I can influence to think about Dogs and how Cats are cuter. How many of you saw a dog or a cat?  So there two ways of being influenced. * How many of you made a judgement in your mind whether a cat is really better than a dog? This fact here proves your mental real estate, your inner landscape can be influenced by things outside of you. * This also proves that the qualities of things outside of you cannot come from the thing themselves. Dogs are not cute to some people. Dogs are cute to other people. If Dogs were cute, then dogs would be cute to all people. * I can't force you to see dogs as cute. I can try and influence you to perceive something in the way I want you to, but ultimately, only within your mental world will you make perceptions and agreements to those perceptions. * the Pen - the world is not coming from its own side. You see it as a Pen. You also can't change the way you see the pen with positive thinking. You can't turn the pen into gold just because you want to. You are forced to perceive the pen the way you are because of how you acted in the past. Heres why: * If we act according to these influences habitually, we become conditioned by them. Our habits and ways of thinking, acting and speaking are all influencing and shaping our inner landscape. * Influencing is also programming. If I want to program you to be more considerate and loving to your peers, I could tell you in an obvious way to do so, and in a not so obvious way. What do you think, I'd love to hear your opinion about it? (subtle way) * Now, the real question is, can we be aware of things in our mental real estate, as an objective observer of it, without being forced to become the quality of mind that we are perceiving? * We need to be objective in order to really understand where our experience, our life and all of the pain in the world is coming from. If we can't learn to see where things are really coming from, then we can't make lasting, true changes in the world and we will always be a victim to the world. * Who here has been angry? How about Hangry? * Why were you angry? Because of the object out there in the world? But if that object had the power to make you angry, then everyone who interacted with that person or object would become angry. But they don't. So you are being forced to see them as making you angry - even if you didn't want to. * Why? because you are experiencing the weeds that are overgrown in your inner landscape in your outer world. Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. Life is not random, is not out of your control. What I'm saying here, is that Life is completely on your team. It is You creating your own life, for you, in order for you to become more understanding and compassionate. * Now we have to take personal responsibility for the world we experience. * Are the wars overseas my reality? No. I don't have a lot of suffering in my life. I have a lot of fortune and leisure in my life. Does that mean the suffering of war doesn't exist? No, they exist because someone is experiencing them. Does that mean its a problem for me if I go and take care of them? No, because the problems you guys have are not my problems. I can be in your world, but not of it, because I have the seeds to not make such things a problem anymore. * So how do we stop making problems for ourselves? * We are respond, instead of reacting. * We respond with an understanding that the things I experience are refletions coming from me. So if its an experience I'm creating, then why would I get mad at the other person? I would have to get mad at myself. And you shouldn't get mad at yourself, you should have intelligent regret. * When we react, our mind sows seeds in our inner landscape to sprout up later in our life. We yell back at the yelling roommate and plant a seed for a yelling roommate to come back to us. * When we respond to our world with compassionate wisdom, instead of reacting with negative emotions, we are sowing seeds that are benefiting the inner garden. * We have to become stewards of our inner and outer worlds to bring about the beauty and medicine all the suffering beings in this world need. So tell me, with this map, where does your outer world begin? From where is it created? Is there any experience you have had that didn't first start as a thought? Why are you here today? Did you not have ideas and thoughts about how your day should go? Did you not make decisions that led you to this very class in this very moment. You literally could be anywhere in the world. But you are not. You are here with me. So if our inner world is creating our outer world, then how is it you're going to create your world? How can we let go of the limitations we have on our creativity and our capacity to bring true happiness and abundance into the world? We have to observe and interact with our inner landscape. We examined how the layers of our being affect each other. So now we can begin to learn how to manage those layers. To utilize tools and solutions that bioremediate these layers. To purify and regenerate the quality and really our relationship with these layers. Can you show me anything that first wasn't an idea or a thought? Are we not perceiving The things “out there”, the things in our world, are just things. We label them, we give them concepts. But you got to see, the feelings of pleasure & pain are coming from within us. Look around you. The very fact that you are where you are in this moment is a creation of many tiny choices & decisions. We believe the things “out there” in our world are the causes of our pleasure & pain, but they aren’t. They couldn’t ever be. Some people like the things you dislike. The feelings and thoughts we have about things doesn’t come from the thing. It comes from you. So this opens it all up doesn’t it? Think about money. Does money from hard work. Surely not- I know some people who make a lot of money sitting on a computer for a few hours a day. Money doesn’t come from luck, hard work, good genetics or good ideas. Money comes from planting seeds for money in your mind. Money comes from sharing, being a generous conduit. Yes, it requires effort, and its not about just sitting around and thinking positive thoughts. It requires us to shift our mindsets, to be joyful generous with our time & energy. And to rejoice in such a way of living. The seeds projecting out onto the ultimate reality of the world are the causes of our whole world. Every decision and action leads us to our future. We are writing our own future destiny in every moment.