Essay Edition
Core Values and Shared Purpose
We are cultivating a dimension of possibility together. There is an element of common values. If you think about your friends, your relationships, your community, your nation, we live in a set of values, things that matter to us. What is really happening interpersonally? I call them values, what we find valuable in life.
Think of values not as principles. That is a different thing, and make the distinction very clearly. A value is a treasure. It is a jewel. The things we value in life are the things that drive our decisions.
There are values we hold in common, which is why we are here together. Otherwise, we would not be. Then we have a core value, which is really what all the values surround. I encourage everybody to ask: What is my directive in life?
To discover your core value, I like the metaphor of thinking of it as your treasure, your treasure chest. What is your treasure chest? What is the thing, your directive?
Then there are secondary values that are supportive. They almost paint the picture of the value more deeply. You have this core value, and then the surrounding values are kind of like a Fourier transform.
In mathematics, we have a signal, which could be anything. It could be a video signal, sound, music, or voice. The Fourier transform is a mathematical tool that helps you determine what frequencies are in that signal. Does it have a low frequency? Does it have a high frequency? You can find exactly all the frequencies that, in their aggregation, produce that signal.
In a way, these values are the frequencies of that core directive. If you take your core directive and ask what that really means to you, you will find that there is a whole constellation of values that, in their aggregation, paints a picture of the deeper meaning behind that directive.
This is very relevant to each of us as individuals, as spiritual beings. You have to know yourself, not just your eternal self, but the dream and wish of your heart and your soul. Who are you?
It is very empowering to say: I have a core value. What is it? If you get really good at this, you can look at people and see quite easily their core value. Almost psychically, you can tell that person lives for this. They may not even know it. They may be living it beautifully, with integrity, but they may not have brought it to their conscious awareness.
Try to find your directive in life. What really drives you? You can look at experiences. If something happens, what did you choose to do? That choice is defined by a core value that you have, what really matters to you. Then there is that constellation of secondary values.
This is essential for individuals, but it is also essential in a community. It is important that we know what our values are and why we are here. It is my job to delineate them and share with you what they are so that you can decide whether you want to be here.
Perhaps more importantly, because I think we already resonate with the values, it is important to bring them to conscious awareness. Then you know what we are doing. All of the whys are answered.
Values are essentially the why. Why does one entrepreneur do things this way and another entrepreneur do things that way? Gandhi versus Nelson Mandela: different sets of values, different directives. If you knew exactly what they were, you would know why they said things and why they acted the way they did.
My core value is to discover the universe together.
Love and Light
Love is one of the values: to experience love, to embody love, to have a pure heart, a big heart, a radiant heart, a warm heart. It is a feeling, to feel love, that warm and fuzzy feeling.
To feel that warm and fuzzy feeling of love drives me. I like love. I want to live in love. It feels like a warm summer night. It feels like being under the roof with family. It smells like warm chocolate chip cookies in the oven. It feels like working together. It feels like compassion and forgiveness.
I love this. I love it. I love it. I love it. That is what I want to experience. I do not like feeling antithetical to that. That is when I have to change something. I do not feel nice right now. I do not feel at home right now.
Love is a discovery of the universe. If you have ever fallen in love and really felt love with somebody, and you looked at that person, I think that love is an existential awakening. You feel yourself. You feel all of the universe in that person.
This is romance at the level of enlightenment. You feel something beautiful. Love, romantically, can be an existential discovery of the universe.
What do I mean by discovery? I mean to experience the richness and depth of life, the potential of it. When you feel love, this is a dimension of existence that is central to having the most beautiful experience and discovery of the universe. That can be love in a family, love with your community, or love romantically. All of those would be included if it is genuine love.
Love is the one thing of value in the universe. It is the very purpose of the universe, for multiple expressions to exist and to be reconciled in unity.
Why did the universe come into being? You could really contemplate this. If we are all one, it is to realize the unity in our diversity, that reconciliation of unity in diversity, in the expressions of the universe as individuals, as parts of a whole. That polarity, that duality, is reconciled through love.
Why not just be in nirvana? Why did the universe not stay in an empty void of perfection? Because it would lack love. It would lack the reconciliation.
Love is a feeling that we have returned home while at home, to really be at home in your heart when you are at home in the world. It is also the bliss of being. When we love, we feel so whole and complete. That unification brings us an existential bliss that is intrinsic to our being. You can experience this in meditation.
In meditation, we sit down and generate love and being. When we formally sit down and do this, you can create a change in yourself where you become more like a saint in your heart, in your field. I think we all want to be saints, not to be great and special, but to live with the blessing of being saintly inside, godly, divine. Love brings that.
What is the intelligence involved? Love is the intelligence of empathy, intuition, and compassion. There is a multidimensional spectrum of intelligence. It is not just whether you can solve a math equation. Do you have genuine empathy, intuition, and compassion?
