The Way of Heartfulness [Audio]

Let’s begin the ___ receiving. First, I want to congratulate you for getting through your first full day of the retreat. If you’re almost ___ and needs a little bit more ___, but generally for the most part, you got through, but mainly the reason why I’m saying this right now is because at least fifty percent of the people here really are doing this for the first time. They haven’t done any kind of any kind of intensive meditation retreat before. And by intensive meditation, I mean really silent, only sitting and walking, and sitting and walking, and not interacting with other people. And that’s a lot, and that’s a lot to do for the first time. And to get through the day, and really be the ___, like to go through all the things that you got here today, and you’re still sitting here, I don’t think anybody has actually laughed yet, but it’s wonderful.

Because for a lot of people, it’s really difficult, and some people report that in the group to us, Wow! This is the difficulty of doing this kind of practice. Just really sitting and walking, and sitting and walking, and there aren’t any other distractions, there aren’t any other stimulations that anything else to get involved in. ___ stuff and your own mind. It would be wonderful if you could just distract yourself or turn your mind off, but that isn’t actually what happened and I think we’ve all ___ set today, that there doesn’t seem to be an ___ and maybe some of you may actually look for one, but there doesn’t seem to be. We really laugh to ourselves with our own mind, our own heart, our own feelings, and all that goes on as we’re left to ourselves with silence. It can be really difficult for a lot of people. What actually makes it difficult? Because essentially, I mean, when you look at the appearance level, like ___, or walking, or eating, lying down, pressing our ___, doing a little bit of work.

So from that, by just looking or talking ___, that it seems like to be very difficult. We all know how to walk, we all know how to just sit still physically, but that’s just something that goes on. Something goes on for us. I mean, one thing that happen is that we are putting this body into this certain posture, or certain form, and we are acting it to sit there and not move. And the body isn’t really used to that. It’s really used to being much more active, much moving around, much more… often times the body isn’t used to for being still for being still for a long period.

And so there can be a kind of rebellion from the body. You know, the muscles there, ___, the back, the neck. They feel stiff. ___ and move, it just doesn’t, it’s still too awkward to feel comfortable in this position. Or in that stillness of staying still and not ___, we try to feel the ___ like we want to move. But not even just the physical things of muscles, or knees, or back, that the ___, that’s the kind. That energy, that energy that we have ___ in some way, physically, and so we feel the ___ starting to arrive inside of ourselves.

Are you feeling that if the pain in the body is isn’t there, or the ___ isn’t there, then we kind of feel ___ or tired. And sometimes, we don’t know whether the sleepiness is just arriving from boredom, because there actually isn’t any pain to deal with, and the energy is kind of settled down, and we’ve got nothing else to do. We just get a little bored and hello, ___. Or it can be a sleepiness that comes to actually stopping, just stopping everything. From a lifestyle that’s actually very hurried or busy, or involved in lots of things, lots of responsibilities, or certain situations that we have just been involved, and then you can, pause, and spare an amount of ___ or a lot of ___ of the emotional level. And maybe you’re quite tired and exhausted from all that work you’re dealing with, or maybe a physical weakness, or some kind of ailment or unhealthy ___ of the body.

You were tired. You feel week. It’s so much, there’s so much to ___. Not to mention if none of those things are going on, then it’s just the mind. Then we’re raft with the potential of all difficult mind states. Just the mind moving. Not just the mind moving, because it’s not a just a mind moving.

All over the place, into the path, and into the future, in commenting, and describing and explaining the present, it’s always mind agitation and mind restlessness and mind movement. And all these are going on. You know, it looks like we’re just sitting there and still, or walking very slowly, and probably there’s a few of you who thought that about everybody else here in the retreat, except me, everybody else can sit still quietly and ___ still, and I’m the only one who’s having this ___ and agitation and pain. Or everyone else ___ walking, and I just want to run. You know, it’s an awareness to look at the appearance level. And probably, somebody was saying the very same thing about you.

But yet, inwardly, we have all these that goes on. And this is the reality. This is the way it is. We’re still in this. What we’re confronted with is our ideals and our expectations about what should be happening, or what we think we should be happening, or what we’d like to happen here. Because we do have it, inner world happening that may not be necessarily the way we want it to be, or like it to be, or even feel or feel good to be. Then we have to see, we will see, all the ideals we are caring about what’s happening in our practice.

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