Essay Edition
Opening Practice and Impeccability
One of the reasons why lighting incense or a candle works is that it trains the mind through the Pavlovian response. Pavlov was a psychologist who trained dogs to salivate at a bell. He would give them food and then hit the bell. Every time you smell a particular incense, it brings you into the state of mind and kindness. You build a gravitational well through that action.
We condition ourselves. We condition ourselves to respond and fall back into the gravity well of the practice.
It is important that everybody tries to implement these things. They are not dispensable. These are core things that should bring happiness. The whole idea of doing a weekly sermon, with a topic to focus on, is that we can construct a new character. We are evolving. If I said all twenty things at one time, it would not change you. You have a runway of months to get you to take off in a certain way, so you can add each of these things each time.
Impeccability can be added to any degree that you wish, but it is something to consider as a human being. Could you rise to your highest happiness without that? Perhaps. But some degree of focus on it, I think, is essential. Actually, maybe you cannot.
Lunar and Solar Power Cycles
Over the last fourteen years or so, since I started doing this practice seriously, one of the things that I observe, and peers of mine as well, is to meditate through certain power moments, power days. There are a number of them, and they coincide with celestial cycles. It is very scientific on the one hand. On the other hand, it is very mystical, because you might ask what the moon's location has to do with anything.
There is a full moon and there is a new moon. These are the most obvious ones. There is also an apogee and a perigee. The full moon and the new moon happen due to the alignment with the sun, but the moon also falls into Earth and out of Earth.
Everything in space has an orbit that is elliptical. An ellipse has a center, but it also has two other types of centers called foci. They are basically off-center. If you have a long ellipse, there is a point here and a point there. It is like two little eyes. Those are other centers. This is very mathematical. You can calculate where they are based on the eccentricity of the ellipse. The moon has an elliptical orbit, and the Earth is in one of those foci, one of those centers.
That means the moon comes close to Earth on one side and far from Earth on the other. Every cycle, think about it more like it falls into Earth. As it falls in, it speeds up, but it never lands. Thank goodness. The moon does not land on Earth. It just falls in, speeds up, and then shoots itself out because it gets so fast. Then it slows down and moves far away.
Imagine you could jump out of an airplane, and you would fall down and then fall back, up and down. That is kind of what the moon does. It falls close, then far, then close, then far. These are also important moments in the celestial cycles: apogee and perigee. They happen at a very particular second every month. You can literally know exactly what second it happens.
The whole idea is that you meditate through that. The new moon is at 2:22 a.m., so you set your alarm for 2:00 a.m., wake up, and meditate for an hour through that moment. On one hand, this is just a really nice practice. You get into this cyclic groove where it is almost ritualistic. Forget all the metaphysical aspects for a second. It is a ritualistic thing, at the very least. You are going to honor the month starting again.
You get four power moments every month just with the moon. You can also look at the quarter moons if you like. I usually do not do that, but they have an energy to themselves. Apogee and perigee are the gravitational transits. Think of them as more gravitational. When you are closer to the moon, you feel the gravity of the moon more. When you are farther, you feel less. You also have the speed of the moon. The moon is flying faster when it is close because it fell in, and slower when it is far.
Johannes Kepler's first law is that celestial objects travel in elliptical orbits. Even if we threw a satellite into Earth's orbit, it would go in an ellipse. It may seem circular, but it is a little bit elliptical. You can never make something exactly circular. A circle is an ellipse in the limit of perfect symmetry. But in space, we cannot do that, because even if you are one millimeter off, it is an ellipse. There are very circular ellipses as well.
Then we have the solstices and equinoxes. A solstice is a time when the pole of Earth is pointing toward or away from the sun. The Earth is at a tilt. Otherwise, there would be no solstice. When it goes around the sun, its tilt points toward or away, and this produces the seasons. Summer is when it is pointing toward, but it is obviously summer in the other hemisphere. During winter in the Northern Hemisphere, at that exact moment in the Southern Hemisphere, it is summertime.
At an equinox, the day and night are the same in duration, approximately, for that very simple moment. That happens twice a year. Depending on whether it is moving toward summer or moving away from summer, it is an autumnal or a spring equinox.
These four are like the giants. These are the most important meditation moments. You want to drive out to the desert for the moment. You want to get on your private plane and fly to Iceland for the moment. You could head out to the Bolivian Salt Flats and camp there. They are flat for miles upon miles. You could meditate through the solstice.
Religions that are connected to the influence of celestial cycles, and the inner influence they have, observe these. If you look at all the religions, basically all of them have some sort of observation of these cycles. That is when the New Year is, or when Rosh Hashanah is. It always has something to do with what these cycles mean. The first new moon after the autumnal equinox has a certain kind of energy.
Each of these has a different signature energetically. If you feel like you are not a believer, do not just believe. Do not make this dogma. This is an invitation to perceive. It is going to take your own faculties to do so.
You need to meditate on your heart so you can awaken the faculty of feeling. The heart is a knower. It knows through direct feeling. Everything has a feeling. Every day has a feeling. Every moment has a feeling. Spring feels one way. The first new moon after the spring equinox feels a certain way. The first full moon feels a different way.
The universe is painting temporally a certain flavor of subjective experience. We get this painting. Sometimes a new moon happens before the full moon right after the equinox in spring, and that is a different kind of year. If you pay attention, you can feel the difference. It is in the sky. It is in the heavens. It is inside of you. These feelings are there, and they move people, consciously or unconsciously, through things.
Sometimes I will shift something in my life, and it aligns perfectly with the new moon. I am just like, whoa, I just completely did that. We live in cycles. You could say every day is the first day, but there is a truth to the ebb and flow of the inner state. You gather your energy, and then you launch. Then you gather your energy, and you launch. You need to align it sometimes and be in alignment with your own cycles.
There are monthly cycles and annual cycles, but there is a cycle for every celestial body in our solar system, and even star systems too.
Planetary Cycles and Metaphysical Influence
Mercury and Venus have cycles that are faster than a year. They are kind of special in that sense because they are like a sub-year cycle. Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, if you want, have longer cycles.
