Sva Dharma

I'd like to talk about a very central part of enlightenment today. It's almost like a technique, but it's not really a technique. It's so much more than that.

Svadharma is the word. Praveen, do you know this term? Svadharma? No?

You have to experience it to see what it does for you. In enlightenment, we're seeking a state of mind, and our actions are part of that. This state of mind comes largely from meditation.

In meditation, we connect with the effortlessness of being what we are, the source. We become a true expression of ourselves. We become what we are beyond conceptual modifications. We become light. The light actually emerges in meditation when we're completely free, when there's no resistance to life or the moment, and the energy is open.

We're completely free. We're just unfolding through time. We're not even doing it anymore. It's just happening. You might see the decision within a greater scope of being beyond decision.

In meditation, we formally sit down and tap into the source. There's no self anymore, or we're erasing the self. Erasing the self in the sense that we're becoming disinterested. There's a renunciation. We're just becoming absorbed in being, and there's no structural self there, or at least the structural self becomes very thin and stops obscuring that free-flowing light, that energy.

So light happens when we're in this state of extreme freedom. Dharma and light go together, actually. When you're in the Dharma, it's like God is moving you, and you're one with the entire concurrence, the body of the universe, and there's a condition of light.

Light happens when there's this effortlessness, when there's this complete, absolute alignment, because everything is made of light, and it's the resistance to it that obscures it.

Now, that's the formal meditative side. But what do we do between meditations? Karma plays a big role. Karma means action. If we do the wrong thing between meditations, we can't enter into a deep meditative state. We have to kind of make up for it. So the goal is to stay meditative between meditations.

But what does that mean? What does that look like? What way do we live our life that is conducive to deep meditation immediately? You sit down and, boom, you're there.

The key is to be living an aligned life, to be extremely true to yourself, and not to live with a self-image that's constantly judging you or interfering with the natural unfolding of your true nature.

It really is almost like dancing. If you can dance uninhibited, there's very much a similar feeling. It's like, well, can you just be yourself? There's a great deal of humility involved in that, right? I am what I am, take it or leave it.

There's a great deal of love because you're not exploiting others. You don't want them to act a particular way to get something out of them, so there's no pretense. You're just, "I am what I am. You are what you are. Hopefully, we'll be together if we're meant to be, or not if we're meant not to be."

But within all of this is this term I keep using: to be true to yourself.

Svadharma is a formal practice in what you love to do for the sake of doing it. It can't just be about serving others. There's a level of interest that is there, and it's woven into the fabric of your spirit. You just care. You always cared about something.

That could be biology, philosophy, mathematics, writing, dancing, business, engineering, or all kinds of things. But the point is, there's something in you that is drawn to a particular... I wouldn't even say drawn, actually. There's something in you that is mathematics, that is music. You are an expression of that. Your inspiration itself brings that into form in the universe.

Why do anything? The universe is empty and meaningless.

That's something I learned at Landmark, actually. At the end of their whole big, long weekend, Landmark is a kind of interesting experience and can be very, very helpful, actually. You go and spend the whole weekend with these people doing self-help kind of stuff, and at the very end they come up with this conclusion that life is empty and meaningless.

It's interesting when you look at that through Dharma, because we give meaning to this universe of rocks and stars and mountains. We give meaning to it. We come here with a wish, a dream in our heart, to live an arc of experience, a destiny that should unfold from our infant stage to our very old age. Through that process, we go through an unfolding of development.

Michael Jackson was five, and then he was 16, and then he was the King of Pop at 30 in the '80s and '90s, right? He went through this arc of experience in life, but he was always evolving a seed that was beyond time. That seed is the inspiration inside of us.

Part of our job in life is to find out: What is the inspiration that drives us? It's all about self-honesty. What does it really mean to you?

It's hard to do this when the world is clamoring with expectations, pushing you into a box here and there, scared of you taking a leap of faith or a leap into the unknown. The heart doesn't need to see. It knows that it's doing what it's meant to be doing, and it moves forward without knowing the next step. It automatically has to take it. It's continuously walking into the unknown, in freedom, without security.

But there's a deeper security there, which is the security of being at home inside yourself, being what you're meant to be. The light is a cosmic home. There's a wonderful sense of being safe in the light.

So Svadharma is a formal practice in doing what you would do just for the sake of doing it. A good word is "autotelic." It means you do things for the sheer joy. When you practice your Dharma, you get better at it.

There are a number of things that are of concern. First of all, you may say you're a dancer, but you're a very unique kind of dancer. In fact, you're the best dancer in the world at dancing the way you dance. We're always the best in the world at being ourselves, whatever that is. We're not the best in the world at anything except for one thing. My teacher's teacher, Rama, said this: being who we are.

