Simplicity

Adam Wes Namaste, everybody. I'm just looking out at our group and feeling that I love the consistency with which we are attending. All of us have a lot of previous meetings to draw from. I feel like there's a lot of clarity, consistency, and mutual understanding. We can draw from many of the discussions and build upon them. They're very interrelated, and I just think that's wonderful. Thank you for being here so consistently, everybody.

Today, I have a wonderful thing I'd like to share. It's one of the most powerful ways you can change your life, and perhaps some of you are already doing it to a degree. It is one of the most indispensable, integral spiritual principles to live by, reflected through millennia of traditions from different parts of the world. It is time-tested and cosmically approved. It is very important, and that is simplicity.

Simplicity is a profoundly effective and essential spiritual principle to live by. There are a lot of nuances to it that can be explored so that one can deeply implement it in their life, in their mind, and in their self, inwardly and outwardly.

You're not going to believe this, but I literally couldn't think of what I wanted to talk about today. Just 45 minutes ago, I got clear on it, and I wrote a five-page document. This comes quickly sometimes, so I'm very excited. In fact, I'm just going to share it with you, although I dictated the entire thing, so it should be properly verbatim. I'll share my screen.

I'm going to skim it and bring up key points because there's a lot here. I'll be able to share this document with everybody as well.

In seeking to become more conscious, which is really the goal of spirituality, we want to be able to abide in spirit all the time. It doesn't matter if you're computer programming, having a conversation, or exercising. To be yoked, to yoke your awareness with eternity, is to be free while in the world, not ensnared in the world or enmeshed in the world. These are good words for it. Enmeshed, perhaps, is the most apropos word. Not enmeshed in the world like a net, like it's trapped you, but liberated from the world.

When we do this, we're able to stay connected to spirit and remain in a state of purity and clarity. Simplicity helps us to do that because simplicity prevents us from getting too involved in a way that's not efficient.

When you simplify your life, you provide yourself with the conditions to minimize complexity and the requirements to attend to that complexity.

I'm never really able to read this. I'm just going to send this to everybody afterward and speak from what comes through, because otherwise it interferes with the flow.

Simplicity happens both within and without. When we do it within, we're simplifying the way we think. Opinions, judgments, attachments, and concern with how others interpret you all create perturbations in the mind. A mind that is aloof, empty, does not move as much. It does not have to attend so much to the complexities of one's humanity.

In transcending our humanity and moving into a superhuman kind of simplicity within, we create stillness. This allows us to live with extreme efficiency. Everything we do is very intentional. It's very effective. We may use words more carefully. Each word we use is intentional and purposeful.

Usually, you may notice that an enlightened being, or somebody who's very spiritual, says less, but they say more with what they say. Right? This has a lot to do with the simplification process of the inward state. They've simplified their mind.

Now, guess what? People ask me, "What does math have to do with spirituality?" Well, math is exactly this. Math is utter simplicity. A fractal, with all its beautiful parts, comes from a single seed of recursive definition.

Sam's like, "Yeah," right? There are five Platonic solids, each with perfect symmetry, existing eternally through time. That's God keeping His room clean. Right?

Keeping your room clean is another thing. Your space. Have you seen a Zen monastery or the Zen aesthetic? The Zen aesthetic is utterly simple. A bunch of rocks stacked on top of each other, right? Tatami mats, and that's all that's in the room. These sentiments are woven throughout spiritual practice.

Today, we'll discuss simplicity and really think, "How can we apply that in our lives? Where are we wasting energy, dissipating energy, and getting unnecessarily ensnared in life?" We want to make life a walking meditation. Right?

Mathematics as a practice structures our mind to become highly refined and simple. We may understand very complicated things, but really, they're not complicated. People usually think of mathematics as this complicated discipline. It's not complicated.

Einstein, the smartest physicist ever, his big equation is E equals MC squared. The math involved in that is learned before fifth grade, right? It's multiplication. E equals M times C times C. You don't even need the exponent right there.

Mathematics is utterly simple, but it requires one to be discerning and perceptive. Can you see the mathematical truth clearly and simply as self-evident? That's where our practice of mathematics structures our mind and intellect to be refined, streamlined, and simple.

