Dispassion

Adam Wes The thing to do is perhaps bring attention to your heart for the first few minutes, so we can settle in and enter the frequency together. Let us see—mathematical risk.

Namaste, everybody. Welcome! I am guessing there will be a few more people joining us than I anticipated, but we can begin with a review of last week. Did anyone try any of the conscious elements that we discussed?

For those who were not here last week, we went over various ways to curate your space to help support the energy and the spiritual atmosphere, and to step into that feeling of spirituality and consecration. Daniel, did you try anything? You were here, correct?

Daniel Raphael Velasco: Yes. Well, I have not done anything yet, but I have had those ideas on my mind all week. Would I need to purchase some things? What I have been doing—I used to carry, before, we did not talk much about this, but I used to carry a stone. It is an obsidian stone.

Adam Wes Oh, beautiful.

Daniel Raphael Velasco: It is good to know. I started carrying it again. Once, a teacher—a colleague—saw me when I looked physically tired. She told me that sometimes, while we are teaching lessons, students can take our energy, or we can absorb their negative energy.

Adam Wes Yes.

Daniel Raphael Velasco: So she told me to carry one of these, and when I started doing it, I felt completely different. It has been a while since I had it with me, but this week, I started carrying it again, and it has felt different. It has been nice.

Adam Wes Yes, it is good to have a black crystal with you. I personally like black tourmaline—I just grabbed it off the table. It has a similar effect; it is a little different from obsidian. Well, thank you, Daniel.

So, take a look—I have a document if anyone wants it. If you do not have access to it for some reason, I have the entire outline from last week, so I can send that to you if you would like. Oh yes, Kara, I will send it to you.

So today—I am not sure where Ariella is, or Colin, or David, but that is all right. Small group with Leah and Karen, welcome. Today we will be talking about dispassion. This is our topic for today.

Dispassion is a very central principle in yoga, but it is present in all spirituality, not just yoga. Dispassion is centered on a very basic premise: that happiness does not come from things, but is our intrinsic nature.

Happiness is the nature of our consciousness, and it is obscured or eclipsed, in particular by attachments and ideas, which can be cleared through dispassion.

To connect with dispassion, I highly recommend—you might not be able to make contact with it right away. You have to truly find your way to it, and then you will recognize it. It comes with a kind of aloofness to the world. You do not really care what anybody thinks. You do not care about things.

But there is a nuance there that we will go into today. What you seek comes from a knowledge that what you seek only comes from within you. It cannot come from outside of you.

Thank you, Sam, for going there with me. I feel that what you really seek—what we truly want, this absolute blissfulness, happiness—it is a feeling inside of us, and it cannot come from sensorial pleasure, egoic recognition, or worldly circumstances. At best, worldly circumstances can facilitate one to connect with dispassion.

If you are an ascetic and you are living on the street and you do not have any food, that can be very distracting, because the body is really calling out for food and shelter and basic needs. If you spend too much time alone, your body might want a hug, some touch—your nervous system desires these things. So there are certain ways you can be distracted.

Really, worldly circumstances can create the conditions through which you find dispassion.

In yoga—actually, I do not even want to use the Sanskrit words. There is a Pali word that I really like, which is very close to this. It is one of the Four Noble Truths in Buddhism: Neroda. Neroda means cessation, but in a sense, it means the cessation that allows for dispassion, which causes this effortless clarity, this effortless freedom.

So, essentially, it is freedom. We seek freedom to abide in that uncaused happiness that is the nature of the self.

Now, most people do not do this, and we are not trained to do this—we are trained completely in the opposite, especially…

Okay, I am just reading a message here. All right. So, we very much inherit the cultural mentality.

And to be different, to walk our own path, it takes vigilance and, truly, it takes work to do that. So, to become dispassionate is something worthwhile, something worth seeking. Let me look at my notes here.

So yes, the central premise is—and this is a profound thing—happiness is uncaused.

Just letting people in here.

So happiness is uncaused. Feel into that. How is happiness uncaused? You might think, well, I felt happy when I was with my family, or I felt happy when I received something. True, but that happiness was inside of you all along. Those things simply triggered a release of it.

It is a capacity for consciousness, a capacity for happiness that is within us. Otherwise, we could never make contact with it.

And in meditation, we get to enter into the dispassion of uncaused happiness. Some people ask, how could you sit and meditate for that long? I say, what do you mean? I am receiving a massage from God. I get to be in the most blissful state. I love it.