In a way, another part of my core value, another way to say it, is to become intelligent in all the dimensions of self, because then we become creators of beauty. You could be in the most beautiful place, but if you do not have that faculty of apprehension of beauty, you will miss it. If you are all in your head, you could be in a rough place, and if you have love, it can be beautiful.
The energy center for love is the heart, the chest: energetic warmth, a soft, radiant field. Essentially, the heart.
Light is the energetic expression of the Source, and in that way it is very close to love, but it is a visual phenomenon. Everything comes from light. You can meditate in light.
We are seeking to embody love. We are seeking to embody and abide in light, and really experience the light. Light is a little bit unknown to most of humanity, and yet it is the deepest part of us, which is strange. It is indicative of the Earth's evolution. I think in a few thousand years, or maybe even in 20 years, we might have the potential to be a light civilization.
Light is a feeling of such existential completeness that love is natural, intelligence is natural, wisdom and clarity are natural. Light is kind of the center in Raja Yoga, one of the four paths in yoga. Light is basically the path. It means the path of light and energy. Light is a deeper energy. There is also the Kundalini, which is a more manifest energy, less etheric.
What is the intelligence of light? Spiritual intuition, mystical cognition, and embodiment. It is an intelligence, a brilliance, in a way.
Think about somebody who is really multidimensionally intelligent. They are empathic. They have all the love, intelligence, intuition, and compassion, but they are also mystical. What could make you the fullest, most beautiful expression of the universe? Not to be ego. It has nothing to do with that. It is just to be your own personal experience of beauty, to do the right thing, and to help others feel a joyous existence.
The energy center is the crown chakra on top of the head, the light body, and an expanded field of consciousness, the causal body.
Clarity, Freedom, Peace, and Energy
Clarity is a mind that is quiet, perceptive, and receptive. It is a mind that is present, has attention, is mindful, and is capable of listening.
Can you go out in the wind, in the forest, and really be present and feel? Do you have a clear mind, an empty, receptive mind? It is a very Zen quality. This is a kind of intelligence. I would say the third eye is one of the primary centers, and the heart and the navel in a way too, and the crown, all of them, but maybe the third eye more than the rest.
I am sharing my heart with you and telling you what I care about. I care about love. I care about light. I care about clarity. If I am missing my clarity, I am not having the best day.
Freedom is the ability to be true to yourself. “To thine own self be true.” Shakespeare said that.
What does it mean to be true to yourself? You have self-knowledge. These values are a part of being true to yourself. You know who you are, and then you are not limited by your attachments and aversions. You are able to know who you are and act on it, to speak up, to say what matters to you, and perhaps to face adversity.
It is to be beyond hurt and manipulation because you are free, free from attachment and aversion, from desires and fears, free to be true to who you are.
This is a kind of intelligence as well. The more you get into your energy, the more it will hurt to compromise yourself. Freedom will become its own reward, and you will not care if anybody likes you. That is a good place to be. It just feels so much better to be free than to be liked.
Eventually, you will find the people who like you for who you are, which is what you really wanted in the first place. This is the intelligence of integrity, self-knowledge, and self-reliance. You can think of individuals who really embody that, or archetypes, or even movie characters who embody these types of intelligence. The energy centers are the heart and the navel.
I love peace. I value peace. It is one of the jewels in the treasure chest. All of these are kind of like gems to me. We seek peace. Peace comes from aligning with the constants of existence. In peace, there is a sense that you can let go.
The constants of existence are our very being, which is unchanging, the eternal side. When all of the changing things are allowed to drift away, what is your true self?
It is also the constants of change and principled living. If you know what you stand for and live for, you can come to the end of your decisions. You just live for what you live for, and there is a sort of peace in that.
It is like a warrior who is at peace because they know they are going to fight for the underdog. They may or may not live, but they have a sense of peace because they are living for something greater than themselves. They are beyond those tormenting decisions, pushes and pulls, and all of that.
Peace is what allows us to let go and be spiritual in the world, to move beyond the torment of transient existence.
Dukkha is the first noble truth in Buddhism. It means there is a little bit of pain in being transient. It means the difficulty in life. Even on your best vacation, with the people you love, when everybody is happy, healthy, and together, there is always a sense that it will not last forever.
Buddhism acknowledges that. It is called dukkha, and the solution is the path to enlightenment. How can we live and transcend dukkha, to live with the wisdom that brings inner peace?
Peace also includes peace of mind: not spending money you do not have, having money saved up, and paying the parking meters so that you do not have to worry about getting a ticket. All the little things that allow you to let go.
Equipoise and equanimity are another form of intelligence. How equanimous are you? How wise are you? How at peace are you? That is a kind of intelligence. The energy centers are the heart, sacral center, third eye, and crown.