That's about enough about mathematics, but you can see how it connects. I thought it was very appropriate for me to make that connection for us.

One can be simple in their life in a number of ways. For example, you could change your oil every quarter, every 3,000 miles. That's almost a rule, a single rule. You just do it with consistency. That simplicity brings peace of mind, and it streamlines your life.

That's my dad's rule. My dad's rule is to change it every quarter or every 3,000 miles. If you live by that, you live like a computer program. This is another reason why I like computer programming, because computer programming is programmatic perfection. That rule right there could be put right into JavaScript or Java, and you could live by it. Then you set it aside. You never have to redesign the principles you live by. That becomes a part of that collection of principles that guide you.

Integrity is living by principles. Each moment, you're empty, but your actions are governed by a set of rules, a set of principles. This principled living produces simplicity as well.

Define your principles. Daniel, if you sit down this week and say, "Okay, what are the principles I live by?" and let those govern your life, then you don't have to be the chooser in every moment. If you're the chooser in every moment, you cannot be in a meditative state. You need to spontaneously act as an expression of your principles.

That's a different way of living, right? If you imagine the great sage or the great spiritual being as an archetype, that is how you probably would imagine them to be living. They live by principles, not by head-turning indulgences. They don't turn their head at an opportunity here and there, being pulled every which way by their attachments and aversions. That's not spiritual.

Spiritual is that single-minded focus, that directed attention, in which you have surrendered to your destiny. You will live out that destiny in accordance with a set of principles that you live by, which will evolve and grow over time, of course. They will become more refined and more streamlined as you mature.

Let's go with some more mundane examples. You can simplify the number of things in your house. If you have a house with lots and lots and lots of things, it's good to try to clear it. Clear out the stagnation of your drawers, your closets, and your extra things that you don't need.

There's a nice tech aesthetic I like: all we need is one robe, one bowl, and one laptop. Sam would love that. I don't know if you know that "one robe, one bowl" is a Zen thing. It's like, all you need is one robe and one bowl. But with a Mac, all we need is one laptop. With an iPhone, one pocket computer, we can really simplify our lives. You can get one Tesla, one electric car. Everything's electric, everything's in the software, and it keeps it clean. There's less, and we revel in less because less feels like freedom. Right?

I think that's really funny. One robe, one bowl, one laptop. That's good, right? It's the modern monk.

Simplicity also happens in relationships. If you have a relationship that's not streamlined, there's too much misunderstanding, too much judgment, and too much attachment. These make relationships a source of dissipation of energy. The complexity in a relationship is not healthy.

A relationship can be very streamlined, and there are a lot of ways you can make your relationships as such. A lot of times, we need to streamline our inner state. When we have attachments and aversions, opinions and judgments, these all create complexity, and they create complexity in our relationships.

You can say, "I don't have an opinion to call my own." Everybody's got a political opinion these days, especially in the United States. What if you just let it go? "I don't have an opinion." People have preferences. They're fighting over what they want the world to look like. But what if you treasure your dispassion?

As long as people aren't being hurt, which sometimes happens in political situations, there's a sort of stepping back and letting truth speak for itself. There's a difference between opinion and truth. Opinion is self-serving. Truth is usually not very convenient, right?

The truth is that we should honor everybody's freedom and have compassion. Those are a part of truth. There are self-evident truths. Truth is very simple. Opinions and judgments, a lot of times, are things to work through.

One of my favorite enlightened beings says, "I have no opinion to call my own. Don't project onto me what you think, that I have opinions. I have no opinions to call my own."

I think that's beautiful because an opinion is not a fact. It's an imposition on fact.

One thing you can do to simplify your life is say less. For example, if I had the wrong audience now, perhaps what I said would have upset a whole bunch of people, right? I don't have an opinion one way or another. But if you say less in most situations, it's very good. It keeps things clean. You're not opening yourself to misunderstanding.

Another thing is, when we speak, to say what's necessary. A lot of times, people just talk and talk and talk, and there's no streamline to it. They're just talking out of conditioning. It makes them feel good for some reason because their mind is going so fast.

But if you learn to meditate and still the mind, you say what you need to say, what's relevant to say, and no more, because you value the stillness. You see? This is the thing. A lot of people don't value stillness, so they don't value simplicity as a principle to stillness. Simplicity, in a way, is its own value. A lot of people don't value that.