Sometimes, in the beginning, it is a little difficult because you have to move through the dispassion. You have to move through the attachments on the way to dispassion—unfulfilled.

So, not fulfilling the attachments, not getting Instagram out and scrolling—Instagram completely conditions us to be very attached, it gets the mind going. It is not Neroda, it is the opposite of Neroda. I wish someone could just check Instagram for me so I never have to go on there, and I can just post and never look.

So, let us see—there are a number of topics here. It is a very nuanced subject. There is a lot to consider, because there are many traps. You might say, “Okay, I am going to be dispassionate,” and then wonder, where is the happiness? Perhaps it does not come to you.

One thing that is very important—and I just love this phrase that I have been saying for a long time—the heart of passion is dispassion. Because a new passion arises in dispassion: the passion of the moment, the passion of existence.

There is an uncaused passion, an undirected passion that arises within you when there is no attachment.

So, seeking happiness in things, but in the formless. The formless is that part of us which is beyond time; it is not circumstantial. There is the formlessness, the eternality of the self.

Anything that is changing, evolving—these things are transient. If we try to find our happiness in transient things, they are always veiled with the pain of transience.

I am so happy to be here, but I know I will not always be—right? So there is a kind of happiness inside us that is completely untethered from circumstances.

Let us see.

One of the things that happens in dispassion, the mechanism of inner transformation, is that by not seeking, by not being attached, we stop creating conflict.

When we get the things we want, or we are becoming or seeking something, there is a sense of conflict within. And conflict does not feel good. That is not happiness. Conflict is the chasm between what is and what should be, and there is a lack of acceptance in that.

So, in dispassion, we enter into a state where there is no conflict. And it is a very practical thing. If you walk around and say, “Okay, I do not need to concern myself with anything. I am turning inward.”

You will notice how conditioned the mind is. You are interested, looking for opportunities for this or that, but to live in the constant of being and freedom—and one other part is integrity.

To always live by a set of principles. It is all written, it is set. I am going to live by these principles, and my destiny will unfold organically. That is integrity. And these go together, right? Because integrity can only happen when someone is quite dispassionate.

If you think about it, if someone has a lot of integrity, they are not going to be bent away from their principles, because they live in the freedom of dispassion and of integrity, which are very closely related.

So I would love to—anybody—Kara, what do you think, or Sam? Colleen?

Colleen So, I was just looking up the word. Because I like to do it, I do not know about this word. And I am a little confused, because it says, “characterized by a lack of emotional involvement.” But the way you are describing how you—makes you feel, it seems like you are emotionally—

Adam Wes Oh, that is—

Colleen —moved. That is—

Adam Wes I like that you looked up the English word. I assumed that you were talking about a different word, because the English word is—very good. So, the English word is taken from a Western perspective. And usually, dispassion does mean that, because it does not imply that someone is going to become dissolved in the bliss of existence. That is not as much of a possibility in the history of English, right? There are some actual Greek words—I think it is apatheia? Apatheia, it is a Greek word that is in the Western philosophy traditions. But… let us see.

Yes, this is one of the paradoxes of dispassion. In dispassion, you are overflowing with contentment and completeness. Right?

So… I recognize that I am something, and I can give endlessly—of what I am. I cannot give what I am not. I only have so much of that. For example, I am not this black obsidian crystal. If I give it to you, I do not have it anymore, right? But of what I am—bliss, my nature—I can give endlessly. In a way, it strengthens what I am. It makes me more of what I am.

So… in dispassion, we come to know the self. It is a form of knowledge—self-knowledge. Where we are dispassionate about…

I have to give you the etymology for the word “passion.” The word “passion” actually means suffering. I do not know if you see that. If you look it up, you will see—it is profound, right? The word “passion” means suffering. Boom, right? Thanks, Sam. And the fact that it means suffering… yes, go ahead, Sam.

Eslam Omar Okay, so I was just thinking, what is the difference between passion and obsession? Obsession can be borderline suffering if you do it too much.

Adam Wes Hmm. Well, okay, so this is a very important factor, and one of the nuances that I spoke of. When there is dispassion…

You live Dharma. You live your integrity. You do what you love.

You play music because you love music. You do not play music for the wrong reason, and then you can actually experience it. So, dispassion leads to this artistic freedom.

Every time I make a reel and I start to get pulled into caring, it hurts. I am becoming less dispassionate. But when I sit and I play and I create from freedom—see, that is why I said passion… the heart of passion is dispassion, or dispassion is the heart of passion. It is a different kind, a different order of consciousness that we are talking about.