Energy is the power of life, the power to act, vitality. It is Tai Chi. It is the Kundalini. It is having cleared chakras, active chakras, to feel powerful, to feel alive and powerful. It is creative will, the ability to go and work for 16 hours a day if you want to, and to will a transformation in your energetic field.
Really, astral awareness is what I am talking about: subtle energy, regulation, and metaphysical awareness. It is like the light, but it is on the astral plane. The energy centers are the navel center, root center, sacral center, spine, all the lower chakras, and the Kundalini that rises up the spine.
Here is an interesting one that is a little less common to label, which is to have a well-structured mind. This is distinct from clarity. Clarity is a still mind, but this is a mind that can perceive the nature of quantum mechanics or the hypercube.
This is abstract logic systems, intuition, and structural insight. These are all energies of the frontal lobe, the frontal cortex, and the third eye. This is part of having that beautiful experience of life.
You want to know why E equals mc squared or what the Fourier transform is. You want to know mathematics, really know mathematics, not just be able to do the symbols or the techniques, but actually know it. This is a well-structured mind, a mind that comprehends, that sees nuanced form and structure.
Abundance and Spiritual Aspiration
Abundance, to me, is all about love. It is having what you need to do the things you want with the people you love, as an expression of beautiful intelligence, light, love, peace, wisdom, and all of those things.
If you do not have abundance, you cannot really let your soul soar and fly through life. You need to have the means to go to Hawaii, to make a home, or to buy the book you want. If you love guitar, you need to have that guitar to be the musician you want to be. If you love mathematics, you need to take a math class that aligns with you.
Of course, people can be greedy and all those things. That is not what we are talking about. We are talking about abundance so that you can fulfill the wish of your heart and be in service. It is not just about you. It is about the world being a beautiful expression.
We come into this life and have a transient formation of our existence. That is a part of love, to let ourselves live that destiny, that journey in our lives.
We value opulence, a well-ordered life in which we have the things we need, a refined life. I like the word opulence. Think of Mother Teresa. She was not living opulently, but she sure would have done well if she had more money for her cause, more support, more amenities, more medicine, things like that.
Refinement, order, and right manifestation are a kind of intelligence. Imagine the person you meet who has their life together. It is a kind of intelligence. Their clothes are dry-cleaned. Their house is clean. Their taxes are paid. Everything is in place.
It feeds back into peace. It feeds back into love. Abundance is relevant.
It takes courage to prioritize love, freedom, integrity, and peace. A lot of people are playing it safe. A lot of people are hiding. They are compromising all kinds of things. It takes courage to do this.
I am standing for clarity as a sort of defense, so we can know that we are coming from a good place. Abundance is our very right to cultivate for ourselves in this world. Peace, love, and light are all very archetypal. Freedom, love, light, peace. These are very archetypal things. They are very core.
These are very spiritually consecrated values. The ultimate samadhi experience of Moksha would be all of them complete at the top. You are completely free, like Ramana Maharshi. That guy was dying, and he did not care. He said, “What difference does it make?” He knew his deepest self. He had just seen changing forms. It is deep love and all the beautiful qualities.
Dantien Meditation
Bring attention to the heart center, where we generate love just by focusing. Think of yourself as a bucket, and you are filling that bucket with the substance of love, a resource that you can have in abundance.
The heart is in the center of the chest, and you can use your will to bring energy, light, and warmth to that center. We are willing a transformation of our energy body. You can learn to do this. Be patient with yourself.
If you are capable of seeing the light, one of the ways to transform the energy body is to bring the vitality, the high-frequency energy of the light, into the energetic center.
If your mind wanders, remember why you are sitting here and what you can do to will a transformation of your attention field, your consciousness.
There are three Dantien. The Dantien are the Taoist energy centers, and they correlate with three of the seven chakras. The heart is one of them. It is the middle Dantien.
The third eye is the upper Dantien. The third eye is not only in the forehead, but in the frontal lobe. Hold the energy there.
Move to the lower Dantien. The lower Dantien is one inch below the belly button. There is an energetic vortex of a different order. It feels like power, our source of power, the power of a disciplined martial artist, one who is in command of their energy field.
Know that power palpably in the lower abdominal area. You have to find a way to awaken it. Feel a kind of integrity, a special, austere integrity, independence, spiritual independence.
Bring your attention back to the heart. Try to feel the whole spectrum now, centering in the heart, feeling how it is supported by the third eye's stability and the navel center's power. It is the tripod of your energetic being.
Then you can begin to really let go. Allow yourself to become absorbed by energy and light. Let meditation happen.
Full Transcript
Core Values and Shared Purpose
Adam Wes Namaste, everybody. Welcome. This is Sangha. We come here and meditate together. We're cultivating a dimension of possibility together.
