Power

Adam Wes Namaste, everybody. Welcome. We can get started. We might have a few more people joining soon.

It's a wonderful time to be meditating together. It's the new moon today and the Chinese New Year. The new moon is a power day. It's always a power day, and perhaps Chinese New Year is an even more extreme power day. So we should have a really wonderful meditation together.

I wanted to follow up on last week. Colleen and I were discussing her Dharma, and we discovered what it is because she already does one completely. Would you like to share?

Colleen I was saying that I'm just happy when I'm doing yoga. I go to yoga basically six days a week. Then Adam said, "Well, that's your Dharma." I love the form of the body, and I love the peace of yoga and, at the same time, working hard to make that body loose enough so you can sit forever, meditating like Adam does.

Adam Wes What's amazing is that I didn't even think of this. Martial arts and yoga are very formal, traditional forms of Dharma.

Last week, for those of you who weren't here, we talked about Svadharma, which is your own personal predilection and mindfulness practice, your art, your lens through which you see the world. I was encouraging everybody to discover what their Dharma is and practice it.

My mom, Colleen, just slipped my mind. She does yoga six days a week and has been working with the body, dance, and athletics her whole life. So that's her Dharma. Mathematics is a little less traditional as a mindfulness practice, but hatha yoga, the physical postures, is literally designed for that.

Thanks for sharing. We realized that after the meeting yesterday.

Does anybody else want to share about their Dharma, Svadharma, from last week?

Harrison M I wasn't here, Adam, but mine would definitely be expressing myself through means. I feel like this keeps expanding for me all the time, but in a simple way, painting is a form of doing that. But I think truly anything. It's just like life is my Dharma. I feel like you see the moment and give 100 percent of your energy to every single moment. That's how I feel.

Adam Wes I love that. I'd like you to consider reviewing the transcript and the video from last week because we went into detail about exactly what a Dharma is, and I think you're really connected with yours.

In fact, I'll show you guys later. I created a page on the website that has all the transcripts now, so you can see all four transcripts. Praveen, did you see it?

Nice. I sent you one of them. You can see all four of them there now.

In fact, I spent the weekend doing my Dharma, which was extremely cool. I created a deterministic, AI-based editorial pipeline that produces really beautiful webpage transcripts, study guides, and an essay version of the talk that I give in the session, all automatically in HTML. It does that from a really rough transcript that Zoom creates. They should be available much more quickly now. Let me just give you a quick look.

This is where you can find them. I've worked very hard to create these. These are the last four sessions that we've had. You can also click on "Teachings" here and look at them. Here's Svadharma from last week. This is the whole transcript, created with code, actually. It's really cool. If anybody wants to learn more about how I did this, it was very, very fun.

You can click on "Media" here and watch the video recording or listen to the audio recording. Say you go for a walk, or you want to put it on while you're making dinner. There's also an essay version here. This is a near-verbatim adaptation of the live spoken teaching, and you can read this if you prefer that format.

There's also a study guide, and I think the study guide is very important. At the end of each session, you can get some key quotes, key points that were made, an assignment, an actionable focus for the week, and some reflection prompts. Then there's a quote page. The invitation page is for other people who may not have attended or may not be part of the Sangha.

That's just one of them. If you go here, we can look at the one on enlightenment from January 20th. It's all there now. I should be able to get these up much more quickly than I have been. This one took me a month to get up, but now it'll probably take a few hours.

If anybody wants to go and review those, it's all available there. What do you think, David?

David P You knew who to ask.

Adam Wes I could see on your face that you thought it was cool.

David P Congratulations, man.

Adam Wes Thank you. It was fun. I used an API with OpenAI to interact with OpenAI through the terminal on the computer. That's really interesting.

Hi, Robert! Nice to see you.

All right. I'm very excited about today's sermon because it's a very central topic. In fact, it weaves together many of the things that we've talked about and discussed over the last six months. I know some of you have only been with us for months, but some of us have been working together for much longer than that.

The topic for today is power.

Power.

No, this is not evil power. This is the power to become enlightened, the power to become love, the power to become free, the power to break into Reality. Everything we've discussed and practiced has to do with the generation, cultivation, and retention of power.

Power is an essential factor in the spiritual life. It's not always overtly discussed, perhaps a little bit more in Zen. My teacher's teacher actually talked about it quite a bit, and my teacher taught me a lot about power as well.