When we meditate, we taste freedom. We get to experience the freedom that is beyond all the pulls of the mind inside, all the pulls of culture outside, and our responsibilities outside.

Another thing is to limit your responsibilities. For example, business is a really important place to apply simplicity. You can run a business with your pinky finger if you do it right, or you can be ensnared in the business from morning until night and have it going on and on in your head.

In business, systems. Somebody fills out a form on your website, and they get an email. They get the right emails at the right times. Complete system design. That's simplicity. You set it up, and you let it go.

It's very different from somebody who designs a business and is constantly in the rat race, running on that wheel, the hamster wheel. Businesses that are designed well are designed with a simple seed of direction. They have a mission statement and a vision statement that guide perhaps hundreds of thousands of people. They have principles that guide the way their products are made, even after perhaps the founder has died. I'm thinking of Steve Jobs.

They have values, the things that they, their community, and their customers find valuable in their products. We have our own set of values. Simplicity is one of our values, right? Perhaps you don't like simplicity, and maybe you shouldn't be here. It doesn't matter. We don't have to convince anybody to like what we like, because it doesn't matter, and that's a part of simplicity.

Let people live their lives. Don't try to control them. Don't try to get them to do anything because you like it. We just like simplicity because we like meditation, essentially.

A business has roles, responsibilities, values, principles, and a value proposition. All of these things are very clear. You put them in one document, and that's the giant business right there. Everything arises from that. You call that manageable complexity. Manageable complexity arises from simplicity.

For example, if you're a computer programmer, the half-million lines of code that make your program are designed in a way that makes them manageable to go through. There are modules of code. There's a hierarchy of code.

If it were just lines and lines of code, or what some people call spaghetti code, going from here to here to here to here to here, nobody would understand it. It wouldn't be possible to create the Mac operating system and everything that's involved there, or Windows, or whatever.

Plants and nature are utter simplicity. The forest is simplicity because it is not imposed upon by human interpretation. It is as it is, and it has balance. The plant grows from the seed. Every leaf is designed from the seed.

One way to feel simplicity is to have lots of plants in your home and to spend time in nature.

You can simplify your diet. You can eat with a greater level of austerity. Eat just fruit. Eat the same foods at the same times every day for the season, and then shift it every season. Do you see what I mean? This is very monastic, but you can live in the world and live this way.

It builds power, guys! You feel power with this. Power because you're not dissipating your power. You're retaining it, cultivating it, and building it.

You can have simplicity in your attire. I have four pairs of these jeans. I like four pairs of white jeans. I wear all white, and I have lots of the same white item. Then I wake up and put it on, and I don't have to manage the complexity, the subtle energetics, and all the things involved in choosing every time.

I also have a whole bunch of colored clothing that I pick when I need it. I'm like, "Oh man, I need a light blue shirt today because things are getting messy, and I just feel tranquility in blue," or something like that. But the whole idea is to simplify your life through streamlining your products and your attire.

A schedule can have simplicity. You can schedule all over the place, or you can have blocks. I've tutored for a long time. I don't have this at the moment, but I used to have blocks when I would tutor. I work this time with a student, this time, or this time. Pick one of them. If you can't fit in one of those, I can't work with you.

There's a sort of, "We just don't match, because I'm not going to bend my life out of shape to accommodate one person, miss my sunset meditation, and throw everything off."

Consistency enables simplicity. It allows us to refine our lives so that we attend to all the many things that are required. Your routine may have ten things in it that keep you in the state of mind you're in, but those ten things are nicely streamlined throughout your life. It's not an effort. It's a joy.

Let me end on one thing here. Love is the greatest simplicity.

When you love, there's an emptiness. There's a simplicity in your being. Some people I know who are very loving call themselves plain. I'm thinking of you.

Plain doesn't mean that you're plain. It's that you're whole. You're content. There's a lot of simplicity in love because we don't foster the complexity of the self. We have negated the self. The abnegation of the self allows one to be their essence.

Being is love, the essence of what we are. The simplicity, that substrate, that block of being, ontologically eternal, is love. The one who needs nothing has compassion because they don't care. They're untouchable. They're not easily offended. Why? Because inwardly, they're beautifully simple.