Eslam Omar So we are using them like dial buttons, to adjust the level of passion that we dedicate to something, right? If we are doing art, we increase the passion, and if we notice that we are catering to the algorithm or to the masses…

Eslam Omar Then we can be dispassionate and polarized.

Adam Wes I would say it is still dispassion, because…

What you do in dispassion is integrity, love, freedom. It is all those things.

Dispassion means I am not in conflict. I am not striving. I am not becoming. It means I am unfolding. I am flowering in the moment. See the difference?

So, you are… I know you do AI, computer programming. Sam is a very intelligent person, by the way. He does really interesting things with AI—very mathematical, technical—and I get the sense that you really love what you do.

To distill it—to really take it and purify it. So, let us try to clear any… and this is something we can all do. I always try to do this with my work: to distill my work of any attachments, any motive, any seeking as a means to an end, and to work…

With an awareness of where it is going, right? Because you have to live in time, but not…

Not in the sense of fulfillment as a fixed point. Fulfillment grows in time, and it has different stages. For example, I am creating now, and then now it is a business, and I am enjoying that too, but I am living in this experience that is a revelation—it is reveling in the joy of myself unfolding through time.

But who is unfolding through time? The eternal side. Right? We are both eternal and formless, but we have form, and that form can express itself—without resistance. It is more of a state of acceptance instead of becoming.

So, in our integrity, we accept and we revel in the destiny of what we become. It is… I like… please challenge me on this, because…

Daniel Raphael Velasco: It sounds a bit… I do not know if you have seen the movie—this movie called Soul? It is about this man who plays the piano, and then…

If I remember correctly, he lies or something, and he starts seeing how people… guilt, like, into…

I think they call it "the zone," whenever they are doing something—like someone who is playing basketball, and he is unaware of everything else besides the fact that he is playing basketball.

Adam Wes Or himself, even, when he is playing piano.

Daniel Raphael Velasco: The only thing that he is aware of is that he is lost in the movement of playing piano. And with that in mind, what Colleen said about being emotionally detached—it makes sense to me. Correct me if I am wrong, but…

I think it makes sense because, even though you are feeling something, and you might be lost in this emotion, at that particular moment, you are not even aware of that emotion. Even though you could be truly happy, you are just lost in whatever you are doing. And maybe when you think about it afterwards, you realize that you actually were really, really happy in that particular moment.

Adam Wes Beautiful, thank you. Yes, there is emotion. But the emotion is… and the motion of detachment. It is a dispassionate—it is a… you know, everybody is so concerned about so many things. There is a certain quality of acceptance and grace in it.

One of the words that I feel is very important is just… it is freedom. Without this, how can we love? Love comes from completeness. If I am whole, I am not asking anything of you.

Perhaps we are in each other's lives in this moment for a reason, and it is complementary. It is simply a complementary expression of our intrinsic natures. But I am not asking anything—I am in a state of acceptance.

Ben… That freedom is a prerequisite for love. Because love does not ask anything of the other. Love wants the best for the other and accepts the other as they are—not as exploitation, but as mutual collaboration, which is very different. So, what do you think, Colleen?

Colleen Well said. It is very philosophical, going over my head.

Adam Wes Oh, sorry. Let us bring it down to earth and make it less philosophical.

Colleen No, no, do not. It is lovely to hear all of you, so keep going. I will just absorb what I am able to.

Adam Wes Okay, well… what it comes down to is—it is not just an idea. If we stop at the idea, and we are like, "Okay, I talked about dispassion, I think about things, I have some phrases," that is not the point. The point is to step into it. And actually, I think you have quite a degree of dispassion. You might not think of it that way, but…

For example, you went to the food bank this morning, right? You were in a state of abundance and giving. There is an element of dispassion there when you were doing that.

Sometimes I notice you are not as much in dispassion, and I see how it causes a quality of suffering. Then I want you to just relax and let go, because I care about you. Because I know that we do not need to resist things. We can meet things. There is no need to worry.

I still worry, but I recognize when I worry that that is an issue, right? So you have to become conscious: do I need to be worrying, do I need to be striving, or can I just be unfolding?

There is… I am suggesting a quality of aloofness as well. Aloofness. I do not know if you know this word, but it means to not be disinterested.

Okay, so let us take it into a more extreme spiritual focus. Imagine somebody who is meditating a lot, and they are very much disinterested in all the things that everybody is running around striving for, right? There is a kind of dignified disinterest. They know that what they want is inside of themselves.