Power goes beyond intellectual understanding. In fact, it informs understanding. Without power, you cannot see with lucidity. You cannot understand. All of us have different degrees of power, so the intentional cultivation of power is a very leveraged way to change your life, both spiritually and in a worldly sense.

People who are very successful in the world generally have a great deal of power that they have used to will something into existence. They're in command of themselves. They're in command of their lives, and you can sense it. If you go into their house, you'll see that things feel strong and powerful because the outer expression is a reflection of their inner state.

I've prepared a sermon on this, and then we'll have a power meditation, which should be fun. I've got an outline here.

The essence of power is absorption.

Power is an ambient energy available to all of us, but it is obscured through resistance. It's obscured through the ego. It's obscured through inadvertence, through a mind that is habituated to thinking and is not free.

When we become absorbed, there is this ambient power within us that runs through us. It's really, in a way, not our power. It's the universal power, but it becomes our power when we get out of the way.

The essence of power is absorption. It's intrinsic to all things. It's intrinsic to all moments. But the varying quality or intensity of the power is the result of the way we obstruct it.

It's like a river. If you take all the giant boulders or the dam out of the way, the river will flow deeply and swiftly. That power is ambient. It's everywhere, it's always, and it's within us.

Non-resistance is really what happens in absorption. We let go, and we can feel this power inside of us rising.

Just to be clear, power is not power over others. In the evil sense of power, it's the evil, powerful man who's exploiting everybody. That's not the power we're talking about. In fact, when one doesn't live with love and kindness, they dissipate their own power. They dissipate the spiritual power available to them.

Sometimes somebody will stumble into social power, but they'll lose it and waste it. If they keep it, they have to hold on because they don't have a lot of inner power.

The power we're talking about is pressure, an ambient vitality within our energy system and within our mind. The light is power. The Kundalini flow is power.

In fact, I'd like to take a moment and let Kira say something. What do you think, Kira?

Kira I'm in so much light right now. It's amazing. While you're speaking, I'm trying to attune to it. As you were speaking, I was letting the light flow through and letting the power increase from that. It's a kind of active listening on the topic that you're speaking of.

Adam Wes Beautiful, yes. Kira is actually doing subtle energetic practices to access the power and increase the power as we focus on it. As we focus on this, all of us should walk away feeling power today. That's the goal: walk away and feel powerful.

Power allows us to have freedom, dignity, and honor. We learn to see things clearly because our mind is in a state of equanimity.

Equanimity, that fearlessness, that willingness to sit and not think, is a very powerful state.

You can see it in some people's eyes. There are some actors I know who are really good actors, and their craft is really refined. You can see how they've developed power within themselves. Sometimes it's like, "Whoa, that person has got it. I can see they've developed this power."

But it's the enlightened beings who have the most power. To break into enlightenment, to experience moksha, to enter into samadhi, requires a great deal of power. So it's very relevant to us as people interested in enlightenment, progressing along the path to enlightenment, and becoming more conscious. Power is needed.

This, I think, is a very fundamental reorientation: the suggestion that there's a power, and you need to get your power up.

Power can be generated in certain activities, and it can be dissipated. Dissipation of power is one of the biggest problems, actually.

We dissipate power through resistance, complaining, and negativity. Kira is an extremely positive person, for example. She's super bright and super positive. Just from the way she thinks, you can see it on her face. That's a very powerful orientation. It's not just fun and playful. It's powerful. It's effective, and it's a useful thing to do with your mind.

We can do anything with our mind. We can complain and resist the world, or we can see it and respond without resistance. Which one is more powerful?

Let's make a distinction between power and energy. Power is the flow of energy. In fact, we could use physics terms to discuss this, but think of energy as a reservoir of substance. You have only so much energy, and that energy comes through in the moment. How much comes through is the power. You want to be a conduit for a great deal of energy channeling through you in every moment.

Power allows you to stay in command of yourself when others are intending to mislead you and exploit you. A lot of times, that's not conscious, so it's important to stay true to yourself even around good people. They may have certain tendencies, and you need to stay grounded and centered in your own reality, your own path, your own success, and your own happiness.

The essential reason for dissipating power is resistance, and it has a number of forms.

The generation of power is so multifaceted. The first thing to do to generate power, and then hopefully keep it and retain it rather than dissipating it afterward, is to meditate.

When you sit down, meditate, and go into light, you generate a great deal of power because you're washing yourself of that side of yourself that obscures the ambient power available to you.