There are some very important cycles. The twelve-year cycle is, to me, one of my favorites. That is the Jupiter cycle. It is approximately twelve years, and big things happen in twelve years. If you look at your life twelve years ago, twenty-four years ago, or thirty-six years ago, you might see certain giant movements. It is like a super-year.
All of these cycles, if you really dive into them, have their own influences. They are also echoed through many religions. In China, they have the twelve years, each of the animals. There are twelve of them. Twelve is a good base system for counting, by the way. It is one of my favorites. Even Jupiter knows base twelve for Earth.
Saturn is twenty-nine and a half years. A lot of times, people have a big spiritual transformation when they turn twenty-nine and a half. That is when I got started, literally. After you have worked for the first twelve years, you reach a sort of next level. It is kind of like you graduate. How many grades are there in school? Twelve. How many eggs are there in a carton? That does not really apply here, but still, it is twelve.
Uranus is eighty-four years. Twenty-one is a quarter-year on Uranus. Forty-two is a half-year. Those quarters are quite significant as well. When you turn forty-two, a lot of times that is a major turning point. Somebody kind of gets to a new level of maturity there.
Neptune is very long, 162 years. Hopefully, the human lifespan will expand. To me, that feels like a good lifespan. We should live for 162 years. With proper health, AI, new technology, and spiritual technology, perhaps we can do that. Taoist masters have stories that they lived very, very long. If you live that way, you can jump onto the next level or somewhere beyond it.
Each of these planets has different influences. The inner planets versus the outer planets have an inner versus outer quality, personal versus societal, things like that. I focus mostly on the main ones and how they help in meditation.
Metaphysically speaking, we are the solar system. It is our body. There is a void, and there are a bunch of things in the void. Our bodies are very tiny, but our body collectively is very cyclic. We are a part of it. Those cycles that it moves through can be thought of as an existential manifestation of what the moment is like.
We are in space, and that is creation. It is the most significant creation by proximity. Maybe something is happening on stars far away, but for our world, proximity matters. Proximity determines how relevant something is. That is why the moon is very relevant, and maybe Pluto is a little less.
There is a gravitational effect. A lot of people say gravity does not matter because Neil deGrasse Tyson says your pillow pulls on your head as much as the moon pulls on your head. He is right. But your pillow does not pull on everybody's head in the same way at the same time. The moon does.
Mathematically speaking, if you were to do the equation in physics, the pillow pulls just a small amount, and so does the moon. But the moon has coherence. It pulls everybody in the same way, so you cannot look at it in such a simplistic manner. It is a vector. If everybody's pillows were in exactly the same spot, and it was not just your pillow but it was on everything, then there would be some coherence. There is something to be considered there.
The point is not necessarily to understand it. I am trying to break open the skepticism, because skepticism can block you from having a direct experience with it. You have to cultivate this. It does not just happen. There are psychic abilities. You can hear music through your psychic antenna, actual music and voices that are not from your own mind. You can experience these things. The more you meditate, the more you develop the abilities.
Energetically, there is a potency and a magnification of power at these moments. That is why we call them power days. You meditate through them. The winter solstice is a great time for you to hop in the car with your loved one, loved ones, or by yourself, even better, and go into nature. Take a day off before and after, and meditate through the solstice moment for two or three hours. Make it a big deal.
Solstice is a time of great stillness. It is a good time for contemplation. It is a good time for meditation. I would like people to jump on that celestial train and swing through the universe with me.
Every planet has an elliptical orbit, so you can find their moments as well. But it is good to focus on the sun and the moon for meditation, and perhaps the rest if you are super tuned into it.
One of the things that happens when you meditate is that there is a palpable pressure. It feels like you are sitting with a teacher. Everything feels more intense, and it is easier to break into the light. If you break into the light, the light is deeper and stronger. You will feel your chakras more easily. The veil lifts.
The ambient mystical, metaphysical potency increases, and you can transform. These are little opportunities for transformation. If you do it every year and every month for ten years, you become a different person. If you do it one time, you might feel a big transformation.
There are also intraday power moments: sunrise and sunset, high noon, low noon, midnight. These are important times to meditate. If you are sitting at the computer working indoors while the sunset is happening, and you are energetically attuned, you may feel very uncomfortable. I start to see energy wiggling in my vision and feel it. It makes me feel sick if I do not go outside. You can get very attuned to it.
You can literally see waves moving through the air. You can see people's auras change. What are you seeing? Perhaps you are seeing the interface of electromagnetism with your brain. That could be it. It does not matter. I am not sure. We have to do some scientific experiments to find out for sure. But I do not really care about that, honestly.
What I care about is enlightenment, where all questions go away and I experience nirvana directly. That is what I care about. The rest is very interesting, but ultimately it can be a distraction.
There are other moments. Groundhog Day, Cinco de Mayo, the beginning of August, and Halloween all happen approximately right in the middle of equinoxes and solstices, and there is a power to them as well.
There is also something called perihelion and aphelion, which is like the moon. The Earth falls around the sun. It falls faster and slower. Perihelion is on the first of the year, essentially. Aphelion is around July fourth. Those are the Earth gravitational ones.
There is a nice two-week period after each equinox and solstice until we get to the gravitational moment. That two-week period is a very powerful time. It is one of my favorite times. It is the time around Christmas and the end of December, or the first half of summer. These are obviously special times.
Direct Perception and Spiritual Practice
It is very important to be on guard in one's practice, and as a pursuer of truth, to be on guard for dogma. Dogma means you just believe in something that does not exist. Or it does exist. It does not matter. What matters is that you believe in it and you do not know. You are just all about this thing that you do not know directly.
I really like Osho. He is one of my favorite enlightened beings, even though he gets a hard time. If you listen to his words, forget about the stories. Just listen to Osho directly. What is he saying? He says some beautiful things, more beautiful than most things I ever hear from anyone.
He says belief is a lack of knowing. If you believe something, it means you do not know it. He says, “Do you believe in the moon? Do you believe in a rose?” Of course not. I know the moon. I know a rose.
The word belief, which often appears in religion, is somewhat problematic. It is very problematic. It is more important to have faith that something exists and pursue it until you know it. That is a big difference.