That is the kind of dispassion I am talking about. Part of why I like this word for it. We could use many words—I could have used the word freedom—but dispassion has a kind of power to it that has really served my practice personally. In yoga, there are words, and in other languages too, that mean this specifically, because it is a part of the practice. Hi, Sam.

Eslam Omar So, is dispassion a means of detachment?

Adam Wes Yes.

Eslam Omar But not in a vacant kind of mindset, but more like I am open to potential, or I am creating space for accumulations that are no longer serving me.

Adam Wes Right. Or maybe…

Eslam Omar If I keep thinking I do not have something, and I am reinforcing that I do not have it, so my system is going to keep me in this loop of wanting, wanting, wanting, and attachments.

Adam Wes Right. So detachment and acceptance are two ways to go beyond aversions and attractions. We want to find detachment from our aversions and our attractions. For example, "Oh, I just have to have this thing," whatever it is.

There is a whole level. At first, we are encrusted in aversions and attachments, right? If someone usually has not done any of the work and they are just living in society, we really are conditioned in such a way that there are all these attachments.

Those attachments will wither in silence if we do not feed them. For example, here is an attachment—do I really need it? Perhaps you need it for a time, but ultimately, you want to be free of it. It is about freedom. That is the central point. I do not feel completely free—the ultimate freedom, even freedom from a body.

Can you reach the point where you are awareness beyond incarnation? You can take this very far. I am just saying that is the furthest extent. But you start with more mundane things, right?

I am free in all these ways. I am not concerned; I am accepting the noisy neighbors, I am accepting this, I am accepting whatever arises, and learning to be detached. To accept things and work with them, and, of course, things always change. That is the central premise of transience—things are constantly changing.

So, we work through that evolution while remaining rooted in the part of us that does not change.

But when you are very dispassionate, there is that aloof quality. It is as if you do not want all of this. Let me put it personally: I do not care. I do not need these things. I just want to be free. I want to live in inner freedom. I want to bask in the silence. I want to feel the radiant, effulgent light within me. I want to feel my heart radiate with love.

I want to be free in my expressions when I create mathematics and animation. I do not want to care what anybody thinks; I want to do it for myself. If others appreciate it, that is fine.

And I will accept what happens to me as life evolves. Some things will be blessings, some things will be challenging. But I am looking inward. I want to be free. I want to meditate, because I know that is where the greatest happiness is—the most beautiful experiences I have ever had were in meditation.

You might say, well, people really pedestalize sex, right? They think, "Oh my god, sex, that is the best." But when you get on the spiritual path, you realize, okay, that can be nice, or it can be not nice. And it is sensorial.

There is something deeper. You can go into the emotional states—beautiful connection and love with someone—but that usually opens something spiritual. And when you go into the silence, into the absolute—freedom from any sense of self—there is no one meditating anymore.

Then you have entered into something so blissful and ecstatic, it cannot be matched by any idea or egoic orientation.

Somebody said something I have not seen yet. Oh. Exactly, Sam. Sam said, "I am extremely passionate about dispassion." Exactly, and that is probably what you are seeing in me right now. I am very passionate about dispassion myself.

Because you do have to push back on the world a little bit. There is this sense of, "Wait, I am supposed to be doing all these things." No, I know that happiness and ecstasy are uncaused—they are inside of consciousness.

So now, from there, you may be a great entrepreneur or a billionaire. That does not mean that you became attached. That might have been an expression of your freedom, your genuine integrity, your dispassion.

And I think when I look at certain people, like Steve Jobs, for example, I saw dispassion in him. He was so focused, he did not really care about other things. Is it about the product? Yes or no? He was very dispassionate, in a sense, and very focused.

But at the same time, I do not think he did it in the complete way that we are discussing, but I am just talking about an element of that, because he was also, you know, not always graceful. You are not going to get angry and have all those reactions if you are truly dispassionate. There is a sort of grace to it that I do not think he always had, unless he was completely acting—which I doubt.

So, hi, Kara! And then we will start meditating in a moment.

Kara McGehee: So I see a lot of parallels between this concept and Stoicism.

Adam Wes Yes!

Kara McGehee: And you—you know my husband, so you—and I do not—you have probably never talked to him about Stoicism, but he is very interested in it, which is probably why I am surprised. But as his partner, I find it to be very annoying.

That is funny. I get a lot of enjoyment out of a more intense emotional experience, I think. And so I am curious what your thoughts are on finding a balance between that more stoic, detached, dispassionate approach to life, and also experiencing the richness of the emotional side of life.