There's an element of common values. If you think about your friends, your relationships, your community, your nation, we live in a set of values, things that matter to us. If you go to a different country, they might care in Japan about etiquette, for example, or in India they might care about something very different from Hawaii. Right?
So what is it that's really happening interpersonally? I call them values, what we find valuable in life. Some of us may find all kinds of things valuable. What do people care about?
Think of values not as principles. That's a different thing, and make the distinction very clearly. A value is a treasure. It's a jewel. The things we value in life are the things that drive our decisions.
There are values we hold in common, which is why we're here together. Otherwise, we wouldn't be. So we value something. Then we have a core value, which is really what all the values surround.
I was watching Tom Guer's talk the other day, and he said, "I have to live a life of adventure. I just have to. I want it." As Tom Guer said, it's like his core value is, "Live an adventurous life." It's a directive.
So I encourage everybody to ask, "What is my directive in life?" Ariella's is something like, "Love the world." There's something there for Ariella. Colleen, yours is like, "Be kind and helpful to everybody who is on your path." Really beautiful. These are beautiful things. Not everybody has values like that.
To discover your core value, I like the metaphor of thinking of it as your treasure, your treasure chest. What's your treasure chest? What is the thing, your directive?
Then there are secondary values that are supportive. They almost paint the picture of the value more deeply. You have this core value, and then the surrounding values are kind of like a Fourier transform.
In mathematics, we have a signal, which could be anything. It could be a video signal, sound, music, or voice. The Fourier transform is a mathematical tool that helps you determine what frequencies are in that signal. Does it have a low frequency? Does it have a high frequency? You can actually find exactly all the frequencies that, in their aggregation, produce that signal.
In a way, these values are the frequencies of that core directive. If you take your core directive and say, "Okay, what does that really mean to me?" you'll find that there's a whole constellation of values that, in their aggregation, paints a picture of the deeper meaning behind that directive.
Really good businesses actually use this very intentionally. A business has a certain core business value, and then they have the other values. If you went to one health food store versus another, one of them may value frugality and the other may value the very opposite. They'll make things more expensive on purpose. Different set of values, different manifestation.
Why am I talking about this? First of all, this is very relevant to each of us as individuals, as spiritual beings. You have to know yourself, not just your eternal self, but the dream and wish of your heart and your soul. Who are you?
I think it's very empowering to say, "Okay, I have a core value. What is it?" If you get really good at this, you can look at people and see quite easily their core value. Almost psychically, you can tell, "Oh, wow, that person lives for this." They may not even know it. They may be living it beautifully, with integrity, but they may not have brought it to their conscious awareness.
So, Elias, try to find your directive in life. What really drives you? You can look at experiences. If something happens, what did you choose to do? That choice is defined by a core value that you have, what really matters to you. Then there's that constellation of secondary values.
This is essential for individuals, but it's also essential in a community. It's important that we know what our values are and why we're here. It's my job to delineate them and share with you what they are so that you can say, "Oh, I like that. I don't like that," and make your decision whether you want to be here.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, because I think we all already resonate with the values, it's important to bring them to conscious awareness. Then you know, "Oh, that's what we're doing. That's why Adam said that. That's why we meditate on Tuesdays." All of the whys are answered.
Values are essentially the why. Why does one entrepreneur do things this way and another entrepreneur do things that way? Gandhi versus Nelson Mandela: different sets of values, different directives. If you knew exactly what they were, you'd know why they said things and why they acted the way they did.
It's very important to see that clarity. I'm going to share with you my values, which are also our community values, and I'm very excited to do that.
Love and Light
Love is one of the values: to experience love, to embody love, to have a pure heart, a big heart, a radiant heart, a warm heart. It's a feeling, to feel love, that warm and fuzzy feeling.
Behice Sorry, my dog.
Adam Wes Oh, okay, sure. That's okay.
To feel that warm and fuzzy feeling of love, that drives me. I like love. I want to live in love. It feels like a warm summer night. It feels like being under the roof with family. It smells like warm chocolate chip cookies in the oven. It feels like working together. It feels like compassion and forgiveness.
I love this. I love it. I love it. I love it. That's what I want to experience. I don't like feeling antithetical to that. That's when I'm like, "I have to change something. I don't feel nice right now. Yuck. I don't feel at home right now."
Love is the first value, but it's part of that constellation. I should start not with the secondaries, which love is one of, but with the directive, the core value.
My core value is to discover the universe together.
Love is a discovery of the universe. If you've ever fallen in love and really felt love with somebody, and you looked at that person, I think that love is an existential awakening. You feel yourself. You feel all of the universe in that person.
This is romance at the level of enlightenment. You feel something beautiful. Love, romantically, can be an existential discovery of the universe.
What do I mean by discovery? I mean to experience the richness and depth of life, the potential of it. When you feel love, this is a dimension of existence that is central to having the most beautiful experience and discovery of the universe.
