Good Evening!
My intuition kept calling me up to Inshallah...and it was RIGHT ON!! We got there late Saturday night AND I had a wonderful morning med in the training room both Sunday and Monday. The vibes in there just don't quit!! Too many of you have met the Great Ones in the training room during Connections and Journey Saturday's mergings and Their frequency remains on and on. Idyllwild is so beautiful this time of year and there has been enough rain & snow to see some lingering GREEN. The peace was tangible in those mountains, both inside and outside.
I chilled and studied my Lessons... Taj and I even snuck in a nap or two. I came home replenished and satisfied. I completed June Training recruitment calls on the ride home so I had the freedom to make my highest choice this Monday night. What was it? For the first time in the 32 years I've lived here, I mozied down to the SRF Temple Lesson Study. My only regret...I am kicking myself that I have missed this the last 3 decades!!
They begin with silent meditation for an hour with a short chanting after 30 minutes. Lesson study commences with reading a paragraph of a Lesson and then sitting in silence to meditate on what was read. I think some people may silently reread the paragraph, but I chose to meditate. Somewhere in the middle they stop and just meditate some extra time. This is so mellow they only get through a couple of pages of the Lesson...and then meditate again! It was just like the scripture study Yogananda mentions in the Autobiography of a Yogi. A few people gather to study the scriptures. A passage is read and then all meditate for a time. One truly can assimilate the meaning much more deeply...into the very atoms or cells, I think He said.
I am considering going each night they have something going on at the Temple. They study scriptures 3 nights a week which always includes the preceding hour of meditation, have longer meditations on others. As Den said...they set it all up for you...you just have to show up and get you butt in the chair!!
I was speaking to my daughter today. I was saying it is getting clearer and clearer that my happiness can only be found within. All the outward push and show does not provide lasting contentment. I am looking both inside myself and also at external activities and collectives that provide support for my inner journey. I used to view these folks that show up night after night as people with incredible self-discipline and the ability to truly sacrifice all the worldly offerings on the altar of their spiritual quest. Now, I am beginning to understand they go because they are addicted to the joy their focus in providing. True joy that lasts.
Humans are all the same. They are driven by their desire for happiness. People strive and push themselves for money, fame, sex/relationship because they are seeking Happiness. We each have experienced the truth that these things DO NOT provide LASTING Happiness. These folks who go to these Temple activities are still going year after year because they are finding Lasting Happiness in the support their showing up offers to their Spiritual life. Just because they "get" it, and we don't (in the past) doesn't mean they have sacrificed anything but their dumbness!
Ha! At the moment I am the one who feels dumb, dumb, dumb for passing up such wonderful opportunities over the years.
Examine how you spend your free time. Is it offering you the Lasting Happiness you crave? If not, re-work your schedule and do those things that will give you support and enthusiasm for discovering your True Self of Ever-lasting Bliss!
Learning along with you! k
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