Love and simplicity go together.

Namaste, and thank you, everybody, for being here with me to talk about this, because it's no fun contemplating this by myself. It's a little fun, but it's not as fun as having a group of people to talk with. I hope that it helps you, that you're able to enrich your life, alleviate some suffering, and empower some inspiration through these principles that we talk about each week.

Anybody have any questions? Ariella, I would love to hear from you. You don't have to if you don't want to. That's okay. Then we'll meditate on simplicity.

Ariella Simplicity certainly sounds really good to me. There are things that I can make simpler in my life. Thank you.

Adam Wes I think a lot of us are quite spiritual, so there's a good chance we've already been doing this, probably since we were children. When I was five years old, I was doing this. Just intuitively, we do this stuff. We like it. We sense there's some power in it. It's good to understand it too, right? Then we can take it further.

Ariella Yes.

Adam Wes Thanks, Ariella. Shall we meditate, or does anybody want to say something?

That was exactly half an hour. Wonderful. We started about six minutes late. See, that's simplicity. Half-hour talk, half-hour meditation. One-to-one.

Do you know one of the most simple ratios? The golden ratio. That's what makes it special. Here's what the golden ratio is. Imagine you take a stick and cut it somewhere. If you cut it in the middle, you've got the small part equal to the other small part, but each small part has a different relationship to the big part. See that? The big is twice as big, so we've got a one-to-one and a one-to-two. We've got both.

Yes, sir?

Eslam O I love that you mentioned the Fibonacci sequence because there is this spiral that keeps expanding from simple rules, and it's recursive. It's reoccurring, right? I see love as one. Leonardo da Vinci said, "Simplicity is the utmost form of sophistication."

I see that one is love, and love is unity and oneness. I see this as a recursive fractal, which is an entity or a being that recurs and fractalizes everywhere and manifests itself in so many different shapes and forms. You see that in compassion, affection, and relationships. You see that in one planet, one solar system, one galaxy.

For me, this is the understanding of love. It's one, unity, wholeness, connectedness, and interconnectedness. That's how it's simple and complex at the same time.

Adam Wes I love it. It's simple, and it gives rise to manageable complexity.

I just want to thank my teacher. Those are partially my teacher's words. He always talks about manageable complexity rising from simplicity.

For everybody, what is the golden ratio? Just think of it as a picture. We take a length, a string, and we can cut it anywhere we want. If we cut it in the middle, we've got two parts that are equal, but the big part, the whole, is twice as big. We've introduced two different ratios.

If we cut it into a small piece and a big piece in such a way that the small is relative to the big piece the same as the big is relative to the whole, we've streamlined the consistency. There's only one ratio: the small to the medium and the medium to the big, which is the whole. That is one ratio, and it's actually .618...

The golden ratio is specifically simplicity expressed.

Let's meditate. Experience the simplicity in music theory, simplicity in all kinds of things that are wonderful in this world.

Can everybody hear it fine? Can you hear it at all? You can hear it.

Meditation is the greatest simplicity because, in meditation, we erase the self. We abide in a transdimensional state, a state that is so simple. It holds intentional manifestation in form.

Go somewhere where there is no self-reflection. Let's try to do that today.

It's always good to start these meditations by bringing our attention to the heart center. I really want to feel a heart, to awaken energy in the heart. You can simply give it your attention. You can put your hands on it like I am. You can put your finger on that heart center. I want to get it active, warm, vital.

As we sit here, try to let go of all your responsibilities, of all your sense of doership. Let go of the roles you play in your relationships and in the world, and become utterly simple. Primordial. Dissolve into the space.

Source.

Let go of the sense of self. Submerge in the humility of impersonal existence.

Continue to feel the heart. Let it accumulate a substance of love. When we feel the heart, we are engaging in a positive focus. We're letting all the complexity fall away. Let it work itself out.

Continue to feel the heart, letting it accumulate a substance, warmth, wholeness, completeness. That is love. Giving it our attention is all that's needed. Allow this accumulation to evolve according to its own possibility.

While we abide in the heart, invite the light and luminosity that is the essence of the mind. Turn your attention to that luminosity.

Astrally, we're staying centered in the heart, but we're putting our attention in the planes of light. Planes of light. The causal dimension, more essential than the astral.