In meditation, we become absorbed, and this power is available. Where does it arise from? Where is it coming from? It's not from the power bar you just ate, the eggs you ate, or the fruit you had. It's coming from somewhere else. Where?

This is a really esoteric, occult secret, in a way. Even though it's probably written in books all over the place, the realization and real connection with this reality, that there is a power available to everybody, is profound. I'd really like to help all of you connect with that.

So, meditation.

The next thing is what we discussed last week: Svadharma. Doing something for the sake of doing it is a mode of non-resistance. When you do it, there's inspiration and joy, and you generate power.

In fact, I might have decided to talk about power this week because I spent the whole week doing my Dharma. I felt so much power from it that my meditations deepened. It's been on my mind, and I wanted to share it with you.

There are a number of things that I need to share with everybody for the collage of this practice to start coming into focus. It's like a big puzzle. We want to put in all the pieces, and you can start to see the big picture as each of those comes onto the puzzle table.

Another thing you can do to generate power is be loving.

Bhakti is very powerful. I had a moment yesterday when I helped somebody, and I walked away almost in tears because I felt all this power, love, and alignment. That unity is power.

Separativity is resistance to the underlying reality that we are all one. When we love, we reinforce that reality, and we orient our paradigm and energy such that we can commune with that truth and embody it.

When you love others, when you're kind to others, when you're considerate, and when you do all the beautiful things that are loving and related to love, you generate power as well.

Between meditations, live with mindfulness. Mindfulness is giving your full attention to what you're doing. I see people walking around on their phones, watching TV while they go for a walk. This very common way that our culture is training us to live our lives dissipates energy massively.

But when you walk around like a Zen master, every footstep is intentional, every bite of food is given full attention, and every motion you take is done with impeccability. This generates power as well.

Give your full attention to what you're doing, and consider the energy. How are you supposed to be in a masterful state of power all the time? You need to give it your attention.

This is a 24-hour practice. Eventually, you'll be doing it in your dreams. I'm not joking. In your dreams, you'll start to realize, "Whoa, the whole night I've been making my power better, my energy better," in the dream state.

Power comes from developing a well-structured mind.

This is where I think a lot of spiritual paradigms aren't usually very overt, although I think some of them are. When you develop a well-structured mind, that order in your mind creates a state of non-resistance.

When the mind is confused and disorderly, it dissipates a lot of energy. When the mind is well structured, like a beautiful mathematical equation, or through some form of Dharma in which one has achieved mastery, everything is parsed efficiently through that well-structured mind. It's a matter of efficiency.

Doing mathematics is highly recommended. Robert is a math teacher, or he was a math teacher. I think he's still a math teacher at heart. You can never leave that.

Hey, Robert. What do you think of what I just said about the well-structured mind? Robert also practices Kundalini yoga, so it's an interesting intersection.

Robert I missed about the last two minutes. I had to quickly check on somebody. But I love the idea of power in this light, and that there's a universal energy that can come through you. It's a really good way to word it. I've never heard that, or it's just tough to put into words.

I think you did a good job of explaining power because I've always struggled with that. You read, "This certain thing means money, power, karma." It's like, what does power really mean when they're talking about this? I think you did a good job of explaining it, and I appreciate hearing it from you.

Adam Wes Thank you. What I was adding recently is that developing a well-structured mind is another form of generating power. It prevents the dissipation of energy, and it also makes you a more powerful being.

Somebody with a mind that has not been attended to in that way has a great opportunity to structure their mind.

What is a well-structured mind? A well-structured mind can think analytically. It sees processes, it sees geometries very clearly, and it just understands them. That's a good reason to practice mathematics.

Simplicity is a beautiful teaching of Zen.

When you think of the Zen dojo, there's nothing in there, right? There are a couple of rocks stacked, and there's a beautiful Zen garden. The principle there is related to power.

When things are simple, they're easy to manage. We want to simplify not only our environment but our life. We want to simplify our relationships. Your relationships should be clean. You shouldn't leave open-ended things that cause confusion and miscommunication between you and others. Your relationships should be directed with intentionality.

All of this generates simplicity within interpersonal connection.

When you run your business, do your work, and go through your day, designing your routines can be done in such a way that it promotes simplicity. It means you can let go. You don't have to constantly be juggling all day, every day.

Consistency and reliability produce a simple state of mind and a simple life. This generates power.