If you look at somebody like Nikola Tesla, he was an engineer, but he was a very particular kind of engineer. He didn't make car engines. He made electric motors, right? He wouldn't have made car engines. It wasn't interesting to him. He wanted to use electricity and magnetism to build machines.

It wasn't just about machines. It was also about transferring electricity and the whole system, and all of that.

Finding out who you are is a very important step in this practice. It's a part of the path to enlightenment. That's what I'm suggesting here. If you want to become enlightened, you have to know who you are so that you can live in your integrity, your art, your creativity, and your purpose.

By the way, when I'm sitting here talking, when I say "art and creativity," I focus on Kira. When I say "purpose," I focus on Jenna, right? Because I know what words resonate with you guys. Both of you have art and creativity and purpose, but I know which ones kind of come first, right? Maybe I'm incorrect, but there's a sort of language or paradigm that is informed by our Dharma.

When I use language, there's mathematics woven throughout my language in a very particular way. The math I do is very geometric. I like to do math through computers, computer science, and coding. To me, they're one. This is a very particular kind of mathematics.

To me, mathematics is a philosophical inquiry into the universe. It's also a state of mind. Unless it brings beauty into my own mind, it means very little to me.

It's also very social. I like to share math. I don't like to do it only by myself. I like people to see it, and I want it to be like a rock star onstage. It should have flair. You'll see this in my math videos, right? These are things that I discovered about my own Dharma.

So it's good to try to find out: What would you be if you were being completely true to yourself?

Svadharma, which means your Dharma, requires a practice. You need to sit down and do it. You give yourself a wake of space to just have some fun. That's the key.

I've been working so hard this whole month. I actually haven't done a lot of math. Today, as part of my practice to get ready for the sermon, I did a whole bunch of math. It helped me connect with, "Oh my gosh, I've been missing this math so much." It was just amazing how it changes your state of mind.

I've also built a very deep reservoir of power in my math, and that's something that happens in your Svadharma. The more you do it, the more you store power there. It's personal power. It's qi. It's your will to live, your will to create, your will to see. All of these things are involved in the personal power you generate when you engage in your Dharmic activity.

These sentences I'm saying have a lot of power stored in them. "The power you generate when you engage in your Dharmic activity." There's something there I'm sharing with you that's very precious. You and I should write it on the wall so it's never forgotten, because I forget it every now and then, right? That's what today was reminding me.

I have a list here to share with people. One of the things that Svadharma does for us that's absolutely invaluable is that it creates a sense of independence.

When you're doing your Dharma, you don't feel lonely. You don't feel you need others. You feel independent, strong, and whole. This is a major paradigm shift for the codependence of humanity.

Most people feel a degree of codependence. They need their show, their food, their companion, and all kinds of things, right? But when you have your art, you sit down and you are free. You are independent in your own practice. You have an art to come home to when you need it most, and that is a precious refuge.

When you're doing your Dharma, you enter into light because there's a state of non-resistance. You feel, "Right now, I'm doing what I want to be doing," and there's an easefulness, a lack of resistance that dissipates energy.

Sometimes in life, we push through and dissipate energy. But in enlightened states of mind, there's no pushing. You're just pure integrity unfolding constantly, and there's no dissipation of energy. You retain all this inner power.

There's no egoic self-talk that dissipates energy. There's no attachment and aversion that dissipates energy. When we sit down and formally practice our Svadharma, we're cultivating the karma of being in a flow state, of living without resistance. We generate power in the activity, and we cultivate the neural pathways and habits to stay in a state of gracefulness, of integrity.

The goal is to be unapologetically, as completely you as possible. Go crazy with it. That's the fun part. You're like, "Wait, if there were no society, and I was listening to my heart, that innocent child spiritual being inside of me that I am, what would I do? Would I make everything iridescent and sparkly? Would I make mathematics something completely different than anybody has ever seen? Would I be a doctor who uses, I don't know, electromagnetism from the planets to heal people?"

What might you do that's completely out of left field, right? Every Dharma has so much potential.

These fields that we know of were created this way. Just think about how ridiculous it is: "We're going to use these tiny little creatures called bacteria and viruses, learn about them, use little microscopes that can see them, and medicine that can interact with them."

This is medicine today, right? But 300 years ago, they weren't thinking along those lines. Somebody came in as a trailblazer and said, "Hey, medicine can be this."

Usually, it goes quite slowly. But every now and then, there's a very enlightened individual who takes a giant leap because they can do nothing but be themselves. It's painful to conform to the limitations of the status quo of the times. It's painful in a spiritual way that's problematic for enlightenment.

This is all a part of enlightenment. I was thinking, "How do we make more progress on the path here as a Sangha?" I wanted to really tell you guys how important this is.

