The Golden Present x3

The Golden Present is a collection of daily inspirational readings from Sri Swami Satchidananda's teachings. This morning I caught up on the past 3 days and these were the ideas I got from each day:
(above picture from the Cold Mountain hike)

Realize that nothing is yours. Things were given to you along the way. At a certain period things and people came to you. At a certain period they might go again. It's all just a carnival. It's always better to be humble, with our feet on the ground, so we don't fall. If you try to rise up and you slip, you will have a terrible fall. The person who is sitting on the floor need not be worried about falling down.

If you are really innocent and beautiful, you will send out a beautiful, innocent vibration.

Accept your karma with gratitude, even bad things be thankful that they are clearing your karma.

Also, from the tricycle daily email, a quote from another one of my gurus, Bhante G:

Ancient Pali texts liken meditation to the process of taming a wild elephant. The procedure in those days was to tie a newly captured animal to a post with a good strong rope. When you do this, the elephant is not happy. He screams and tramples, and pulls against the rope for days. Finally it sinks through his skull that he can’t get away, and he settles down. At this point you can begin to feed him and to handle him with some measure of safety. Eventually you can dispense with the rope and post altogether, and train your elephant for various tasks. Now you’ve got a tamed elephant that can be put to useful work. In this analogy the wild elephant is your wildly active mind, the rope is mindfulness, and the post is our object of meditation, our breathing. The tamed elephant who emerges from this process is a well-trained, concentrated mind that can then be used for the exceedingly tough job of piercing the layers of illusion that obscure reality. Meditation tames the mind.

- Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, from “On Practice: Breathing,” Tricycle, Spring 1995

This quote resonated with me because I feel like my mind is at the point where it is "screaming and trampling, and pulling against the rope for days." I originally assumed my meditations would get easier and better with the more time I spent here, but the longer I stay the more I am just homesick and wanting to get back to normal life. But this quote was perfect for me to get today, it makes complete sense at the stage I am at. I feel like with more practice and training, I can get over this hurdle and re-condition my mind back to that calm, easeful and peaceful natural state to help me "pierce the layers of illusion that obscure reality." Its going to take some time though. But each day, each breath, each moment can be put to good use. "Time is limited, so choose wisely," a good friend once wrote to me.

Another concept that I have been coming across repeatedly throughout my days here is the ego, the self, the true self, the divine nature. Alan Watts says that we all need to stop lying to ourselves because there is no ego, there is only the true self, your divine nature. The whole purpose of life is to realize your divine nature. Gurudev said, "Holding onto an ordinary notion of self or ego is the source of all our pain and confusion. The irony is when we look for this self that we were cherishing and protecting we can't even find it."

Here are some ideas I found important to reflect on that were discussed during our scripture classes so far: Find your center on a daily basis, its all in you, happiness will come from inner peace while pleasure comes from worldly desires which fade. Cultivate a calm, peaceful mind, be present. With expansion of the mind, your whole being is expanded, and you have a more equanimous energy...you lose the highs and lows. Look at the mind and watch the thoughts come up. Know day by day you are becoming the master and we are all from the same source, everything comes from the same source. When thoughts come up just say, its okay because that's my mind. It's not me.

The mind will stay calm and emotions will stay calm if you accept things that happen to you as God's will, God's reason for everything. Be who you are, the source created you uniquely, and what we all need to find is that essential nature, the deep peace. Everyone has natural gifts--figure out what they are and use them, it's your natural tendency. You either use them or you don't. Use them and everything will fall into place; figure out who you are in the cosmic sense as well as the duality sense. Develop radiance and spiritually resonate through your practice.