These things are so important. Everybody in first grade should be learning this. This is so important because if you dissipate all your power, you don't have access to happiness in the same way.

There's a beauty within us that is the essence. It's a spiritual state. It's a state of mind, and you can work toward it. The Grand Canyon suddenly becomes more beautiful. Everything becomes more beautiful because you are beautiful. Your state is beautiful, and power is necessary for that.

Live a life that's clear and simplified.

You can probably think of some people you know who have lives in disarray. There's lots of complexity. Their minds are a little convoluted, right? Bless them, but at the same time, let them be a great example. You can probably see how they are dissipating power.

If you have a big stack of papers on your table that's been there for a long time, I would suggest that there is an opportunity to generate power by taking care of that.

One thing you can do to see your power is look at how it's reflected in form. How well is your computer organized? How well are your relationships happening? How clean is your house?

Cleanliness. Not just order and organization, but also cleanliness. Get out the cleaning supplies. Make sure your bathroom is clean. That's a powerful state.

I've walked into beautiful mansions. I used to spend a lot of time in beautiful mansions because I tutored here in Malibu, Bel Air, and Los Angeles. I spent a lot of time in these beautiful mansions, and I could feel the power in there because everything was so pristine.

Not everybody was like that, but there were certain houses where I could feel that those people were living their lives in a certain aligned way. This doesn't mean they were overall spiritual, but there were some spiritual elements there.

Spirituality doesn't always express itself in the obvious archetypes. You might meet a lawyer who is very powerful and very spiritual. There's something about them that is spiritual. They're actually doing something spiritual that is very much like what Buddhists have been doing for thousands of years. They may not identify with it at all, but it feels good, it works for them, and they know it. They have mastery there.

You can still wear your suit, or you can get your kurta out and wear your robes. It doesn't matter. What's happening inside could be powerful and spiritual.

What time is it? Oh gosh, we're basically done.

Solitude. Solitude generates a great deal of power. Everybody should spend time alone. When you take time to yourself, you have an opportunity to process all the interactions that you've had.

Robert has almost no time alone, I think, because he's so busy. Maybe you do have time alone. But I would stand for you bringing that into your life and protecting it if you are doing it.

Take time for solitude. Sometimes you can take it too far. I think I do that because solitude really works for me, profoundly.

Another thing is time in nature. When you spend time in nature, it also purifies and clears you. There's a lot of power in nature because there's no resistance.

Nature happens the way it happens. Everything is designed and moves through its embodiment and its destiny. The flowers bloom, and then they wither. The bunnies are born, and then the fox gets them. Sometimes they get away, right? But it's all just happening.

There's a sort of lack of that human quality of cognition and the machinations of selfhood. Our capacity for abstraction is also our form of resistance. It's also our depth. That's why the human being has this beautiful capability of taking things very far and also going very low.

I think I've got most of what I wanted to share.

Spiritual association is enormous for power. Reading every day, having spiritual friends, and having powerful friends are all important.

People may be homeless, but they could be very powerful. If they're homeless, there's probably some other reason for it. Maybe their power is not fully aligned, but they could still be very powerful.

Spending time with powerful people, people who live powerfully and have powerful habitual patterns, helps to strengthen your power and sustain your power.

Going beyond agency and becoming is important. When we're doing things and living our lives, we can get into a flow state in art very easily. But if we can stay in a flow state, then I'm not the doer. I'm not choosing these words right now. They're just coming out of silence.

That's power.

For me, it's better to give an extemporaneous sermon that just comes from describing something as I see it with clarity. This is actually a more powerful state. When I'm feeling very powerful myself, I speak more clearly. I won't need to write an outline as much. It'll just come through very clearly from silence, and I don't feel that I'm speaking.

This state of being beyond agency is being beyond like and dislike, being beyond advantage and disadvantage, being beyond becoming, and instead just being what you are. That's a very powerful state. It doesn't dissipate energy.

All right. I think I've covered enough of it for now. I don't want to go too long because we should meditate, but I wanted to give a couple of people a chance to say something in response, share something, or ask a question.

I'm so grateful to share about power with all of you. I love power. It's very important to me. Having people who will sit down with me, discuss power, and be concerned with it is satsanga. That is association with those who are interested in power.

To be largely alone with an understanding of it actually makes it harder to retain it, harder to build it. The few people I hang out with are quite powerful people, and I tend not to make very many exceptions, if any. I'm pretty intense about that.