Beliefs can conflict. I believe in this god, you believe in that god, and then we go and fight about it. But if we just perceived God, we would be in agreement, because truth is singular. Truth brings us together.
The truth is the is-ness, the suchness. A lot of people have very cherished beliefs because they find security in them. Dogma gives you a sense of security. But the courageous ones pursue truth. They stand naked before the unknown until truth dawns upon them. They see it for themselves, and it is immutable and unassailable.
They cannot unsee it, and they cannot be told they are wrong, because they just saw it. They know it, like a mathematical equation.
Practice requires personal engagement. Wake up and meditate for fifteen minutes. Eat mindfully. Meditate at sunset. Meditate on the full moon. Whatever it may be, these things strengthen the community. Do your practice.
Meditation and the Luminosity of Mind
Look at everything very broadly. We are invoking a visual experience that is the luminosity of mind.
The mind is made of light. Let that be not dogma, but faith that perhaps there is something to be discovered. It literally looks like church walls. It is like stained glass. It is truly divine, but you can experience this.
Look at everything at once. Hold your vision very broadly. Let your vision settle, but with your periphery, see everything else without collapsing. Essentially, you are holding your energy open. Then soften. Soften your gaze and allow things to settle.
Wait. It is not up to us. It is up to the light. Light will wash us away.
One of the things that allows the light to emerge is loosening the grip on physicality. The mind holds physicality in a solid, rigid form. Find out how to soften that. Let it become fluid and ethereal, holographic. Matter, that is, including your body.
When you start to see any sort of visual distortion or perturbation, notice it. It magnifies when you give it your attention. See everything at once. Be aware of the whole expanse.
Keep a secondary focus on your heart chakra. It is very important. Stay in your heart.
The light is a very high-frequency energy. It exists in a plane beyond the astral body and its chakras and nadis. It is the fabric of the dream, the dream of life. You can turn your attention to this extremely essential part of yourself.
Do not judge it. You are waiting. This is the grace of enlightenment. Light may appear in different colors, different qualities, different textures, emotions. The whole cosmology of light can be perceived.
Make sure to let yourself merge with the light. Your physical body should be enlightened, your chakras in light. It permeates your nervous system.
Find the very point from which your mind arises. When you touch it, it feels like absolute happiness. Allow the brilliance to wash you away. Let go of resistance. It has renewal properties. It is high-frequency, and it wants you.
Any mistiness, fogginess, even a grayness, is starting to see the light. When you bring your body into the light, it purifies your nervous system, chakras, and brain. It is a divine shower. It is a real-life ambrosia, food for the soul.
Focus on the gold, the health quality. Focus on the clear light. Bring your attention to the heart center and all the energy you have generated. Really feel the heart. Let it be the number one beneficiary of the light.
Let it help you center your assemblage point, your sense of spatial identity, in that part of the body.
Take a moment to notice the unchanging moment in which all time flows, which is your very self. See it more clearly now. Ever-evolving contents within the timeless center, the timeless moment, the now.
You are the light that holds all of that content.
Applications of the Light
All of the vortices, the chakras and dantian, should be in a condition of light. A lot of purely metaphysical practices, where you just meditate on a chakra, are not the fullest level. The fullest level is literally bringing them into light, merging with the light.
After you have cultivated all that light, it is very natural to give it to the heart. One of the ways to purify the chakras, if one feels stuck in some way, is to use the light.
Use the light. This phrasing is very powerful. One of my old teachers once said to me, “You have been working on your stomach for thirty minutes, but are you using the light?” I love that language. You can use the light to do a math equation. You can use the light to run. You can use it to purify and clarify your chakras.
If you did not experience it, do not worry. It is a rare thing. It is a very rare thing to hear about it, talk about it, and be able to do it. It is profound. This is some serious mystical awakening.
Enlightenment essentially means you are going through the light into the quintessential center of the universe, not the galaxies, but the universe of consciousness. It is well delineated in various ancient books and Tibetan books. All the different colors mean different things.
Gold light is the soul. If you see the gold light, you are seeing the essence of your soul. If you sit there, you melt into your essence and pivot on your incarnation.
I like what my Paramguru says. He says, “Happiness comes from contact. Happiness comes from contact with light.” That is where it comes from: deep, unassailable, unbounded, unconditional happiness at the divine level.
Full Transcript
Opening Practice and Impeccability
Adam Wes Oh, wonderful. Thank you for being so impeccable.
Right, it's six o'clock. I'd love to take this moment. Namaste, everybody.
I'd like to take this moment to light some incense, light a candle, burn some sage, and purify your space while we wait for people. How does that sound? Do you have something like that?
Also, I highly recommend giant selenite wands. These are awesome. They purify your air for a lot.
One of the reasons why lighting incense or a candle works is, one, it's metaphysical, but it also trains the mind through the Pavlovian response. Pavlov was a psychologist who trained dogs to salivate at a bell. He would give them food and then hit the bell. Every time you smell a particular incense, it brings you into the state of mind and kindness. You build a gravitational well through that action.
We condition ourselves. We condition ourselves to respond and fall back into the gravity well of the practice.
Jacob's like, "I don't do really."
Sure.
Kira It's hard for me to hear you.
Adam Wes Okay, let me turn it down. Is that better, Kira?
Oh, yay! So happy you made it, Karen.
Who are we missing? I know Ken. Thank you. I don't know if Andrea's coming. Maybe David knows. I'll just wait another minute or so, and then we can get started.
I love your background, Sepanta. That's a good one.
Sepanta Is it familiar to you?
Adam Wes That was a lot of work. That was very difficult to make. Oh my gosh. But yeah, it's one of my favorite things. Tiled septagons. Altair disc.
Namaste, everybody. Welcome. How was your week? How was your impeccability?
I got a text from Jacob on Sunday. He said, "I'm choosing to be impeccable today." I was like, "Yes!"
Oh, nice! Kira folded some blankets. But did you fold them very, very slowly?
It's important that everybody tries to implement these things. They are not dispensable. These are core things that should bring happiness.
Ariella, did you go over your pile of papers, even just for five minutes? Let's see if Ariella did her homework. I spent six hours with Ariella on Sunday. You better have done your five minutes.
All right, you're muted, Ariella. I can't hear you.
