meditation, practice, intuition, visualization
Saints in training is a term that I affectionately use to remind us that we are all here to become enlightened. That is our task according to the Yogi’s. We do not have any saints on site at SIT, we are human beings who are committing ourselves to the practice of love. We want to encourage you to be creative in your spiritual practice. Each month I will share some of my own practices, as well as techniques that I have learned from others.
Each month we offer out a virtuous word and a saboteur to that virtuous word to ponder on. All things have an opposite Let’s say the virtuous word is patience and the saboteur is anger. We would begin our practice by using the word patience in our conversations, this is because we can’t say anything that we don’t think about first. So, as we change our speech, we also change our thinking patterns. It’s a win win.
We encourage you to meditate or ponder on the word. We invite you to experiment with the various practices that will be offered throughout the year. We hope you will see or intuit how focussing on the virtue gives greater insight into how our thoughts influence our outer life. We invite you to learn to visualize, not only through inner vision, but through feeling or embodying the virtue in your daily life.
Remember the saboteur is always present. That is the nature of opposites.
MEDITATION
I am of the school that there isn’t anyone who can teach you to meditate. We can inspire, educate, demonstrate, and participate with one another, but ultimately, meditation is self taught through practice. There are various schools of thought on the subject of meditation and I encourage you to sample them until you find the one that drops you into Infinity.
We meditate on the word of the month by setting our concentration on it. As we ponder on the virtue, we become aware that the saboteur is always present, it may be dormant, but it is present.
This type of meditation can be a walking or sitting meditation. Follow your own path while joining with us in being aware of one virtue for thirty days.
We may not know one another, but we are collectively putting energy into a virtuous quality together. Breathe in the virtue, become the virtue and return the virtue to the world.
PRACTICE
Practice is everything. It is the road that you are building every day of your life. By observing our habits of communication, we can change the direction of our thoughts because no word appears in your throat without originating in your mind. Observation first, then change can happen.
The word of the month can be practiced in any way that you see fit to practice it. This will not interfere with any other practice that you may have. Maybe you do affirmations, you can affirm the word of the month by stating, — I am Patient and Kind. It takes practice for affirmations to become deep and meaningful.
You may breathe the essence in while you are taking a walk and breathe the saboteur out while asking the wind to disperse the negative energy. My point here is for you to be creative, if you take charge of the style of your practice, you are more likely to fall in love with the process and the results.
Practice practice and more practice. Practice the way you love to express yourself and the practice will become part of you.
INTUITION
The shuffling of ideas in the mind is similar to the shuffling of the cards.
We shuffle our hopes, wishes and fears in our minds everyday. We tend to use our intuitive process more like a slot machine though, we pull the lever and out comes our fate. Intuition is deep and profound, it is not to be used as a fate machine. Life is a gamble, but the more we can learn to sense patterns, then it is more likely that we will make better choices.
Nothing in this living Universe happens in and of itself. Everything is related. The words, random, coincidence and accident are designed to tell us that we do not see the connection in certain events, however, the connections are there. There are patterns just waiting to be discovered.
Our intuition is the part of us that reads these patterns. Our intuition gathers the information through observations, feelings, and memories.
Everyone has intuition and an intellect. We tend to overuse our intellects and underuse our intuition. This is unfortunate because the intuition is the key to the unknown.
The future can be known by learning to read the patterns of the past and present, so the future is being made as we speak. Everything that lives in the future has its beginning in our past. This is why in mysticism there is not anything that is random. Just because we have no recollection of how something came into being, does not mean it just magically appeared.
Each month we will offer out a symbol, Tarot card, Rune stone or some other Divination tool to help you find a unique way to practice the word of the month.
VISUALIZATION
Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.
— Swami Vivekananda
As is the feeling, so becomes the action.
— Sathya Sai Baba.
In the Western part of the world we are taught that we need to practice the art of visualization by projecting exactly what we want in our future down to the minutest details. This can be good if everything that you want for yourself is truly what is best for you.
When we put our focus on only one thing and visualize it in excruciating detail, we may be preventing ourselves from seeing other options. In order to increase our options for a more favorable outcome, we may want to practice feeling peaceful and secure. As we practice feeling more at peace with ourself, we attract natural situations that reflect that inner peace.
By projecting these feelings of peace and security, we are more likely to attract a series of events in the future that perfectly pare themselves with the current feelings of peace and security. That is what was originally meant by like attracts like to itself.
See it, feel it and become it. That is the practice of SIT