So I honor all of you, powerful beings.

Praveen, what do you think?

Praveen S Thank you, Adam. I was reminded of an article that you had put up on your website or something like that. I don't remember exactly where it was, but the topic was how to create an unshakable mind. I think I got the answer today.

Adam Wes Was this an article I wrote, or was it another article?

Praveen S I think it was in one of your writings, either on the website or in a topic. It was about how to create an unshakable mind.

Adam Wes I like the wording "to be untouchable."

Just think about a really dignified, honorable warrior or a very integral being of intelligence. They're untouchable. You can't really bother them. They're going to do what they're going to do.

But why? What makes somebody like that? Why would one not actively cultivate something like that?

Do you know Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek? His character is a great example. Very powerful. You can't exploit him. You can't manipulate him. Very dignified.

There's a power inside. Power makes one choose those things because if they weren't in integrity, they would lose power, and that's not worthwhile.

Why would someone do something dangerous and honorable? Because they retain their power. Why would they face adversity socially? They get to retain their power. They know something. They're doing something.

Being untouchable.

Thank you, Praveen.

All right. Did you guys like this talk today? Okay, cool.

Let's meditate and generate some power.

How are we going to meditate? First of all, I have a little bit more of an intense playlist. Use the music. Feel into it.

Sometimes when you feel powerful, you feel like you can fly. You feel like you can walk up a mountain, even if your body isn't going to do that. Even when you're sitting, you feel the power channeling through you.

You can feel your heart. You can feel your navel. You can just go into the light. That ambient power isn't really in a chakra, but you'll feel your chakras activate. That's very powerful.

I do want to say one more thing that I forgot from the sermon, which is that power is needed for intelligence.

If you want to do mathematics, if you want to see clearly, there has to be power there.

Think of somebody like Einstein. I would argue that he probably had a great deal of power. It wasn't just that his mind was structured in some way. There was power available to him to run that well-oiled machine of his mind.

Power and intelligence go together.

An empty mind is a powerful mind, and a mind that can see and understand.

All right, let's get started. We'll start with something a little centering first.

Was my music playing when you guys arrived?

Andrea P No, we just heard it.

Adam Wes Was it playing in the beginning?

Participant1: I wasn't there.

Adam Wes Oh, you weren't there. It was, right?

It's important to open and soften the heart first before you begin to access power. The heart needs to be in a state of gentleness and openness.

Listen to these beautiful songs. Soften the heart. Bring your attention there. Feel within your whole being.

Gentleness. Non-resistance.

Bring your body into life.

Dispassion is an energetic orientation. Feel your dispassion, your absorption, the dispassion woven together.

All that matters is the moment, at least for now.

I want you to sit up for this, Ariella. Keep your Sushumna straight.

That actually wasn't the song I thought it was. It wasn't ideal. This will be better.

You may feel within the essence of the energy of each of these songs, especially the one we just listened to.

Navel center. Heart center. Soul center. Just the light.

Feel the third eye and the balance. It gives you a sort of power as well.

Steady mind.

Indulge in feeling powerful. Allow that.

It's God coming through us. It's enlightened, intrinsic to us.

Allow yourself to be what you are.

Use the light, the greatness of the universe, the light in things.

This will be the last song after this one. Let's really give it your all.

Become absorbed in the light.

Focus on a chakra. Navel center, one inch below the belly button. Heart center, center of the chest. And the third eye, or all three at the same time.

You can add the crown chakra too, if anybody feels called to do that. Very helpful.

The crown is self-transcendence. It reaches up into the sky.

Look to the unchanging background of the moment.

You are the moment.

The river of time flows through the riverbanks of you.

Try to see that directly.

The immovable center of self.

Namaste.

Thank you for going on the ride with me.

Mom, would you like to share? I'd love to hear from you.

Colleen I'd love to hear other people, but just quickly, when I do my third eye, it pulls me and squeezes me together. This time I saw orange, which is an unusual color for me.

Adam Wes Power color. Amazing.

Colleen I had a lot of dreams, and Kira was in one of them. I can't remember, but you were helping me with something.

Adam Wes Thanks, Kira. That's really amazing.

I saw you do the crown for a moment too?

Colleen I tried. It wasn't doing anything.

Adam Wes Okay, we'll have to work on that one. Maybe just keep working on your third eye.

Colleen It'll rise.