You can see this luminosity with the eyes closed, or you can simply wait for it, allowing everything to dissolve.

There's a brilliance. Allow that luminosity to wash you away, to purify the aura and the body.

A useful chakra meditation for simplicity is the crown chakra. Metaphysically, it is self-transcendence. The crown chakra is right on top of the head. Let's bring our attention there while we keep the heart open and maintain our connection to the light.

Simply feel and awaken the energetic, bioelectrical, biomagnetic energy right on top of the head, a little bit outside the head. It's above the head. You can feel the tingle in the scalp, but it goes even higher than that.

I think you guys will love this one.

Continue to feel the crown opening, and simply bring your attention to that location. Self-transcendence.

From this stillness, very gently take a moment and look at the paradox of time. You are always now, and yet through the riverbanks of that now flows the river of time, with its currents, movements, and change.

Let's just say that you are the now.

Bring attention to the heart center. Notice your freedom. Stillness.

When you're ready, come out of the meditation.

Namaste.

Colleen Mr. Adam, thank you very much. I enjoyed your talk on simplicity. My middle name is Simple. I'd love to hear from other people.

Adam Wes The most important thing, and the main reason we share, everybody, is to share the subtle, mystical experiences that we have. It helps us map them back to our conscious experience right after our meditative experience.

Did you see any light?

Colleen Yes, I did. I felt very relaxed and just comfortable. The colors I saw were my usual red and purple, and then blotches of green and some yellow came in today.

Adam Wes Nice. Wonderful. And the waves of light?

Colleen The green and yellow were sort of wavy.

Adam Wes Was there a texture?

Colleen No.

Adam Wes Pay attention to the texture next time.

Colleen Okay.

Adam Wes There are usually different qualities to each of those lights, like sparkly light, different kinds.

Colleen The green and yellow were sort of like, do you know that goopy stuff? Not Play-Doh. That reminds me of it.

Adam Wes Like jello?

Colleen Yes.

Adam Wes Nice. Namaste, Mom. I'm glad you liked that.

Colleen Thank you. Namaste, Adam.

Adam Wes Thank you for being here. Love you. Ariella?

Ariella My meditation was very simple. There was nothing, no light, just nothingness.

Adam Wes Beautiful.

Ariella Yes.

Adam Wes You may have seen the clear light, actually.

Ariella Okay.

Adam Wes It looks like outer space, and it's the deepest light. You might have actually connected with that. When you say this, I think maybe you had what, in Japanese, is called a kensho experience. It's a glimpse of reality.

Ariella Yes.

Adam Wes It is basically a spontaneous nirvana experience where you go into the quintessential light of reality, which appears as clear outer-space light, where there's no self-reflection or sense of self.

Ariella Yes, there was no sense of self.

Adam Wes Beautiful. Nice.

Ariella Thanks.

Adam Wes Vinh, would you like to share? Vinh's in the autumn cohort. I'd love to give him a chance.

Vinh T I opened my eyes a little bit, and then I closed them again. I saw Ariella's jacket color, the teal color, and then I thought, "Am I actually seeing color, or am I just being influenced by her jacket color?" She's in the middle of my screen.

Adam Wes Now I have to put Ariella in the middle. Nice, Vinh. Thank you. Nice to see you here. Namaste.

How about you, David? Good to see you. How's your practice going?

David P Hey, Adam. Hi, everyone. This was a good topic for me, simplicity.

Adam Wes Wonderful. I figured you'd resonate with it. I felt that.

David P It's very me, but I struggle to bring simplicity into some parts of my life. I can see the benefit, but when I try to implement it, I simply cannot control the other part of me, which is distractions.

For instance, managing my time and the example you gave of doing the same thing is something I've been trying to do, specifically right now, when I am trying to transform myself and bring this state of meditation and simpleness into the rest of my day.

I'm trying to do this, but it has not been so easy. There is an old self that has this way of doing things, and I'm trying to break this and install this new way of doing things. That's where I am today, and my meditation was a bit like this. I was struggling.

Adam Wes Development. Perhaps review the sermon on karma and the sermon on routine. Both of these things play a role in this. We don't change overnight. Karma is like a giant ship. It has momentum, and it has inertia.