So, do the practice. You can always review in the digital ashram. Actually, maybe you guys don't have access to that.
If you need access, I've got all the sermons and all the recordings. If you're interested or you have any requests, how do you remember the things we've discussed? The whole idea of doing a weekly sermon, with a topic to focus on, is that we can construct a new character. Right? We're evolving.
If I said all 20 things, or 16 of them, at one time, it wouldn't change you. You have a runway of months to get you to take off in a certain way, right? So you can add each of these things each time. And they're truly not dispensable.
Impeccability, you can add it to any degree that you wish, but it's something to consider as a human being. Could you rise to your highest happiness without that? Perhaps. But some degree of focus on it, I think, is essential. Actually, maybe you can't.
I want to do a very exoteric versus esoteric topic today. Esoteric is when I talk about something that you can't really read in a book. You'll hear words, but really, I'm sharing more than words. It's subtle. Exoteric is something you can read in a book. It's more informational.
I'm a little overly taxed this week, so I'm choosing something exoteric. I only like to speak from the silence, and I think today's a good week not to impose that upon myself.
Lunar and Solar Power Cycles
The topic for today is celestial cycles and power days.
Over the last 14 years or so, since I started doing this practice seriously, one of the things that I observe, and peers of mine as well, is to meditate through certain power moments, power days.
There are a number of them, and they coincide with celestial cycles. So it's very scientific on the one hand. On the other hand, it's very mystical, because you might say, thinking of you, Dad, "What does that have to do with anything? What does the moon's location have to do with this or that?" We'll talk about that today.
Let's just go over what they are. There is a full moon and there's a new moon. These are the most obvious ones, right? There's also an apogee and a perigee.
The full moon and the new moon happen due to the alignment with the sun, but the moon also falls into Earth and out of Earth.
Think of the orbit of everything in space. Everything in space has an orbit that's elliptical. An ellipse has a center, but it also has two other types of centers called foci. They're basically off-center. If you have a long ellipse like this, there's a point there and a point there. It's like two little eyes. Those are other centers.
This is very mathematical. You can actually calculate where they are based on the eccentricity of the ellipse and all of that. The moon has an elliptical orbit, and the Earth is in one of those foci, one of those centers.
That means that the moon comes close to Earth on this side and far from Earth on the other side. Every cycle, think about it more like it falls into Earth. As it falls in, it speeds up, right? But it never lands. Thank goodness.
The moon doesn't land on Earth. It just falls in, speeds up, and then it shoots itself out because it gets so fast. Then it slows down and moves far away.
Imagine you could jump out of an airplane, and you'd fall down and then you'd fall back, up and down. That's kind of what the moon does. It falls close, then far, then close, then far.
These are also important moments in the celestial cycles: apogee and perigee. You can look them up. They happen at a very particular second every month. You can literally know exactly what second it happens.
The whole idea is that you meditate through that. You're like, "Oh my gosh, it's the new moon at 2:22 a.m." So what are you going to do? You're going to set your alarm for 2:00 a.m., wake up, and meditate for an hour through that moment.
David, why are you giggling over there? I love it when you appreciate things.
So you set the timer. On one hand, this is just a really nice practice. You get into this cyclic groove where it's almost ritualistic. Forget all the metaphysical aspects for a second. It's a ritualistic thing, at the very least. "I'm going to honor the month starting again."
Actually, sorry, the new moon has nothing to do with the falling. That's the alignment. But you get four power moments every month just with the moon. Four of them. You can also look at the quarter moons if you like. I usually don't do that, but they have an energy to themselves.
We've got apogee and perigee, and these are the gravitational transits. Think of them as more gravitational. When you're closer to the moon, you feel the gravity of the moon more. When you're farther, you feel less.
You also have the speed of the moon. The moon is flying faster when it's close because it fell in, and slower when it's far.
If anybody knows a guy named Johannes Kepler, this is his first law: celestial objects travel in elliptical orbits. Even if we threw a satellite into Earth's orbit, it actually goes in an ellipse.
You're like, "Well, isn't it circular?" Well, it's a little bit elliptical. You can never make something exactly circular. A circle is an ellipse in the limit of perfect symmetry. But in space, we can't do that, because even if you're one millimeter off, it's an ellipse, right? There are very circular ellipses as well. Those exist.
All right, let's go over a few others. We've got the solstices and equinoxes.
A solstice is a time when the pole of Earth is pointing toward or away from the sun. The Earth is at a tilt. Otherwise, there'd be no solstice. When it goes around the sun, its tilt points toward or away, and this produces the seasons. This is actually what causes seasons.
Summer is when it's pointing toward, but it's obviously summer in the other hemisphere if you go to the other hemisphere. This winter, on December 21st or whatever it is, which I will look up, at that exact moment in the Southern Hemisphere, if you're in South Africa, where I was born and where Jenna was born, it's summertime.
Colleen and Colin, a lot of us were born there. Ariella too! We've got a lot of South Africans in this room.
Ariella It's summertime in December.
Adam Wes An equinox is when the Earth's axis is pointing at a slant, so it's parallel to the sun.
Hi, Andrea. Namaste. Welcome.
Andrea has the perfect background for today. We're talking about celestial cycles.
Andrea P Oh!
Adam Wes At an equinox, the day and night are exactly the same in duration. Everywhere on Earth, we have a 12-hour night and a 12-hour day, approximately, for that very simple moment.
That happens twice a year. Depending on whether it's moving toward summer or moving away from summer, toward winter or away from winter, it would be an autumnal or a spring equinox.
These four are like the giants. These are the most important meditation moments. You want to drive out to the desert for the moment. You want to get on your private plane and fly to Iceland for the moment, right?
As a Sangha, we could do this eventually when we start traveling together, which I would love. Let's grow this Sangha, and we can all head out to the Bolivian Salt Flats and camp out there. I don't know if you know the Bolivian Salt Flats. They're just flat for miles upon miles.
Ariella Flat for miles upon miles.
Adam Wes We could meditate through the summer solstice, or in that case, it would maybe be the winter solstice because it's in the Southern Hemisphere.
Let's see what Sepanta said. Lovely. Exactly. Thank you for saying that, Sepanta.