You can sit down for 30 minutes a day and do your Dharma. Today I sat down. It's hard to do 30 minutes sometimes, but even 15 minutes can be a very powerful thing. This is a multiyear endeavor and inquiry, so you might get better at this and ask questions. You might have been doing it for a long time already, but this is a good thing to question right now.

All right, I'll wrap up soon. There's so much related to this.

Dharma helps you develop lucidity because the way you live and what you master help you make sense of infinity. The universe is something to make sense of. How do we make sense of our lives?

We use metaphors for things that we really understand. You might say, "Oh, you see what's happening over there? That's kind of like a choreographed dance."

If you know dance and choreography, you might be able to draw upon the structures from dance and choreography to make sense of what's happening in a business, a restaurant, or whatever it might be.

Mathematics is a very powerful one because it's... Well, they're all powerful, and you don't choose your Dharma, so I shouldn't say it that way. That's interesting: you don't choose your Dharma.

Mathematics can be a nice complement to any Dharma, but dance can be a nice complement to the mathematician's Dharma, right? It frees a mathematician from maybe a degree of rigidity. You can have your Dharma, and then you can bring in other things that support it.

All right. Kira, come back.

I'd just like to talk about a few enlightened people. Bruce Lee is a very good example of somebody who lived his Dharma and entered into enlightened states of awareness. He actually went into Samadhi through martial arts.

Martial arts is a very classical Dharma for mastery through form and practice. It's for inner mastery through outer practice.

Another person is Rabindranath Tagore. Praveen, do you know who that is? I'm sure he does. A lot of people who aren't in India don't know, but Rabindranath Tagore was a brilliant poet who became enlightened as a poet. He started a school, and his whole life was around poetry. I think he won the Nobel Prize.

Emerson was a writer, one of the best writers in human history that I know of. He became enlightened as well. Shakespeare is actually an example of this as well, believe it or not.

Enlightened beings aren't always a sage in a cave. Sometimes it's Shakespeare. Sometimes it's the actor on TV. The thing is that they entered into states of awareness. If you read Shakespeare, you're like, "How did he do that?"

Well, he was in a state of mind. He was in a state of freedom. You can see, even in the things he says, the depth of wisdom, the lived wisdom that he was sharing. He wasn't just a great writer. He was a wise sage sharing through plays. He was a playwright, right? Emerson wrote essays. Very different.

There are a number of people in history. I think Mozart was one as well. Pythagoras was one. There are a number of people who became enlightened through mastery of some sort of art form.

Let's end on finding your Dharma.

To find your Dharma, look through your life and ask, "What are the things that were always present in my life?" It's never too late. It's never too late because you'll get an immediate joy from this.

You've always been doing it. Sometimes it's right in front of you and you can't see it, which is a little bit frustrating. But don't be frustrated because you'll dissipate energy. Just keep considering it.

Look at what you did after school when you were a teenager. What did you do during school when you were a teenager? What did you do in elementary school? What did you do in your 20s? What did you do in your 30s? Just go through and see what things have been a part of your life the whole time.

It's important to think of it as something you can refine. It's a skill set.

Oftentimes, it exists within a larger scope. For example, Bruce Lee was a martial artist, but then he was an actor. That was kind of a larger scope, but martial arts was the thing. If he got confused and said his Dharma was acting, he might have gone and done something that had nothing to do with martial arts, right? He was also a philosopher.

The key is that it has to be something in which you can revel in the subtleties. Think about it. In mathematics, I can keep learning higher, more subtle things and get better at understanding even the basics, right? You can always become a better dancer. You can always become a better doctor, martial artist, or painter.

There's got to be some sort of joy in the mastery. It can't just be about caring for others. There's something you do for you. It's a selfish activity. You're doing it for you, but really, you're not doing it for you. You're doing it because it is you. There's a difference.

You're the flower blooming in spring. It's not selfish. It's just being itself.

Maybe this week, contemplate what your Dharma could be. What's something you want to do?

For a long time, I didn't know I could do mathematics as my Dharma, even though I had been doing it my whole life. Literally my whole life, I was doing mathematics. But it never occurred to me that I could sit down and just do math, pure math. That seemed impractical.

It was not impractical at all because that's what I had to do. I had this tendency to have to use it for something. It has to be engineering. It has to make cool technology. It has to do this, right? But pure math was really always a joy for me.

There are higher-dimensional mathematical shapes you'll never see in the third dimension. Could they ever be used? Maybe. But that's Dharma for me. There's a lot of purity in the math.

So what is your Dharma? Do it every day. When you do it, try to make it a meditation. If you can do it in light, that's a very powerful thing.

Can you do your Dharma in light?

I remember when my teacher first suggested that, and I thought, "Whoa, that sounds so crazy." But it often happens to me right now. I close my eyes, and I do math, and there's light. I'm literally in Samadhi, with waves of soma washing through me, and I'm doing mathematics just with my eyes closed.