Adam Wes Higher to the crown. Wonderful. You saw orange. Any other colors?

Colleen Yes. I also saw a hexagon going out. Purple and green, which were expanding and coming back.

Adam Wes I love it.

Usually, when you see sacred geometry, you're tapping into the astral plane. You had a simultaneous astral-causal meditation. The causal plane is the plane of light. The astral plane is the plane of energy, sacred geometry, and the chakra system.

Wonderful.

Colleen Thank you.

Adam Wes Guys, I love her so much. She's such a good student. It's really sweet. She's so sincere. I love it.

All right.

Robert, I'm so happy you're here today. It just makes me so happy that you made it. Would you like to share?

Namaste, Mom.

Robert Thank you for having me. I had some resistance to coming today. I had a lot of challenges and got through them.

During that meditation, I was very grateful that you gave us some really good insight today. It allowed me to think about a lot of things and come into this idea of power. It's something I've never really had a good grasp on or had good wording for.

I can really feel it, especially when I was teaching math. When I was unprepared or unfocused, I would just ramble. It would be very non-powerful speaking. I'd lose the kids immediately, and they could sense that.

I notice that you don't really ramble. You're very clear and concise. It's always like, "Wow, you would think he wrote that down," because of how well you said it.

It's noticeable how powerful you are, and it's something to strive for as someone who's learning and trying to really get back into this stuff.

Adam Wes It fluctuates. Sometimes I can sit down and speak a whole 2,000-word essay with no editing. Sometimes I totally can't do that.

It has a lot to do with whether I had a good meditation in light, and whether I lived in easefulness and gracefulness for the previous week. It's an aspiration of mine too, to keep building and growing. I'm so happy that you're doing that too.

Robert Yes, thank you.

Adam Wes Wonderful. Namaste, Robert.

How about you, Harrison? It's good to see you. We missed you last week.

Harrison M Hello. Yes, it's good to see you too and to be back. I love these sessions. The meditation was awesome.

I love meditating by myself, but it's always nice doing it in a group.

The thing I'm consistently seeing has changed a lot since my first meditation with you, both what I see and what I feel. My most common experience is that I feel like I'm flying. Either I'm flying, or it's coming and washing through a single point.

I was just at MONA in Tasmania, and there was a quantum visual thing of that machine that shoots the atoms around, the fastest-traveling thing in the world. I can't remember. It's in Europe somewhere.

Adam Wes CERN, the particle accelerator.

Harrison M Yes. They had this art piece there that was connected to that. Without going too far into it, it had these particle visuals, like mathematical cosmos made of tiny white dots on a black screen in this giant room.

They were flying toward you. I felt like that's what I see when I meditate every time. It changes from a point that I feel like I'm flying through, with stars, and then it turns into a spiral. Then it turns into a channel again. That's what I'm feeling.

Adam Wes I believe that's an astral experience. That's wonderful. Wow.

I'm so glad you're here and had a great meditation. I feel like you're quite a powerful person, like you've cultivated that. Did the talk resonate with you?

Harrison M It did. As you said, I'm always striving to better myself in various aspects of my life.

My words are love, trust, and respect. I always strive to have a lot of respect for myself. In the same way that if you can't love yourself, you might not be as good at loving others, if you don't respect yourself, you might not be as good at respecting others. So I strive to show myself a lot of respect.

I think that if you can work on those things, trusting yourself, showing love to yourself, and respecting yourself, that cultivates power. In that sense, yes, I'm striving toward being better all the time.

Adam Wes Love, trust, and respect. I saw that in one of the transcripts I was looking at today. I like it. You've got strong consistency with those. It's beautiful. Those are Harrison's words. You called them your pillars.

Namaste, Harrison. Thank you.

Harrison M Namaste.

Adam Wes Andrea, hi! I didn't see you last week either.

Andrea P Yes, I had a very big event, and I couldn't be here.

Adam Wes It's okay, but I did miss you.

Andrea P I really loved the music tonight. It helped. It really helps to feel the power and the light, and to get deeper into the meditation. Pretty cool.

Adam Wes Wonderful. I added them to the playlist. They're all on the playlist if you guys want to go and check.

Andrea P Great. I was going to tell you that I really love the page. Today, I was like, "Where's the Zoom link?" Then I thought, "The page." I went there, it said "Zoom," and that's how I connected. It's really useful.

Adam Wes On the practice hall?

Andrea P Yeah.