I also want to point out that religions that are connected to the influence of celestial cycles, and the inner influence they have, observe these. If you look at all the religions, basically all of them have some sort of observation of these cycles.
That's when the New Year is, or when Rosh Hashanah is. It's always got something to do with what these cycles mean. The first new moon after the autumnal equinox has a certain kind of energy.
Each of these has a different signature energetically. If you feel like you're not a believer, don't just believe. Don't just make this dogma. This is an invitation to perceive. It's going to take your own faculties to do so.
You need to meditate on your heart so you can awaken the faculty of feeling. The heart is a knower. It knows through direct feeling. Everything has a feeling. Every day has a feeling. Every moment has a feeling.
Spring feels one way. The first new moon after the spring equinox feels a certain way. The first full moon feels a different way.
The universe is painting temporally a certain flavor of subjective experience. We get this painting.
Sometimes a new moon happens before the full moon right after the equinox in spring, and that's a different kind of year. You see, if you pay attention, you can feel the difference.
It's in the sky. It's in the heavens. It's inside of you. These feelings are there, and they move people, consciously or unconsciously, through things.
Sometimes I'll shift something in my life, and it aligns perfectly with the new moon. I'm just like, "Whoa, I just completely did that."
Also, we live in cycles. You could say every day is the first day. Whatever day it is, like my brother says, he makes the best thing happen that day. But there's a truth to the ebb and flow of the inner state.
You gather your energy, and then you launch. Then you gather your energy, and you launch. You need to align it sometimes and be in alignment with your own cycles.
There are monthly cycles and annual cycles, but there's a cycle for every celestial body in our solar system, and even star systems too.
Planetary Cycles and Metaphysical Influence
We should talk about the planets. By the way, my sister Jenna is super into this stuff, so if anybody wants to talk to her a bunch about it, send her a message. She'll talk to you for days, I'm sure. She literally takes university classes on it.
Mercury and Venus have cycles that are faster than a year. They're kind of special in that sense because they're faster. They're like a sub-year cycle.
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, if you want, have longer cycles.
There are some very important cycles. The 12-year cycle is, to me, one of my favorites. That's the Jupiter cycle. It's approximately 12 years, and big things happen in 12 years.
If you look at your life 12 years ago, 24 years ago, or 36 years ago, assuming you're not Kira. I'm just kidding, because Kira's not 36 yet. If you look at your life, you might see certain giant movements, right? It's like a super-year.
The Martian year is a bigger year. It's like two and a half years or something. Am I right about that? I think it's closer to two. Maybe it's a little less than two. I should know this. It's a smaller year.
All of these cycles, if you really dive into them, have their own influences. They're also echoed through many religions.
In China, they have the 12 years, each of the animals, right? There are 12 of them. Twelve is a good base system for counting, by the way. It's one of my favorites.
In fact, in Enlightened Mathematics, I've been doing base 12 with people. Even Jupiter knows base 12 for Earth.
Let's talk about the metaphysics. Well, maybe let's talk a little bit more about the planets.
Saturn is 29 and a half years. A lot of times, people have a big spiritual transformation when they turn 29 and a half. That's when I got started, literally.
A lot of times, after you've worked for the first 12 years, you reach a sort of next level. It's kind of like you graduate.
How many grades are there in school? Twelve, right? How many eggs are there in a carton? No, just kidding. That doesn't really apply here, but still, it's 12.
Come on, don't be so serious. Thank you, NJ, for laughing.
Uranus is 84 years. There's a sort of alignment. Twenty-one is a quarter-year on Uranus. Forty-two is a half-year on Uranus. Those quarters are quite significant as well.
When you turn 42, a lot of times that's a major turning point. Somebody kind of gets to a new level of maturity there. At 21, obviously, you can start drinking.
Don't drink. I'm just kidding. Drinking is not good for your spiritual practice or your health.
Uranus is important as well. Neptune is very long, 162 years. Hopefully, the human lifespan will expand. To me, that feels like a good lifespan. We should live for 162 years.
With proper health, AI, new technology, and spiritual technology, perhaps we can do that. Way, way better than 84, which has been kind of a very low average for humanity for a long time.
But it's a lower vibe because you can live much longer than that. Taoist masters, there are stories that they've lived very, very long. If you live that way, you can jump onto the next level or somewhere beyond it.
Each of these planets has different influences. I don't want to go into a full astrology session today, but the inner planets versus the outer planets have an inner versus outer quality, personal versus societal, things like that.
I'm not as much of an expert on that, actually. I focus mostly on the main ones and how they help in meditation. But if you want an expert, please message my sister Jenna. She's in orange right there. Orange J.
Let's talk about the metaphysics for a second.
Metaphysically speaking, we are the solar system. It is our body. There's a void, and there's a bunch of things in the void, right?
Our bodies are very tiny, but our body collectively is very cyclic. We're a part of it. Those cycles that it moves through can be thought of as an existential manifestation of what the moment is like.
We're in space, and that is creation. It's the most significant creation by proximity. Maybe something is happening on stars far away, but for our world, proximity matters. Proximity determines how relevant something is.
That's why the moon is very relevant, and maybe Pluto is a little less. By the way, there are other cycles, like Ceres, dwarf planets, and things like that.
There is a gravitational effect. A lot of people say gravity doesn't matter because, what's his name, that science guy, the Tyson guy?
Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's like, "Your pillow pulls on your head as much as the moon pulls on your head." And he's right. But your pillow doesn't pull on everybody's head in the same way at the same time. The moon does.
Do you understand the difference there? He's looking at us from a simplistic perspective. Mathematically speaking, if you were to do the equation in physics, the pillow pulls just a small amount, and so does the moon. But the moon has coherence.
It pulls everybody in the same way, so you can't look at it in such a simplistic manner. Does everybody understand what I just said? It is a vector.
If everybody's pillows were exactly in the same spot, and it wasn't just your pillow but it was on everything, then there'd be some coherence. So there's something to be considered there.
The point isn't necessarily to understand it. I'm just trying to break open the skepticism, because skepticism can block you from having a direct experience with it.