Adam Wes Yes, I love that you brought this up. It is interesting, because someone gave me a hard time in the reel I did last night—I do not know if you saw my hyperbolic reel—and they said, "It is so melodramatic," or something like that.

So I personally weave a deep romance into this. There is a dispassion in consecration, but there is also a deep—well, I do not know if you know the enlightened poet Rumi. He is very romantic, right? And I really connect with Rumi. I feel there is a complementary resonance in our soul path.

That is why I said dispassion is the heart of passion, because it opens the heart. There is a sort of freedom in it.

As a man, in a relationship, there is that man who feels in service in a very beautiful way that is evocative of a romantic feeling—they sacrifice, they love. I am picturing almost like the farmer archetype. It is an archetype I have in myself, too. There is the man who lives for his family, and there is a sort of sacrifice in it, but you feel the love at the same time. Do you see the paradox I am talking about?

So, yes, I think ultimately, in dispassion, we allow our heart to decide. We simply follow the heart.

It is like what Aladdin said: "When last did you let your heart decide?" He said that to Jasmine on the carpet—my favorite moment in movie history, because it is my favorite. You know, "A Whole New World" and all of that. Because, yes, that is exactly it—he said the beautiful thing to Jasmine: "When last did you let your heart decide?" Well, how can you let your heart decide if you do not have a degree of dispassion?

The heart decides. You do not decide because of your attachments—the heart sings its subtle intimations into existence.

Sam, thank you. Alright, I am not sure, Kara, if that was helpful. When I post a reel, I feel all this energy psychically, and I am not in my stillness right now, so I do not feel I have delivered this sermon with as much dispassion as I would like, because I am checking too many things in a somewhat distracted style.

Colleen No, it is good, Adam, because now I am understanding it, so thank you for that.

Adam Wes Good, good.

Colleen Making feet.

Adam Wes For you, I would say dispassion would really be—

But, you know, it is interesting. Compassion—you have a lot of compassion, and you tend to enter into the suffering together, right? Co-suffering is what that means.

But there is a wonderful quality if you simply know that everything is good. Everything is good.

Colleen There is an example here, which I just want to read. She dealt with life's disasters in a calm, dispassionate way.

Adam Wes Yes, that is more like it, yes. And probably with a smile, with a sense of gratitude, and with faith that things are evolving as they should.

Colleen Thank you.

Adam Wes That encompasses all of that.

Colleen I learned something. Thank you.

Adam Wes Thank you, you are welcome. Alright, let us meditate, because I am running a little over. Hi, new people! Welcome. We have quite a few regulars who have not—oh, speak of—one of the—

Devils. That is a funny word to use.

So, welcome, everybody. We have quite a few regulars who have not shown up today for various reasons, including Sukkot, and I am not sure why. But, hi, hi, Jacob!

We talked about dispassion for about forty minutes, and now we will meditate. I would love to see people's faces, if you would like to show your face. It helps the interaction.

You also do not have to if you do not want to, especially while we are meditating, but it is nice to say hello to people. See? You just brightened my whole experience right now by showing your pink, your smile, and your clapping.

Oh, and here is Ariella. Oh. Is that Kali? Who was that?

Leah Dancing Shiva.

Adam Wes Shiva? Oh, I like Shiva. Beautiful. Shiva is one of my favorite energies. It is the energy of destruction, and you can connect with Shiva.

It is destruction because it frees us to dance, in a sense, in life. There is a power inside that will dissolve us into freedom. And it is Shiva, and you can experience it.

It can be a little intimidating, but… I am reading messages here.

Leah Where are you based?

Adam Wes I am in Los Angeles.

Leah Oh, amazing.

Adam Wes Where are you?

Leah Los Angeles! Oh my gosh! Can you message me on Instagram? Yes.

Adam Wes Yes, everyone here has messaged me, so I can also say hello, but especially you, Leah, since you are in Los Angeles as well.

Leah Hi, neighbor.

Adam Wes Hi, neighbor. Kata, yes, if you have to go, it is bedtime. Oh, good, you are just going to be here, but… No camera, that is fine.

Alright, can people hear the music? Oh, it is quite soft. Is that louder? Can you hear?

Audio shared by The Bhakti Math Guru (Adam): Alright.

Adam Wes Let us meditate on dispassion. Let us see if we can experience that. We will use energy work, we will focus on the chakras a little bit, but let us use it to enter a state of dispassion. We are passionate about it.

Babyte.

Audio shared by The Bhakti Math Guru (Adam): Breath.