Adam Wes Nice. Everybody, remember that the practice hall is there. Cool. Namaste, Andrea. So nice to see you.

How about you, Kira? Yay, Kira!

Kira Hi! Thank you so much. Hopefully you can hear me okay. There might be a little bit of background noise.

Wow. Major realizations and incredible breakthroughs on this call.

Throughout the whole call, I felt the sensation to practice conscious breathing. Pretty much the entire call, I was very conscious of my breath. I realized that it was a way to cultivate power as well because when we're conscious and aware, that cultivates power. Doing it with your breath is very natural because you're breathing anyway.

Adam Wes It's also mindfulness and prana. Pranayama from the breathing.

Kira Yeah. That's been really incredible. Over an hour of conscious breathing cultivated so much power.

During the meditation, I also had a realization that it's almost like you have to relinquish some of your personal power to allow a greater power to move through you, the power of the universe or whatever you want to call it.

One of the people who comes to mind is Anandamayi Ma. She's an Indian saint, and I felt like she was really connected with the power of God. It would just flow through her, and all of her activities were in accordance with that flow. She was dissolved. You kind of dissolve your personal power.

Adam Wes She was enormously detached.

I'd like to orient that language very carefully for a second.

When agency lifts away, personal attachments, agendas, the machinations of self, thoughts, ideas, and plans can give way to the spontaneous effortlessness of going beyond agency.

It's not that you give away your personal power. It's that the whole universe is powerful, and you, as a part of it, become part and parcel of the concurrence of the moments, the concurrence of the universe transmuting and transforming.

You're meant to be something. Your purpose, your dignity, and your life are part of all of our lives and all of the universe. When you are aligned with your true self, when you are one with Dharma, the power that flows through you is the honor.

The dignity and honor come from being oriented toward something that you care about more than yourself. But you live your Dharma, your purpose.

It's not personal power. That's almost a misunderstanding if you look at it this way. It's not that there's personal power and then there's non-personal power. There's just the power of Dharma.

The power of Dharma is what we seek to find and live in spontaneous authenticity and integrity. Then there's power, and you may become wealthy, but it won't be for you in quite the same way that a selfish person might do it.

You will do it in service. You will do it as part of a greater heart. You'll do it as part of your nature.

That's the key. What is your nature? Live your nature with complete acceptance of it and complete self-transcendence in it.

Kira Beautiful. It feels like there's a current moving through me, and I'm moving with the current.

Adam Wes Yeah. But don't abandon yourself. That's why I'm being very careful. You and your art are part of that. Your dreams for Hyperbloom are part of that. It's not your power. That's the power.

Kira It's so interesting. For a large portion of today, I was just moving with what was meant to happen. What was meant to happen was a deep cleaning, clearing, and organizing of my home space.

On that same note, it was an act of what was right to do now.

Adam Wes That was earlier today?

Kira Yeah. Also, the act of doing it, as you were suggesting, cultivates power as well. Power in the home.

Adam Wes And outside the home. When you draw power from your home, it's very important.

Your manatman is your extended self when it's in order. The manatman is your things.

Kira What's the word you're saying?

Adam Wes Manatman. M-A-N-A-T-M-A-N. Manatman. It's a Sanskrit word.

Kira Atman as in soul, and then man?

Adam Wes What does "man" mean? I think it means creation or created. It's like the creation of your soul. You have to double-check. I'm not 100 percent sure that's correct, but that prefix or etymological component comes up in a lot of places.

Kira Thank you so much. That's an amazing word to know.

Adam Wes Maybe I'll add that. Namaste, Kira. Thank you for sharing.

For the assignment this week, I want to give you an optional thing to do. Look at the ways you can generate power, and look at the ways you dissipate power. Consider them.

Sometimes it's people, the food you eat, or a habit you're into. What are the ways you're dissipating power? How can you start to build your daily routine and your inner habituality, your way of speaking, thinking, and acting?

If you walk around annoyed with everybody, you dissipate power. Sometimes I do that because I wish everybody was a little more conscious. I think I end up dissipating a little bit of power right there. Just accept people as they are. Find your tribe. That's a better orientation.

What are some shifts in orientation? What are some ways you can change? Then go and practice them. See if you can add one thing each week.

Wonderful.

Ariella, we've got to hear from Ariella. Ariella has always shared for the last four years.

Ariella I was in a very deep place. I don't remember anything about it. All I remember is when you called me to pay attention and sit up. I don't know what was going on, but it felt good.