You have to cultivate this. It doesn't just happen. There are psychic abilities. You can hear music through your psychic antenna, actual music and voices that are not from your own mind. You can experience these things. The more you meditate, the more you develop the abilities.
Energetically, there's a potency and a magnification of power at these moments. That's why we call them power days. So you meditate through them.
We've got a full moon coming up here soon. We've got the winter solstice coming up here soon. The winter solstice is a great time for you to hop in the car with your loved one, loved ones, or by yourself, even better, and go into nature.
Take a day off before and after, and meditate through the solstice moment for two or three hours. Make it a big deal, right?
Any questions? I might have missed a few things here.
This wasn't intentional, but you may have seen my self-paced course promotion, which I called the solstice enrollment window. Solstice is a time of great stillness. It's a good time for contemplation. It's a good time for meditation.
I'd like people to jump on that celestial train and swing through the universe with me.
Every planet has an elliptical orbit, so you can actually find their moments as well. But it's good to focus on the sun and the moon for meditation, and perhaps the rest if you're super tuned into it.
Any questions? I'd love some questions. Come on, somebody. This is a nice intersection between science and mysticism here.
One of the things that happens when you meditate is there's a palpable pressure. It feels like you're sitting with a teacher. If you're sitting with a teacher, they feel more intense, so everything feels more intense, and it's easier to break into the light.
If you break into the light, the light is deeper and stronger. You'll feel your chakras more easily. I'm not sure exactly why. The veil lifts.
The ambient mystical, metaphysical potency increases, and you can transform. These are little opportunities for transformation.
If you do it every year and every month for 10 years, you become a different person. If you do it one time, you might feel a big transformation.
Andrea, what do you think? You're late, and you have a great background, so you're answering first. I called on you.
Andrea P Yeah, sorry. I lost track of time. I didn't get everything, but what I was thinking is that here in Mexico, we have Teotihuacan. The Aztecs made Teotihuacan, so there are some pyramids. There's the Pyramid of the Sun and the Pyramid of the Moon.
I have been there once for the solstice, and there's the snake coming down, and you go and recharge. So maybe once you come, we can go and do meditation there.
Adam Wes I would love that. Thank you. Thanks for the invitation. That sounds awesome. Oh my gosh, Aztec pyramids? That's the perfect type of thing to do.
Andrea P Yeah. I don't know anything about this, but it is very related to mathematics. I'm not the one to ask.
Adam Wes Well, yeah. I mean, it's all geometry, right? Where's the sun? What's the altitude and latitude? All those things. Wonderful. Thank you.
Sangha, it's important that people do a practice. Everybody's here, and we want to deepen the field we're creating. This is a suggestion for a practice you can do, something we move with together, privately and together.
Consider that. You can look it up on Wolfram Alpha. That's a nice tool. I like Wolfram Alpha. It's a mathematical app.
It's by Stephen Wolfram, a mathematician who made cellular automata. He also made this app.
Sorry, I'm talking about things. David's like, "Nope, nope." Well, look, write it down: cellular automata, Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram Alpha. He's a very well-recognized mathematician and computer programmer.
You could also probably just look it up in many different ways on Google, but that's what I like to use.
Kira, do you want to add anything?
Direct Perception and Spiritual Practice
Kira Yes. Can you hear me okay? I'm using headphones, so I want to make sure you can hear me.
The meditation community that I'm part of is almost overly emphasizing the new moon, full moon, solstice, and equinox. We're kind of hardcore about it.
I have actually felt like it's too overemphasized, so I pulled back a little bit. I feel that your presentation of it, this idea of an invitation to perceive, makes it more real and more interesting. It's less about, "Oh, I just got an email that says I need to meditate."
Adam Wes It's very important to be on guard in one's practice, and as a pursuer of truth, be on guard for dogma.
Dogma means you just believe in something that doesn't exist. Or it does exist. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you believe in it and you don't know. You're just all about this thing that you don't know directly.
I really like Osho. He's one of my favorite enlightened beings, even though he gets a hard time. I like what he says about enlightenment.
If you listen to his words, forget about the stories. Just listen to Osho directly. What is he saying? He says some beautiful things, more beautiful than most things I ever hear from anyone. Whatever his stories are, I don't really pay attention to that.
He says belief is a lack of knowing. If you believe something, it means you don't know it.
He says, "Do you believe in the moon? Do you believe in a rose?" Of course not. I know the moon. I know a rose, right?
The word belief, which often appears in religion, is somewhat problematic. I mean, it's very problematic. It's more important to have faith that something exists and pursue it until you know it. That's a big difference.
Beliefs can conflict. I believe in this god, you believe in that god, and then we go and fight about it, right? But if we just perceived God, we would be in agreement, because truth is singular. Truth brings us together.
The truth is the is-ness, the suchness. A lot of people have very cherished beliefs because they find security in them. Dogma gives you a sense of security.
But the courageous ones pursue truth. They stand naked before the unknown until truth dawns upon them. They see it for themselves, and it's immutable and unassailable.
They can't unsee it, and they can't be told they're wrong, because they just saw it. They know it, like a mathematical equation.
Kira Amazing. I love this. I'm putting together the meditative calendar for something that I'm creating, and I was wondering how much I should have celestial events play a role or be a deciding factor in the events. I feel like this way of looking at it helps me deepen.
Adam Wes Bye, Sepanta.
Kira Bye!
Adam Wes Namaste. Oh, we missed him.
Yes, Kira. Nice. I'm glad it's helping. That's cool.
Oh, I should talk about the intraday power moments: sunrise and sunset, high noon, low noon, midnight. That's low noon.
These are important times to meditate. If you're sitting at the computer working indoors while the sunset is happening, and you're energetically attuned, you may feel very uncomfortable.
I start to see energy wiggling in my vision and feel it. It makes me feel sick if I don't go outside. You can get very attuned to it.
You can literally see waves moving through the air. I actually see this stuff, and you can see people's auras change.
What are you seeing? Perhaps you're seeing the interface of electromagnetism with your brain. That could be it. It doesn't matter. I'm not sure.
We have to do some scientific experiments to find out for sure. Some people have tried. Maybe they've succeeded. But I don't really care about that, honestly.