Through refinement of our routine, continually over time, we can transform ourselves. We want to renew our karma, essentially.

What you can do is add little things. It's hard for the human mind to just change. We don't really do that. As much as I think people feel that they're in control, you can really only change little things. Start talking completely differently. It's hard. If somebody says "like" all the time, they can't just stop saying "like." It's very difficult. You can eventually retrain yourself.

One of the things you can do is start with the little things. When you brush your teeth, pick up your toothbrush with the same hand. Things that may seem almost silly and inconsequential. But what you can do is become conscious of how you really want to live your life and build in things that are consistent.

Let your morning routine get a little longer. You meditate, and then you read for 15 minutes. Then you do Tai Chi for 15 minutes. Or you meditate, and then you do mathematics for 15 minutes or an hour. Just make it longer and more consistent.

I don't know if you remember, in our classes, we did different counting in the beginning. Of course you remember. That was simplicity. We always started the same way: essential counting, basic counting, counting sequence, and novel counting. We did all of that. That consistency brought us back into a state.

Just keep working on it. It takes time.

David P Thank you.

Adam Wes Do it for 12 years. One Jupiter cycle. Twelve years is a good amount of time to overhaul your entire karma for this incarnation.

David P I'm not even joking. In India, they say it takes 12 years.

Adam Wes One year is a good amount too. Scopes of the cycle.

Daniel, thank you for being here. I see you really listening and taking notes beautifully. That's wonderful.

Daniel V I just want to say thank you because, like I told you one time, there are times when I feel like I was supposed to be here because of things happening in my life. Then you share such wisdom with us. I don't know, it's kind of weird how beautifully things sometimes synchronize.

Adam Wes Yeah.

Daniel V It inspired my mind, so most of the meditation I was just thinking and thinking. I started writing many things, things I wanted to say during this week and couldn't. But then something sparked as I heard you, and ideas kept flowing.

Adam Wes Beautiful. Keep it up, man. Good job. I love it, and thank you for being here. Your sincerity, your energy, your love, and your purity, I think we all feel that, just with you in the corner over there. That's really lovely.

Thank you, Daniel. Daniel is in Mexico, and so is David. Wonderful.

Sepanta, would you like to share really quickly, and then Sam? Then we'll all go after that.

Sepanta M Hi. First, I would like to send you my appreciation, as Daniel said, for sharing this wisdom.

Perhaps if I had listened to this session on simplicity two years ago, I couldn't have interpreted it or understood it the way I do now. Unlike what you mentioned, that you grew up with that simplicity inside of you, for me it was different. I've been feeling the concept for the last two years, so I really enjoyed the topic. I am so thankful from deep inside my heart.

Adam Wes Dude, you're such a sweet guy. I love it. Look at my mom's smile. My mom's like, "That Sepanta guy, he's so great."

Where are you located, by the way?

Sepanta M At the moment, I live in Malaysia, so here it is Wednesday morning.

Adam Wes Thanks, Sepanta. It's so nice to have you here. It's just wonderful.

Sepanta M Thank you for providing the opportunity, Adam. Thank you so much.

Adam Wes You're welcome.

Sepanta M Hi, Sam. Namaste. And namaste, Samantha.

Eslam O Thank you, Adam, and thank you for this wonderful space. I feel like my meditations here are a thousandfold. They feel multiplied when I come here. Maybe it's just a permission slip, because there's some intentionality that comes with showing up for ourselves, showing up for the community, and showing up for the world.

I see the interactions. Earlier, when you said we don't have to get entangled, it's something that Ram Dass loved saying. When we see people complaining and people struggling, we don't have to get entangled with their patterns. We can just have an open heart, and we get anchored in awareness. We are anchored in the light of conscious awareness and who we truly are, not being entrapped in their mental chatter.

But then there's also the other side, where I see this awe, joy, beauty, and wonder. There is wisdom and intelligence. The collective wisdom of the group is contributing to love, to the enrichment of what love is and what love means.

I would love to end with this. I'd seen so much. I felt so much. Again, because of the ten-thousandfold multiplication of meditation. But my conclusion, or the outcome that I came up with from this session, is that when things are simple, like I have hundreds of books, but I have my favorite ten books that I love to revisit and reread, the Kabbalah and the Bhagavad Gita, these things are dense and condensed with richness and meaning. They have vivid detail that allows you to improve and optimize on the second round.