You see, I'm trying to describe what I mean by love. That can be love in a family, love with your community, or love romantically. All of those would be included if it's genuine love.
Love is the one thing of value in the universe. It is the very purpose of the universe, for multiple expressions to exist and to be reconciled in unity.
Why did the universe come into being? You could really contemplate this. If we're all one, it's to realize the unity in our diversity, that reconciliation of unity in diversity, in the expressions of the universe as individuals, as parts of a whole. That polarity, that duality, is reconciled through love.
Why not just be in Nirvana? Why didn't the universe just stay in an empty void of perfection? Because it would lack love. It would lack the reconciliation.
Love is a feeling that we've returned home while at home, to really be at home in your heart when you're at home in the world. It is also the bliss of being.
When we love, we feel so whole and complete. That unification brings us an existential bliss that is intrinsic to our being. You can experience this in meditation.
In meditation, we sit down and generate love and being. When we formally sit down and do this, you can actually create a change in yourself where you become more like a saint in your heart, in your field.
I think we all want to be saints, not to be great and special, but to live with the blessing of being saintly inside, godly, divine. Love brings that.
I also did something interesting. I asked, "What is the intelligence involved?" Love is the intelligence of empathy, intuition, and compassion.
There's a multidimensional spectrum of intelligence. It's not just, "Can you solve this math equation?" It's, "Do you have genuine empathy, intuition, and compassion?"
In a way, another part of my core value, another way to say it, is to become intelligent in all the dimensions of self, because then we become creators of beauty.
You could be in the most beautiful place, but if you don't have that faculty of apprehension of beauty, you'll miss it. If you're all in your head, you could be in a rough place, and if you have love, it can be beautiful. Compassion, things like that.
The energy center for love is the heart, the chest: energetic warmth, a soft, radiant field. Essentially, the heart.
Number two is light.
Light is the energetic expression of the Source, and in that way it is very close to love, but it's a visual phenomenon. Everything comes from light, if you can meditate in light.
This is one of the values. Why are we here together? We're seeking to embody love. We're seeking to embody and abide in light, and really experience the light.
Light is a little bit unknown to most of humanity, and yet it is the deepest part of us, which is strange. It's indicative of the Earth's evolution. I think in a few thousand years, or maybe even in 20 years, we might have the potential to be a light civilization.
Light is a feeling of such existential completeness that love is natural, intelligence is natural, wisdom and clarity are natural. Light is kind of the center in Raja Yoga.
Raja Yoga is one of the four paths in yoga. Light is basically the path. It basically means the path of light and energy. Light is a deeper energy. There's also the Kundalini, which is a more manifest energy, less etheric.
What's the intelligence of light? Spiritual intuition, mystical cognition, and embodiment. It's an intelligence, a brilliance, in a way.
Think about somebody who's really multidimensionally intelligent. They're empathic. They have all the love, intelligence, intuition, and compassion, but they're also mystical. What could make you the fullest, most beautiful expression of the universe? Not to be ego. It has nothing to do with that. It's just to be your own personal experience of beauty, to do the right thing, and to help others feel a joyous existence.
The energy center is the crown chakra on top of the head, the light body, and there's an expanded field of consciousness, the causal body, maybe that's a better term.
Clarity Freedom Peace and Energy
The next value is clarity.
We've got love, light, and clarity. Clarity is a mind that's quiet, perceptive, and receptive. It's a mind that's present, has attention, is mindful, and is capable of listening.
Can you go out in the wind, in the forest, and really be present and feel? Do you have a clear mind, an empty, receptive mind? It's a very Zen quality.
This is a kind of intelligence. I would say the third eye is one of the primary centers, and the heart and the navel in a way too, and the crown, all of them, but maybe the third eye more than the rest.
Remember, I'm sharing my heart with you and telling you what I care about. This is what I really care about. I care about love. I care about light. I care about clarity. If I'm missing my clarity, I'm not having the best day.
What you could be asking yourself is, "Do I care about these things too?" That's what I would love to share and grow myself, and for all of us in this cohort and in our community.
Freedom. What is freedom?
Freedom is the ability to be true to yourself. "To thine own self be true." Shakespeare said that.
What does it mean to be true to yourself? You have self-knowledge. These values are a part of being true to yourself. You know who you are, and then you're not limited by your attachments and aversions. You're able to know who you are and act on it, to speak up, to say what matters to you, and perhaps to face adversity.
It's to be beyond hurt and manipulation because you are free, free from attachment and aversion, from desires and fears, free to be true to who you are.
This is a kind of intelligence as well. The more you get into your energy, the more it'll hurt to compromise yourself. Freedom will become its own reward, and you won't care if anybody likes you. That's a good place to be. It just feels so much better to be free than to be liked.