Adam Wes Bye. Let us just let everything go. I already know it.

Audio shared by The Bhakti Math Guru (Adam): So…

Adam Wes Let us turn our attention… It is a paradoxical time. Notice right now that there is an eternal moment. There is an unchanging background in which all these birds, sounds, and feelings occur.

But turn your attention to the unchanging background. We are shifting our identity from form to formless, from the time-bound to the timeless.

Time burdens us—the activities of time. But in the timeless, there is nowhere to go. There is nothing to change, because we do not have form.

Shifting the identity by focusing our attention on the timeless. A good practice is to simultaneously bring our attention to the heart center. The heart means the center.

We move to the center of the wheel. The Wheel of Time—if we are on the outside, we are moving around, whirling around the circumference. But when we move to the axis, to the heart, our velocity slows.

Let us step out of that peripheral motion. This is the energy in the music, by the way. Feel this music. It is expressing eternity.

We are just warming up right now; we will go into dispassion soon. First, I have to clear the space. Open the heart. You may feel the burden lifting as we enter into the freedom.

Lift the burden of responsibility, the burden of interest and attachment. You are a newborn baby. Perfect. A jewel rising out of the universe.

Lift that burden and feel it. It can be emotional. You may feel that burden moving away.

Very gently say to yourself, "My happiness is uncaused. It is my intrinsic nature. And it is merely eclipsed by attachments and thoughts."

I no longer need to become—just attend. It can be completely free.

As we evolve into this freedom, you may sense an equality of dignity, of integrity. It is like abiding in the sun, in a loop. And we wait for that blissful nature to reveal itself, of its own accord.

We are in our dispassion. There is an organic distillation process. You have to allow it; otherwise, we act too much, perpetuating attachment.

Can you feel this discussion? Attachment. And then, simultaneously, we build a paradox. We expend energy.

We enter into a state of dispassion. It is old, steady, and centered.

Let us just, for a moment, feel the dignity of needing nothing.

Mothers, you are a sovereign being. Complete. Overflowing with the love of your own consciousness.

It is a sense of being in command of your own mind, of your own field of attention, beyond the reach of manipulation through attachment and aversion.

Allow yourself to feel a degree of austerity. Is there something greater within, in the fabric of existence?

Let us bring our attention to the navel center, about one inch below the belly button. Combined with the heart, these two chakras create a quality of discussion—a centeredness of the heart.

We are disciplined. Simply feel that spot where you can place your finger. Begin by directing your attention there.

We have evolved to find a way to generate Kundalini. You will feel it as heat, as an energy center. You are capable of this.

It is quite metaphysical, but simply generate Qi in your navel center through intentionality. It is perfectly fine if you feel older than I am.

Notice the surrounding areas—the pelvis and the center of the abdomen. I did not use the navel sentiment, but notice there is a generation of energy, and yet it is not being used; it is just sitting there.

Sit with the energy. Now, let us move to the heart center.

It is beneficial to recenter in the heart when we access power, which is what we do in the navel. The heart is right in the center of the chest. Let us feel that place with an austere dispassion, using the energy we have cultivated.

Let dispassion conclude with a sense of ecstatic divinity, building within our own being. You are able to invoke the—shock team, light, quality engine.

Take a deep breath, and as you exhale, let the heart release. Gently come out of the meditation. Wonderful.

You can make everything you do a means of increasing dispassion.

Why do we meet here? What are we gaining from this? We are gaining the facilitation of freedom—uncaused happiness. Happiness untethered to causal factors.

Would anyone like to describe your meditation? Colleen? Mom? I enjoy it when you go first.

Colleen Can I pause today?

Adam Wes Really? Yes, of course.

Colleen Thank you.

Adam Wes Ariella? How was your meditation?

Ariella It was… it was very good. With what I am learning from you, I am really having different experiences. Thank you, Ed.

Adam Wes You are welcome.

Ariella But there was something—when I focused on the heart center, I felt very intense energy in my right chest and my right arm. There was a bit of pain, but it did go away.

Adam Wes I see. Sometimes when we feel pain in the midst of energy work, what is really happening is that something is moving through.

The amount of pressure we experience—every now and then, I will get what might look to others from the outside like a very concerning bodily pain, perhaps in my liver or elsewhere. In reality, it is as if something was stuck there for three days, and then it is suddenly released. Afterwards, I feel great.

So the real question is, do you feel great after? Did it feel as though something was released? You can check in and see.

Ariella Oh, thank you.