If you read something in the first round, you're wise, you're intelligent. But you gain more wisdom and intelligence, so on the second run, you're able to extract more wisdom and intelligence from it.

The Kybalion says, "The lips of wisdom are closed, except to the ears of understanding." If you don't have the ears of understanding, you don't have the ability to understand the wisdom that comes out of the lips.

I love the discipline that we all have. I love that consistency. Thank you, Adam, for creating this wonderful space.

Adam Wes Thank you, everybody.

One of the reasons meditation is stronger here is entrainment. Do you guys know this word, "to entrain"? It's kind of an unusual word.

If you have a bunch of springs connected to a piece of wood and they're all going in different directions, but they're all centered on one spring on the bottom, they're all on a platform that's on a spring, they'll eventually entrain each other. They'll start wobbling at the same frequency in the same way.

When we meditate, one of the mechanisms of darshan is entrainment. I'm providing a darshan, but the group is also providing a darshan. Each of us is in a state of mind. What you focus on, you become. Your inner state entrains to the inner state of the other.

Art is a transmission of entrainment. In art, we perceive something somebody made from their heart, from their state of mind. They manifested a piece of art. That piece of art has stored within it the power of their state. When we look at it, it invokes that state within us.

I think that's a really important word. A darshan in yoga means you go and sit with the teacher, and they have energy. There's also the metaphysical aspect. The more that all of us spend time in light, in love, in heart, in kindness, and in metaphysical energy, the more that transmits.

You can even meet with somebody who's really unwell, not feeling well. Sometimes, if I meditate with somebody who's not feeling that well, they'll see and feel immensely better if I'm really an abundant expression of the energy. This is what my teacher did for me, and still does for me, and what his teacher did for him.

We're spreading the light, guys.

Practice your meditation. Study the Bhagavad Gita. Focus on the greatest. When you do all those things, you spread the light because you become an embodiment. You tend to your own garden, which every individual in humanity has to do to shift the consciousness of humanity.

Namaste, everybody. Thank you for being here. We do this every Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. Pacific time, and I hope to see you all next time.

Colin West, my dad, thank you for being here, Daddio. He doesn't like to share.

Bye, Mom. Bye, Sepanta. Bye, Ariella. And hi, our friend who just showed up for a moment. Namaste.

Ariella Namaste. Thank you.

Adam Wes Thank you, Ariella. Namaste.

Simplicity minimizes unnecessary complexity, supports purity and clarity, and allows awareness to remain connected to spirit while living in the world.

• Simplicity happens both within and without.
• Opinions, judgments, attachments, and concern with how others interpret you create perturbations in the mind.
• Stillness allows actions and words to become intentional, purposeful, and effective.
• Principled living reduces the need to be the chooser in every moment.
• Clearing unnecessary possessions, responsibilities, and complexity creates conditions for greater freedom.
• Relationships become more streamlined as attachments, aversions, opinions, and judgments fall away.
• Saying less and saying what is necessary help keep things clean and preserve stillness.
• Well designed systems allow manageable complexity to arise from simplicity.
• Consistency enables simplicity in schedules, diet, attire, work, and spiritual practice.
• Transformation happens through gradual refinement of routine and attention to little things.
• Love and simplicity go together.
• Meditation is the greatest simplicity because the sense of self is released.

Notice where energy is being wasted, dissipated, or unnecessarily ensnared in complexity. Allow one small part of life to become simpler and more consistent, inwardly or outwardly, while valuing stillness and letting the change develop over time.

• Opinions, judgments, attachments, and aversions that create complexity in the mind.
• Speaking less and saying only what is necessary and relevant.
• The principles that govern daily actions.
• Drawers, closets, possessions, and responsibilities that may be simplified.
• Consistency in morning routines, meditation, reading, movement, or study.
• Simple patterns in diet, attire, schedules, and work.
• Time in nature and the presence of plants in the home.
• Attention to the heart, luminosity, the crown, and stillness during meditation.

• Where does less feel like freedom?
• What complexity can be allowed to fall away?
• What is present when attention rests in the heart?