Eventually, you'll find the people who like you for who you are, which is what you really wanted in the first place.
This is the intelligence of integrity, self-knowledge, and self-reliance. You can think of individuals who really embody that, or archetypes, or even movie characters who embody these types of intelligence. The energy centers are the heart and the navel.
I love peace. I value peace. It's one of the jewels in the treasure chest. All of these are kind of like gems to me. There are eight gems I'm sharing here.
We seek peace. Peace comes from aligning with the constants of existence. In peace, there's a sense that you can let go.
The constants of existence are our very being, which is unchanging, the eternal side. When all of the changing things are allowed to drift away, what is your true self?
It's also the constants of change and principled living. If you know what you stand for and live for, you can come to the end of your decisions. You just live for what you live for, and there's a sort of peace in that.
It's like a warrior who's at peace because they know they're going to fight for the underdog. They may or may not live, but they have a sense of peace because they're living for something greater than themselves. They're beyond those tormenting decisions, pushes and pulls, and all of that.
Peace is what allows us to let go and be spiritual in the world, to move beyond the torment of transient existence.
Dukkha is the first noble truth in Buddhism. It means there's a little bit of pain in being transient. It means the difficulty in life. Even on your best vacation, with the people you love, when everybody's happy, healthy, and together, there's always a sense that it won't last forever.
Buddhism acknowledges that. It's called dukkha, and the solution is the path to enlightenment. How can we live and transcend dukkha, to live with the wisdom that brings inner peace?
Peace also includes peace of mind: not spending money you don't have, having money saved up, and paying the parking meters so that you don't have to worry about getting a ticket. All the little things that allow you to let go.
Equipoise and equanimity are another form of intelligence. How equanimous are you? How wise are you? How at peace are you? That's a kind of intelligence.
The energy centers are the heart, sacral center, third eye, and crown.
Energy is the power of life, the power to act, vitality. It's Tai Chi. It's the Kundalini. It's having cleared chakras, active chakras, to feel powerful, to feel alive and powerful. It's creative will, the ability to go and work for 16 hours a day if you want to, and to will a transformation in your energetic field.
Really, astral awareness is what I'm talking about: subtle energy, regulation, and metaphysical awareness. It's like the light, but it's on the astral plane.
The energy centers are the navel center, root center, sacral center, spine, all the lower chakras, and the Kundalini that rises up the spine.
Here's an interesting one that's a little less common to label, which is to have a well-structured mind. This is distinct from clarity. Clarity is a still mind, but this is a mind that can perceive the nature of quantum mechanics or the hypercube.
This is what we're learning in the math component: abstract logic systems, intuition, and structural insight. These are all energies of the frontal lobe, the frontal cortex, and the third eye. This is part of having that beautiful experience of life.
You want to know why E equals mc squared or what the Fourier transform is. You want to know mathematics, really know mathematics, not just be able to do the symbols or the techniques, but actually know it.
This is a well-structured mind, a mind that comprehends, that sees nuanced form and structure.
Abundance and Spiritual Aspiration
Another value is abundance, and this is the final one of the eight.
Abundance, to me, is all about love. It's having what you need to do the things you want with the people you love, as an expression of beautiful intelligence, light, love, peace, wisdom, and all of those things.
If you don't have abundance, you can't really let your soul soar and fly through life. You need to have the means to go to Hawaii, to make a home, or to buy the book you want. If you love guitar, you need to have that guitar to be the musician you want to be. If you love mathematics, you need to take a math class that aligns with you.
I love acupuncture, so I have to go to my acupuncture. I feel wonderful when I do acupuncture. I love it so much. Abundance is having the means to go to acupuncture. It's very pure.
Of course, people can be greedy and all those things. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about abundance so that you can fulfill the wish of your heart and be in service. It's not just about you. It's about the world being a beautiful expression.
We come into this life and have a transient formation of our existence. That's a part of love, to let ourselves live that destiny, that journey in our lives.
We value opulence, a well-ordered life in which we have the things we need, a refined life. I like the word opulence. I would say that this is an important thing. It may be a little more personal to me. Think of Mother Teresa. She wasn't living opulently, but she sure would have done well if she had more money for her cause, more support, more amenities, more medicine, things like that.
Refinement, order, and right manifestation are a kind of intelligence. Imagine the person you meet who has their life together. It's a kind of intelligence. Their clothes are dry-cleaned. Their house is clean. Their taxes are paid. These are things I aspire to. Everything is in place.
It feeds back into peace. It feeds back into love. I'm trying to paint a picture so you can see. If we were to have a retreat together, I'd rather go and stay in a really beautiful place in Malibu than try to wing it with a little place that's got noisy stuff going on all around, where we can't really have a sabbatical.
Abundance is relevant.
Those are the eight values. I hope you guys like them.
David P Love them.
Adam Wes David, you said you love them?