Adam Wes Wonderful. You may have just been absorbed in the unknown, which is kind of the goal. There's a lot of power in that.

It feels good. If it feels good, you're probably doing something right. Profoundly good, not just naptime good.

Wonderful, Ariella. Namaste. Thank you.

Welcome back, Rachna. I'm glad you're feeling better. Would you like to share quickly?

Sorry, Praveen. You're going last.

Rachna S Even for me, I did not know where I was. At one point, I felt that I was swaying left and right, forward and backward. That's what I remember. Otherwise, it was all just music, and I was kind of nowhere. I don't know.

Adam Wes Beautiful. When thought is in abeyance, that's meditation. Good job. Wonderful.

If we ever have a themed meditation and you go into Nirvana and forget the theme, it's okay because you went into Nirvana, and that's where we're going.

I'm not sure if either of you did go into Nirvana, but perhaps you did, perhaps you will, or perhaps you're on your way to Nirvana.

Wonderful. Namaste, Rachna. Thanks for being here.

Praveen, do you want to share something briefly?

Praveen S It was an amazing talk, a sermon on power, Adam, as usual. Many of the points that you made, I'm hearing for the first time. I really appreciate the work you have done to gather all this wisdom together and share it with us.

I'll try to be more mindful of the things that you have taught us today and the ways you mentioned to generate power. I think I will be more consciously attuned to the various aspects of my life.

Adam Wes Get your power up, Praveen. Get your power up!

Really, when you get your power up, you gain command of your life. Your relationships will change. Your career and your work might change. Everything changes because you have that capacity to be true to yourself, essentially.

Praveen S Yes, sir. Thank you.

Adam Wes Wonderful, Praveen. Love it.

Thank you, everybody, for being here. This was the New Moon Open House, but I've been quite busy, so I didn't promote it. It's just us today. But next new moon, perhaps we'll invite some more people and plan for it.

I was working diligently on the transcript page. Take a look at the transcript page, and you'll probably be very impressed. There will be a beautiful, pretty polished website transcript up there, probably within a couple of hours. That's thanks to the editorial pipeline that I generated.

Thank you, everybody. Namaste. I'll see you next week.

Kira Thank you. Namaste.

Praveen S Thank you.

Adam Wes Namaste. Thanks, Harrison.

Spiritual power is the power of Dharma, available through absorption, non-resistance, and alignment with one's true nature.

• The essence of power is absorption.
• Power is ambient and universal, but resistance, ego, inadvertence, negativity, and a disorderly mind obscure or dissipate it.
• Power is not power over others. It is an ambient vitality within the energy system and the mind.
• Meditation generates power by allowing absorption and clearing what obscures the power already available.
• Love, kindness, and consideration generate power. Separativity and a lack of kindness dissipate it.
• Mindfulness means giving full attention to what one is doing.
• A well-structured and empty mind supports non-resistance, intelligence, and clear understanding.
• Simplicity, cleanliness, consistency, reliability, solitude, nature, and spiritual association help conserve and strengthen power.
• Integrity retains power. Going beyond like and dislike, advantage and disadvantage, and becoming does not dissipate energy.
• Svadharma is one's personal mindfulness practice, art, and lens through which one sees the world.
• There is not personal power and non-personal power. There is the power of Dharma.
• Living one's nature with acceptance and self-transcendence allows power to flow through spontaneous authenticity, integrity, and service.

Look at the ways power is generated and the ways it is dissipated. Consider the patterns in daily routine, speaking, thinking, acting, relationships, food, and habits. Notice one shift in orientation that supports absorption, non-resistance, and living one's Dharma, then practice it during the week.

• Regular meditation and absorption in the light.
• Love, kindness, consideration, and acceptance of people as they are.
• Full attention while walking, eating, working, and moving through the day.
• Awareness of complaining, resistance, negativity, and annoyance as forms of dissipation.
• Simplicity and order in the home, work, routines, relationships, and computer.
• Cleanliness and attention to unfinished tasks.
• Time in solitude and nature.
• Reading, spiritual friendship, and association with people who live powerfully.
• Integrity, steadiness, and staying true to one's own path.
• Adding one supportive shift in orientation during the week.

• Where do you feel absorption and non-resistance in your life?
• What tends to generate power, and what tends to dissipate it?
• What is your nature, your art, or your Dharma?