Yes, that makes sense, because I did not know what it was, or why it was there, and then it went away. But now that you are giving me that term, "release," it really resonates with me.

Adam Wes Release, yes. For example, if you eat a large piece of bread and swallow it with some milk—vegan milk, of course—you will feel that release. It is uncomfortable for a moment, and then you are fine; it was just stuck in your throat. So, not stuck anymore, but it is that kind of experience.

Namaste, Ariella!

Ariella Thank you, thank you, Ed.

Adam Wes Leah, would you like to share?

Leah Thank you. Yes, it was really nice just to connect in a group meditation. I used to have a very strong practice by myself, and it faded for various reasons. Now I feel the best when I am able to be in a group, so that was really nice.

I was also really grateful for how the wisdom speaks through everyone uniquely. I really enjoyed hearing you talk about these concepts in your way. It made me see them differently and learn, so thank you very much.

Adam Wes You are welcome. It is so important to have Sangha, which essentially means a group of people with common values. Some of us may be more interested, some less, but the goal is to have a group that is fundamentally seeking. Satsanga means association with truth.

The truth is, happiness is uncaused, there is a true self, there is Maya, there is illusion, and all the esoteric religions and spiritual paths discuss these things in their own ways. In Sangha, or satsanga, we hold the wavelength. We do not get pulled off our center into forms of attachment or other concerns. We are able to stay centered in something more strongly because we are a group.

And actually, if each one of us were to give more of ourselves to it, we would all feel that. Imagine next week, everyone meditates three hours a day, practices dispassion, does all these things, and reads the Bhagavad Gita five times. We would feel that, because we would be surrounded by a more normalized spirituality—a real, genuine sense of it.

That is part of the reason why I am doing this. I want spiritual friends, which can be difficult to find—genuine spiritual friends. It does not mean, "this is my style, this is how I dress, this is how I go on dates," or anything like that. There are so many reasons people pursue spirituality, and I think, wait, that is not self-abnegation. That is the opposite of self-abnegation.

So anyway, Leah, join us, practice, meditate, find joy and happiness, and share that with the world. It is beautiful.

Leah Oh, yes.

Adam Wes Thank you.

Leah Thank you.

Adam Wes Also, I am loving your shirt and your light together—it is so nice. Do you always wear the same color as the light?

Leah I just… I do not plan it, it just happens.

Adam Wes It looks good. It is a nice frequency of energy. So, namaste, welcome, thank you.

Thumb mistake, Colin. Akara, would you like to share? And then we will be wrapping up in a moment.

Kara McGehee: No, just briefly. I have said this before, but Leah mentioned it, so I will just agree with her that it is always nice to have other people to do this kind of work with. Even if it is a small group, it still really is an amplifier, for sure.

And I did feel some pain moving through me to Ariella, so you were not the only one who experienced some aches and pains. But it is good.

Adam Wes Yes, we need to clear... One of the terms I really appreciate, metaphysically, is "clearing your space." Oh, Karen, would you like to share? Or would you prefer to go? If you would like to share.

Exactly, I appreciate what you said there. I have learned a lot today about dispassion. It is not about ignoring emotions, certainly. There is no suppression in this. Suppression is definitely not dispassion; that is actually a kind of passion, right? You are pushing it away. But allowing emotions not to control your mind—that is very important.

So, thank you, Kara. Namaste. And, Kata or Karen, would you like to share? Kata, I sensed a very beautiful spiritual energy from you—Kat on Instagram. You do not have to share if you do not want to, but, alright, how about Sam?

Last share for Sam, and then we will conclude.

Eslam Omar I appreciate the association I made during the meditation. You can feel a clench when you are holding on tightly to emotions, or if you have been ignoring them for a long time and they crystallize, creating a kind of crust.

When you are anchored in the light of conscious awareness—in meditation, I am aware that I am aware. What am I aware of, right? Just as Karen said, you do not allow the emotions to control your mind. Your mind is aware of your emotions, but you are not actually controlling or doing anything. You are surrendering. You are opening the heart and allowing the heart—here is the association—to dissipate the accumulation of emotions.

You surrender to it, you surrender into the clench, and you let your heart unravel or decompress yourself. You are decompressing yourself.

So this is the association I made: the dissipation by dispassion, essentially.

Adam Wes Yes.

Yes, because the goal is not to say, "Oh, I want this thing, I have this urge, but I am going to ignore it and push it away." The goal is actually to not have that urge at all. And how does that happen? You have to observe yourself as you are, dispassionately. So you might say, "Oh, I feel so attached, I am observing myself."