David P Yeah, 100 percent.
Adam Wes Wonderful. What do you think, Shawn?
Shawn E I love them as well. I felt like you were describing my life and my aspiration. The alignment and connection, I was just like, there were fireworks. I love the treasure chest. Thank you.
Adam Wes Thank you. It's nice to meet people. It takes courage to prioritize love, freedom, integrity, and peace. A lot of people are playing it safe. A lot of people are hiding. They're compromising all kinds of things. It takes courage to do this.
I guess I want to say that I'm standing for clarity as a sort of defense, so we can know that we're coming from a good place. Abundance is our very right to cultivate for ourselves in this world. Peace, love, and light are all very archetypal. Freedom, love, light, peace. These are very archetypal things. They're very core.
Some people might have the value of sports cars. It doesn't have to be things like this, and that's cool for them. Have you ever watched Fast and the Furious? Those guys love sports cars. They lived for sports cars. One kid was an engineer, and that was their life.
These are very spiritually consecrated values. The ultimate samadhi experience of Moksha would be all of them complete at the top. You're completely free, like Ramana Maharshi. That guy was dying, and he didn't care. He didn't care because he said, "What difference does it make?" He knew his deepest self. He was like, "I've just seen changing forms." It's deep love and all the beautiful qualities.
Thank you, everybody, for listening. I hope that wasn't too much. Colleen, what do you think, Mom? Do you want to say anything?
Colleen I'm saying ditto to what Shawn said.
Adam Wes Thank you. Love it.
Dantien Meditation
Let's start our meditation. We'll do the Dantien because that's what I shared this week.
Bring attention to the heart center, where we generate love just by focusing. Think of yourself as a bucket, and you're filling that bucket with the substance of love, a resource that you can have in abundance.
The heart is in the center of the chest, and you can use your will to bring energy, light, and warmth to that center. We're willing a transformation of our energy body. You can learn to do this. Be patient with yourself.
If you're capable of seeing the light, one of the ways to transform the energy body is to bring the vitality, the high-frequency energy of the light, into the energetic center.
If your mind wanders, remember why you're sitting here and what you can do to will a transformation of your attention field, your consciousness.
There are three Dantien. The Dantien are the Taoist energy centers, and they correlate with three of the seven chakras. The heart is one of them. It's the middle Dantien.
The third eye is the upper Dantien, so let's move to that. The third eye is not only in the forehead, but in the frontal lobe.
Hold the energy there.
Let's move to the lower Dantien. I'm changing the music because that was a very third-eye song. This is a little more navel center.
The lower Dantien is one inch below the belly button. There's an energetic vortex of a different order. It feels like power, our source of power, the power of a disciplined martial artist, one who is in command of their energy field.
Know that power palpably in the lower abdominal area. You have to find a way to awaken it. It should be easy for you to do it right now.
Feel a kind of integrity, a special, austere integrity, independence, spiritual independence.
Bring your attention back to the heart. Try to feel the whole spectrum now, centering in the heart, feeling how it's supported by the third eye's stability and the navel center's power. It's the tripod of your energetic being.
Then you can begin to really let go for the last few minutes. Allow yourself to become absorbed by energy and light. Let meditation happen.
When you're ready, we can come out of the meditation.
Meditation Reflections and Energetic Experiences
Ariella, how was your meditation?
Ariella It was wonderful, Adam. Thank you.
Adam Wes You're welcome. Thanks for being here. Do you have any specific energetic descriptions you can share?
Ariella There was a lot of light. There was a time in the first section when I just spaced out, but it was all incredible.
Adam Wes Beautiful. Well, nice to see you. Thank you. Namaste.
Ariella Namaste.
Adam Wes Do you want to share, Behice?
Behice First, sorry. I was in the process of finishing bathing my dog and then giving her a bone. I forgot her treat, and that was the noise I made. I did not realize.
Adam Wes Not a big deal at all. We like hearing doggy love going on.
Behice Oh my God, yeah. She's very happy.
Adam Wes How about your meditation?
Behice I made the mistake of running around the block yesterday with my dog, so my back has not been happy because of my injury. Sitting that much, I worked on that internally. I went inside and cleared it out, opened all the pathways and things like that, because each angle was talking to me.
Instead of lying down and leaving the meditation lying down, I said, "I'm going to sit here and work through that." That's my report on the meditation.
Adam Wes Okay. Thank you for hanging in there. How about you, Shawn? Don't you guys like how he's wearing his hat? It's cool.
Shawn E When we started the third eye, I was like, "Oh man."
I'm having this experience right now where, when I'm watching you guys talk and the square lights up green, when it goes away, I'm seeing purple.
Adam Wes That's a somewhat more biological factor. Green and pink are on opposite sides of the color wheel, and this color green is more on the opposite side of purple.