What I care about is enlightenment, where all questions go away and I experience nirvana directly. That's what I care about. The rest is very interesting, but ultimately it can be a distraction.
Hi, Ariella. I can hear you now.
Ariella After 30 years, right?
Adam Wes You're very muffled.
Ariella Oh. Is that better?
Adam Wes Yeah, a little bit. It's pretty muffled, but it's okay. Oh, that's better.
Ariella For about 30 years, I've been celebrating the new moon. That's very powerful for me.
Adam Wes Nice.
If you had told me new moon or full moon, I would have said you're a new moon energy. I feel like I can read that in you.
Ariella Wonderful.
Adam Wes Yeah. I have a very particular time of the month that resonates with me. There's the moment before and the moment after. They're very different.
David P May I ask, Ariella, how? Why is it powerful? What do you feel?
Ariella I don't know. In Judaism, the months are based on the new moon. I don't know why. I was just motivated to create a group, and we gathered every new moon. It was important to me. I don't know why.
Adam Wes Lovely. Very nice. I feel your energy has benefited from that.
Ariella Thank you. Thank you.
Adam Wes Hi, Mom. Any comment? You sure? Do you like this conversation at all? Are you bored? Cutie. Cutest woman on the planet. Maybe in the solar system, actually.
All right, let's meditate.
I want to invite people to really consider deepening your practice. Sangha requires that the participants have a coherent practice, some personal engagement with practice.
Wake up and meditate for 15 minutes. Eat mindfully. Meditate at sunset. Meditate on the full moon. Whatever it may be, all of these things can strengthen the community.
So do your practice. I'm giving you a lot of suggestions.
David, what do you think? Any comments?
David P I have a terrible signal, so I don't know if you can hear me well.
Adam Wes I see you perfectly.
David P Okay. I was just thinking that we are made of stars, right? Stardust. So for me, it's super logical that our field is modified or changes.
We're not aware of it. That's a different topic. We need to create awareness or consciousness. That's our job.
For many, many years, human beings were connected with this. It was in the last 100 years that somehow we got disconnected from this consciousness.
I like this topic very much because I would like to connect with this and prepare.
Adam Wes Well, let's do it. Let's do it right now.
Is it a power moment? Not that I know of. Perhaps it is. Perhaps that's why we're talking about it.
By the way, there are other moments. Have you heard of Groundhog Day? Cinco de Mayo? These are right in the middle of equinoxes and solstices.
I think Andrea laughed.
Andrea P I really like it. I don't know. It's something really funny for me.
Adam Wes What do you like about it?
Andrea P I lived in the United States for a while. It was so cold, and they said that if the groundhog goes out on Groundhog Day and returns, it's because spring is not coming.
I was like, "Please go out. I want spring to come." I remember those days, and it's really funny for me.
Adam Wes Yeah, it's a funny-sounding day, Groundhog Day.
Andrea P Yeah.
Adam Wes Cinco de Mayo, Groundhog Day, the beginning of August, and Halloween all happen approximately right in the middle, and there's a power to them as well.
Oh gosh, I can't believe I almost missed it. There's something called perihelion and aphelion, which is like the moon. The Earth falls around the sun. It falls faster and slower.
Perihelion is on the first of the year, essentially. This is no coincidence, right? Aphelion is on July 4th. It's like the second half of the year.
Basically, the first, second, or third of January, it shifts, or July 3rd, July 4th, or July 5th. Those are the Earth gravitational ones. You can feel the power on July 4th, obviously, right?
There's actually a nice two-week period after each equinox and solstice until we get to the gravitational moment. That two-week period is a very powerful time. It's one of my favorite times.
It's the time around Christmas and the end of December, or the first half of summer. These are obviously special times. The first part of summer, the first two weeks.
All right, let's meditate.
Andrea, do I have your email?
Andrea P Nope, but I will write it down.
Adam Wes Okay, because I remind everybody. Usually, I send a message to just about everybody. I haven't had yours, so you might have known that class was starting.
Andrea P Okay. I'm in Circle, so I tried to RSVP, but today was crazy. It goes to my calendar.
Adam Wes I'm glad you're in Circle. Nice.
Andrea P Yeah, cool. But I will send you my email.
Adam Wes Cool. I'd love to have it, and I can message you as needed.
All right, let's meditate.
Can everybody hear the music?
All right, just 20 minutes today. I'll do a very quick share.
Meditation and the Luminosity of Mind
Kira, are we going to do some light together? Let's do it.
In fact, if anybody wants to join us, Kira and I have a practice where we go into the mystical light together, and we do it through gazing.
If you gaze at me or Kira with a very broad focus, you can access this light and see it in the air and in your body.
I'll guide the meditation in this way, actually. Sam and I have done it before too, and Ariella.
So look at everything very broadly. We're invoking a visual experience that is the luminosity of mind.
The mind is made of light. Let that be not dogma, but faith that perhaps there's something to be discovered.
It literally looks like church walls. It's like stained glass. It's truly divine, but you can experience this.
Look at everything at once. Hold your vision very broadly. Let your vision settle on the screen, but with your periphery, see everything else without collapsing.
Essentially, you're holding your energy open. Then we soften. We soften our gaze and allow things to settle.
We wait. It's not up to us. It's up to the light. Light will wash us away.
One of the things that allows the light to emerge is loosening the grip on physicality. The mind holds physicality in a solid, rigid form.
Find out how to soften that. Let it become fluid and ethereal, holographic. Matter, that is, including your body.
When you start to see any sort of visual distortion or perturbation, notice it. It magnifies when you give it your attention.
I'm seeing everything at once. I'm aware of the whole expanse.
Keep a secondary focus on your heart chakra. It's very important. Stay in your heart.
The light is a very high-frequency energy. It exists in a plane beyond the astral body and its chakras and nadis.
It is the fabric of the dream, the dream of life. You can turn your attention to this extremely essential part of yourself.
Don't judge it. You're waiting. This is the grace of enlightenment.
My presence should help, by the way. It's called darshan. This is what darshan does. Power days help.
Light may appear in different colors, different qualities, different textures, emotions. The whole cosmology of light can be perceived.
Make sure to let yourself merge with the light. Your physical body should be enlightened, your chakras in light. It permeates your nervous system.
