I wanted to start by talking about light.
I've been studying and teaching a system called Vedanta.
And the word Vedanta comes from the word Veda.
And the Vedas are the oldest texts of mankind.
We don't know how old they are,
But they've been around forever.
And Anta means the end.
So Vedanta is the end of knowledge.
And where does that knowledge resolve?
That knowledge resolves in us.
So Vedanta is a system of knowledge that is as old as time immemorial.
And it's a traditional system of knowledge.
And it comes from a time in India where the Vedas came into being.
And then there was this part of the Vedas said to be older than the Vedas,
Which were the Upanishads.
And the Upanishads just explain the nature of the human being.
What is the nature of the human being?
Answering the biggest questions like,
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is my purpose?
Etc.
So when I studied this knowledge after many,
Many years of studying a lot about yoga,
The philosophical systems of yoga,
The meaning of yoga,
I found Vedanta and I found a teacher that not many people get a chance to study with.
And I had these questions answered for me.
And it was absolutely a profound time in my life.
I was in a deep crisis,
My marriage ending,
My child leaving home,
Like all these things happening.
And then I discovered this knowledge and had these big questions answered and felt very lucky to get to that point in my life.
And so from then on,
Of course,
I just immersed myself in the study and tried to find a way to integrate these understandings with the practices of yoga.
Because the practices of yoga can't answer these big questions.
The practices like meditation and breathing and physical postures,
They free us.
They free the mind.
They pull us out of our getting lost in our thoughts and getting lost in the stress.
And they give us a glimpse of peace,
Stillness,
Serenity.
But they don't tell us what is the nature of peace?
What is the nature of serenity?
What is that?
And so Vedanta answers those questions.
So light in the tradition of Vedanta is seen as a metaphor for our true nature.
So the light of awareness or consciousness,
Right?
So our true nature is that pure awareness,
That pure consciousness.
But we take consciousness for granted.
We don't even realize that everything that's happening in our lives is because we're conscious.
And try to be unconscious,
Right?
It's absolutely impossible.
You can't not be conscious.
In the same way that without the sun in the sky,
All life on earth wouldn't exist,
We need light.
Light lights up the day.
And there's a beautiful story in the tradition that I wanted to share with you.
So the darkness and the light were having a chat.
And then after talking a while,
They decided it would be really fun to visit each other.
The dark went to visit the light.
He was like blown away.
And he said,
Oh my God,
It's so beautiful here.
Everything is filled with light.
I never want to leave.
It's so peaceful and so precious.
And so then the light went to visit the darkness.
And as he entered the darkness's home,
Light shone everywhere.
And there was no darkness.
So the moral of the story is that light can only bring light.
And when it shines on darkness,
Light dissolves into light.
The light lights up our thoughts as well.
Like our thoughts are illuminated by that light of consciousness.
And a thought only comes to life because we're conscious of that thought.
So lots and lots of thoughts come in and out.
And if you think about it,
How many thoughts come in and out in a day,
A week,
A month,
A year?
Right?
Thoughts are immeasurable.
I mean,
If you had the biggest pen and the biggest piece of paper and you tried to write down every single thought that has come and gone in the whole of creation for the whole of time,
You would never ever stop writing.
Right?
It's just like phenomenal.
We don't think about it.
We don't think about how many thoughts are coming and going and how many thoughts we actually light up.
And what kind of thoughts do we light up?
We light up the thoughts that we want to see.
Right?
We don't light up the thoughts that we're not interested in.
Yeah?
So we actually uptake a thought.
We're conscious of a thought.
And then we move with that thought.
Think about it.
Thoughts are actually eternal because they keep going.
And the light that lights up the thoughts is also constant.
So consciousness,
In whose presence all these different thoughts come and go,
That never changes.
It's always there.
Because if it wasn't,
None of our thoughts could come to life.
In fact,
We wouldn't even be breathing.
So meditation has just such a profound effect on helping us to engage with light.
We see light as a reflection happening in awareness.
And I wanted to share another story with you that comes from a tradition to really demonstrate this.
So imagine if you had a whole bunch of clay pots and you filled them all with water.
And then you put them outside.
And you would see the sun reflecting in every pot.
But is the sun in the pot?
Or is the sun just a reflection?
The sun is just a reflection in the pot.
I mean,
If you broke the pot and all the water flowed out,
The sun would just keep reflecting in the water.
It wouldn't stay in the pot.
So the question is,
Do we want to be the reflection?
Or do we want to be the sun?
So in the same way,
Our thoughts,
Experiences,
And everything that appears to be real to us is a reflection of light.
It's always moving and changing.
Whereas consciousness,
Lighting up all those different experiences,
Is constant.
So Vedanta uses these kinds of examples to point out the reality that the reflection is just an appearance.
And the only reality is the consciousness,
The awareness,
The one seeing,
Seeing everything.
We call it the seer.
When we practice meditation,
We focus the mind on something.
And whether that's the breath,
Whether that's light,
Whatever,
We focus the mind on.
It draws us out of that tendency to get preoccupied and involved and engaged with the thought.
And this gives us a glimpse of light,
Which is lighting up each thought.
And that glimpse,
Which lights up each thought,
We might call that stillness,
Or peace,
Or calm,
Or serenity.
But whatever you name it,
It's all one and the same thing.
It's the self,
In whose presence all our thoughts are illuminated.