What's good about that, though, is you're in a state of stillness where things are becoming stronger.
Shawn E My visual cortex is relaxed, and it's able to see that.
Adam Wes That tends to happen more easily as a sign of going deeper, but it's not the light.
Shawn E No, I understand that. The rest all kind of ties into my math meditation from this morning, and it just kept exploding during this meditation. It was incredible. I'd love to share that, but I don't want to monopolize.
Adam Wes Take 45 seconds and share.
Shawn E I don't think I can do it in 45 seconds.
Adam Wes How about you write to the group?
Shawn E Okay.
Adam Wes If you write to the group, it's really good to have people share like that because it makes it more real for everybody. We're like, "Oh, wow, Shawn had that amazing experience. I want to have that," or, "Maybe that was similar to what I had."
Behice Yeah.
Adam Wes Namaste, Shawn. Thanks for being here. Your energy contribution and your alignment are so special. I really appreciate you.
Shawn E Thank you.
Adam Wes How about you, Elias?
Elias P At our last class, I was having an experience that wasn't in line with the energetic experiences I've had before. It was kind of like being overwhelmed, but it wasn't like a sexual or impersonal sexual energy, which is more the thing I've felt before.
It was like perceiving the multiplication tables on Tuesday, and something else we were doing on Monday was making me feel, not high, but like my body was overwhelmed. Have you ever taken niacin? It almost felt like the feeling of your blood vessels dilating or something.
Adam Wes I can explain what I think you're experiencing. It's your Kundalini.
Elias P When I've had Kundalini risings or flows before, it feels different from how I'm used to it showing up.
Adam Wes How does it feel different?
Elias P When I've had things that I identified as Kundalini, it was overwhelming, but there was always a sensual, sexual texture to it. It's so hard to describe the energies.
Adam Wes Instead of that, what's in this?
Elias P It's almost like...
Adam Wes It's higher-pitched or something.
Elias P Exactly.
Adam Wes I know exactly what it is. I'm so glad you said that.
The Kundalini that was rising was rising a little bit into the sacral center. Kundalini almost is orgasmic. It's similar, but it doesn't arouse. It's the life-force vitality. There's nothing sexual about it.
You can recognize that orgasmic energy as drawing from the same energy in the lower centers. Do you see what I mean?
We're in the heart, the third eye, and the crown. The navel is as low as I probably will be focusing on in this class, although maybe with a little bit of the first two. The navel draws up from the lower centers without getting too much into them.
Elias P I've had lower centers very intensely, and then I've had heart center. This felt even higher. Maybe it was up. It didn't feel particularly refined, like how I imagined something up there would be.
It was from this feeling of actually understanding, not from an intellectual place, but almost like my perception was touching a thing.
Adam Wes I'm laughing because it sounds like you probably had a third-eye experience. How does your forehead feel? Do you feel your forehead a lot?
Elias P Pressurized.
Adam Wes That's good. The energy is moving through, and you're feeling the pressure, which is clearing, opening, and transforming the Chi in the third eye.
Elias P Sick.
Adam Wes Cool. I love it. Sick is good. That's great. I love your description here. It sounds like you're really experiencing it.
It's good to have all of the centers activated simultaneously. You don't have to abandon the lower chakras, although I wouldn't focus on them as the goal. I think the heart, the navel, and the third eye are very good for enlightenment.
The sacral center can be a fun addition. It could be a distraction, though, too. It's not really my specialty.
Elias P It didn't feel sexual. It was that kind of orgasmic energy, but not personal. It wasn't like I wanted to...
Adam Wes There you go. I understand. The Kundalini feels good. It's vitality. It's endorphins. All these things are happening chemically, electrically, magnetically, and electromagnetically in the field.
Really, you're just dripping with bliss and steeped in existential bliss. That's what you start to feel. It's not sexual because it's not tied in with the sexual organs, but you can recognize that there's an energetic quality that's similar.
That's just Kundalini. Kundalini is our life force.
Wonderful, Elias. Namaste. Thank you. Andy, are you here?
Andy Yep, I'm here.
Adam Wes Do you want to share for 20 seconds?
Andy Sure. My 20 seconds is shapes and colors and forms that transitioned into different things, and then they would just sort of evaporate.
Adam Wes It's an astral experience. In the astral, which Behice knows a lot about, you'll see a lot of geometry, shapes, and forms, and then they'll disappear. It's very much like you said. Maybe look up astral psychedelic meditation, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Andy Yeah, I'll check it out. Thank you.
Adam Wes Glad you made it today, Andy.
Andy So am I. I apologize for not being able to make it the last two times.
Adam Wes That's okay. Behice, thank you for being here. It's wonderful to have everybody. Thank you. From now on, it'll be on time. We're going to do it. I promise.
Behice Bye, everybody.
Adam Wes Namaste.