Find the very point from which your mind arises. When you touch it, it feels like absolute happiness.
Mom, you're really good at going into light with your eyes closed, so definitely do that. That's more advanced. Gazing helps us to proceed.
Sam, allow the brilliance to wash you away. Let go of resistance. It has renewal properties. It's high-frequency, and it wants you.
Ariella, stay alert. Ariella, if you gaze with me, gaze at me. Look at everything at once.
This song is very much in alignment with this meditation. This feels like light to me.
Any mistiness, fogginess, even a grayness, is starting to see the light.
Bless you.
When you bring your body into the light, it purifies your nervous system, chakras, and brain.
It's a divine shower. It's a real-life ambrosia, food for the soul.
Here, let's focus on the gold, the health quality.
Let's focus on the clear light now, Kira. Bring our attention to the heart center and all the energy we've generated.
Really feel the heart. Let it be the number one beneficiary of the light.
Let it help you center your assemblage point, your sense of spatial identity, in that part of the body.
Take a moment to notice the unchanging moment in which all time flows, which is your very self.
See it more clearly now. Ever-evolving contents within the timeless center, the timeless moment, the now.
You are the light that holds all of that content.
Experiences and Applications of the Light
Namaste, Mom. How are you? How was that?
Colleen The staring is interesting.
Adam Wes Yeah?
Colleen You became more 3D. Then the background got closer to me and sharper, like a TV. My eyes got tired, and eventually things behind you started duplicating.
Also, the light on you would go lighter. It would change slightly. There would be the light, and then a slightly different light.
Adam Wes Colors?
Colleen No.
Adam Wes Black and white?
Colleen No, just like you are, but like a different light was shining on you.
Adam Wes Yeah, there are all those visual distortions that occur, and you start to see all kinds of funny things happen.
Did you see me change into different people?
Colleen No, not today.
Adam Wes But you've seen that before, right?
Colleen I've seen you melting, but not changing into different people.
Adam Wes I scare her when I melt. She's like, "What's happening to my son? He's melting away." It literally makes her uncomfortable. It's cute.
Did you see any of your colors?
Colleen No. Not with my eyes open.
Adam Wes Feel free to keep your eyes closed when we do an open-eye meditation, unless we're in person, maybe, or unless you want to practice it.
Colleen I wanted to try it.
Adam Wes Okay, good.
Colleen Thank you.
Adam Wes Namaste, Mom. Thank you for being here.
Hi, Ariella! I gave you a hard time in the middle of the meditation. "Wake up!" How was it?
Ariella Looking at you, I didn't see more light, but when I closed my eyes, there was a lot of light.
Adam Wes Okay, wonderful, wonderful.
Ariella What's wrong with me?
Adam Wes You have to tune your mind to be able to do it.
I did it with you for 20 seconds at your celebration. Remember? You saw the light then.
Ariella Yes.
Adam Wes Sometimes you can do it in person a little bit more. It works online. Kira and I did it recently online, and it was absolutely amazing, as good as just about anything we ever do.
It works online, but sometimes I think it's good to practice in person.
Namaste, Ariella. Thank you.
How about you, Kira? Then we'll get off in a moment.
Kira Wow. I feel really grateful because, at this point, we've been practicing for so long that it's almost as easy as slipping on a piece of clothing. I can just slip right into the light.
I'm very thankful for that. Thank you for sharing the light with me.
I also really loved that you brought our attention to the heart. What that did was, I felt a kind of freeing of the heart. I still feel like I'm in that state. I'm actually trying to sustain as much light as I can while we're talking.
Adam Wes I'm still in it with you.
Kira It was interesting. When you're in the light and bring your awareness around the heart, it's almost like the heart gets liberated in some way.
Adam Wes Exactly, yes.
Kira You only notice that it was contained once you're free of the containment. You know?
Adam Wes All of the vortices, the chakras and dantian, should be in a condition of light.
A lot of purely metaphysical practices, where you just meditate on a chakra, aren't the fullest level. The fullest level is literally bringing them into light, merging with the light.
After we've cultivated all that light, it's very natural to say, "Okay, let's give it to the heart," because we're finishing now, right? Definitely give it to the heart.
One of the ways to purify the chakras, if anybody feels that one is stuck in some way, is to use the light. Use the light. This phrasing is very powerful.
"Well, did you use the light?" I remember one of my old teachers saying that to me once. She said, "You've been working on your stomach for 30 minutes, because there are some stomach things you can do, but are you using the light?"
I just love that language. It's very powerful. You can use the light to do a math equation. You can use the light to run. You can use it to purify and clarify your chakras.
Thanks, Kira. That's wonderful. We partially did light today because Kira's here and she loves the light.
I want friends who love light, so get into the light, be my friend, and we'll go into light together. It's truly a divine experience.
If you didn't experience it today, don't worry. It's a rare thing. It's a very rare thing to hear about it, talk about it, and be able to do it.
It's profound. It's Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad-level stuff. This is some serious mystical awakening.
Enlightenment essentially means you're going through the light into the quintessential center of the universe, not the galaxies, but the universe of consciousness.
It's well delineated in various ancient books and Tibetan books. All the different colors mean different things.
Gold light is the soul. If you see the gold light, you're seeing the essence of your soul. If you sit there, you melt into your essence and pivot on your incarnation.
I like what my Paramguru says. He says, "Happiness comes from contact. Happiness comes from contact with light."
That's where it comes from. Deep, unassailable, unbounded, unconditional happiness at the divine level.
I'd like to do more light with everybody.
Kira, what are you giggling about?
Kira "At the divine level." I just love it.
Adam Wes Okay, we have to get going. We have a hard stop at 7:15.
Message me if you had a nice experience with the light or if you have any questions about it. There are Sanskrit words for it. You can learn about it and everything.
It's so nice to see everybody. Namaste. Thank you. I'll see you next time.
If anybody wants to give guru dakshina, in Sanskrit that means a donation, I'd really appreciate even a ten-dollar donation, and I can go and have a nice dinner tonight.
Thank you, everybody. Namaste.
David P Namaste.
Adam Wes Thank you, Daddio. Love you.