And you have to let the clouds reveal themselves, let the clouds move on their own, and then there is the sun, right? It is not suppression—you are not pretending there are no clouds. They may be there.

And what eventually happens is this opening occurs organically, and it is real and deep. That is what we want. We want to find that freedom that is truly an actual freedom. So, if there is an emotion, attend to it. That is an evolution of what you are becoming—free.

It is not wrong, right? It is simply where you are. It is not wrong to be at the bottom of the mountain or the middle of the mountain, as long as you are walking up the mountain.

Most people go in the wrong direction, walking down. This is the whole point: to turn around and go in the right direction. The right direction is, "Oh yes, happiness is uncaused, I want to be free, I want to find that freedom, I want to let it evolve. I am not going to suppress; I am going to let it happen naturally and find a way."

That is essentially what it is.

Eslam Omar So it is not about associating with the emotions, but rather disassociating and having dispassion regarding these clouds, while anchoring in what is true, what is real—the sky. The sky exists; existence exists; it cannot not exist.

So it is happening. Happiness is inherent and primordial. Happiness exists, and what clouds it are simply things that are cloudy, essentially. We surrender into the clench, and we let it dissipate.

Adam Wes Exactly, dissipation. I love it, yes. That is what you meant—dissipation.

Love it. Well, namaste, everybody, thank you. Namaste, Sam, thank you. We do this every Tuesday at 6 pm, and—

And,

If you would like to donate, there is a link on my site. It is recommended, $3 to $33. It helps support me and this work, and I would love to do this five times a week, although once a week is nice. So—

I invite you to come back next week if you would like. And if you would like the document from today, I write a sermon document that I can send you on Google Docs as well. So, thank you, everybody, namaste, thank you, Daniel!

Bye, Kat. Bye, Mom. Namaste.

Huh.

Dispassion is the freedom of uncaused happiness—our intrinsic nature—revealed as attachments, aversions, and inner conflict are allowed to wither and clear.

• Dispassion rests on the premise that happiness does not come from things; it is intrinsic, and attachments eclipse it.
• Worldly circumstances cannot give happiness, but they can sometimes create conditions that make dispassion easier (basic needs matter; distraction is real).
• Dispassion has an “aloof” or “dignified disinterest” quality: not caring what people think, not needing things, and turning inward.
• Dispassion is not emotional suppression; suppression is “a kind of passion.” The aim is that urges and attachments wither when they are not fed.
• “The heart of passion is dispassion”: when attachment drops, a new, undirected passion can arise—creative freedom and the “passion of existence.”
• Transient things are veiled with the pain of transience; untethered happiness is rooted in what does not change.
• Conflict is created by striving and “the chasm between what is and what should be.” Dispassion reduces conflict through acceptance.
• Integrity and dispassion are closely related: living by a set of principles without being bent by attachments.
• Love is linked to freedom and completeness: love does not ask anything of the other; it wants the best and accepts what is.
• Meditation was presented as a direct entry into dispassion: shifting identity from form to formless, and returning to the heart center.
• In energy work, discomfort or pain can sometimes be experienced as “release,” with a sense of clearing afterward.
• Sangha/satsanga was emphasized as an amplifier: a group “holds the wavelength” and helps people stay centered.

Let the week be an experiment in noticing where you are striving, worrying, or feeding attachment, and gently turning inward toward the heart’s quiet freedom—allowing what is present to be seen without suppression, until a more natural dispassion and unfolding begins to reveal itself.

• Bringing attention to the heart for the first few minutes, to settle and “enter the frequency together,” even when alone.
• Remembering the phrase: “My happiness is uncaused. It is my intrinsic nature. And it is merely eclipsed by attachments and thoughts.”
• Noticing where “conflict” is being created (the gap between what is and what should be) and sensing what acceptance feels like instead.
• Letting attachments “wither in silence” by not feeding them (including the pull of scrolling and constant stimulation).
• Distilling work and creativity of motives, seeking, and “means to an end,” so expression can come from freedom and integrity.
• During meditation, shifting attention to the “unchanging background,” while also recentering in the heart.
• Exploring the navel center and heart center as a way to cultivate energy and then recenter it in the heart.
• Clearing your space and staying connected to sangha as a support for staying centered.

• Where this week do I feel the “burden of interest and attachment,” and what happens when I let it lift for a moment?
• What does “dignified disinterest” feel like in my body, without becoming cold or suppressed?
• When I create, relate, or serve, what changes when I let the heart decide rather than my attachments?