Sometimes it brings me into a deeper meditative state than even meditating, although it's a different thing. It's important to know that when you're becoming completely absorbed in source, you can't do your Dharma there.

I should tell you that, eventually, this back and forth between formal meditation and Dharmic living becomes one. Dharmic living can be infused throughout your whole life, by the way. You can make math everything or dance everything. You're cooking dinner, and you're dancing, right? You live it. It's your metaphors. It's everything. But you have the formal practice too.

Eventually, that back and forth becomes one, and you enter into Sahaja Samadhi, which is a very rare state. It means the natural state. In Sahaja Samadhi, the waking state is full, deep nirvana Samadhi.

It's kind of unfathomable to talk about it, but there's a state where meditation and flow merge so completely that there's no difference anymore. There are about ten people in the world who can do this, by the way. It's very rare.

Although I do think Rabindranath Tagore achieved that. I don't think Bruce Lee achieved the full integration, but he might have. I don't think so. I think he might have if he had lived longer.

That's a very special state. That's the highest Samadhi.

I hope this was inspiring and also encouraging, to hold space for each of you to try. Thanks, Kira. That made me laugh.

Sometimes it's helpful to have somebody say that this is a reasonable and fair use of your time, right? To kind of give you permission. Somebody did that for me, so I want to do it for you.

Namaste. Any questions? I'd love a comment or two, and then we'll get started.

Kira No questions, but I'm just so inspired by the idea of an education system that recognizes and nurtures this in young children instead of standardizing them. My mom is part of the education system. It's very standardized, right? They're conforming the kids.

What if our education system actually developed that inner genius, the potentiality of each of us?

Adam Wes I love that. Yeah, it could center on your Dharma, and then you could learn all the other things as a part of it.

For me, I could have learned the history of mathematics. They never had a history of mathematics class in my school. Oh my God, I would have loved that!

Then I could have learned the mathematics of mainstream history, right? Okay, I need to know the history of the United States. Well, let's look at it mathematically and statistically, things like that. That's just one example.

Everything could have been centered on mathematics. It could have been writing, history, philosophy, PE, physics. All those things could have been more mathematically focused for me.

But it's not designed that way. It's designed, "Okay, here's history. It's centered on history."

That's a great idea, Kira.

Kira One question around this, actually. I find myself to have a love of many things, so I can see multiple different paths that I could take. I could go all the way with one path, but I don't really want to abandon the other path.

Maybe this is a conversation for another time, but one question is how to clarify, concentrate, and refine your Dharmic path.

Adam Wes Yeah, so think...

Kira I'm at a crossroads. I want to combine everything, though, and proceed.

Adam Wes Perhaps you're looking at an unfolding. What if you were just to look at the arts itself?

I did my Dharma today. I picked a math concept that has been reverberating in my mind for some time, and I coded it. I learned it, understood it, and learned some really new, interesting things.

I didn't really ask, "What's the path?" I just followed my heart.

In fact, I had about five different things I was thinking of doing. I was like, "Oh, that could be cool. That could be cool. That could be cool." Then, when I remembered this one, I was like, "That's what I'm doing today."

That's what happened. It drew me in, and two or three hours went by while I had just been doing that. It was an autotelic activity of refinement, mastery, and expansion of my practice, my craft, my art, right?

I wasn't saying, "Oh, I have all these things I can do." I said, "What does my heart want to do now?"

Think of it as each moment. There's something your heart wants to do now, not as an idea. That's actually Dharma. It means truth and duty. What is your duty now? It's always implicit in the current moment.

That's that natural effort that's almost like you're still in meditation because you're somehow here and it's happening, but you're also beyond. Because integrity is a constant, everything becomes a constant. There's no choice anymore.

You see what I mean? That takes you beyond choice. Choice dissolves in integrity. There's no room for it. Then just love and integrity operate, and you get to see what happens.

Does that answer?

Okay. Can you say something in response?

Kira Just amazing. I love the way you're wording all of this.

Adam Wes Thank you.

Kira Choice dissolves in integrity.

Adam Wes In every moment, there's always the right thing to do. Actually, to me, that's what the word "righteousness" means. It means that in every moment, there's a right thing to do, and it's always being true to yourself, with an expanded scope of identification with the whole.

It's always inspired, and it's always not selfish, but it's also being what you are. Another little paradox there. You can be what you are on behalf of the whole. That's essentially it.

When there's a level of clarity and stillness in the mind, you kind of just know what to do. Krishnamurti talks about this. He calls it choiceless awareness. It's kind of like unpremeditated action.

The nice thing is, you just follow your heart. What does my heart say? My heart knows exactly what to do. Every time you do it, your heart gets fuller and fuller and fuller, and expands. You just live a life of being free, honest, true to yourself, and one with everybody and everything.

Then, voilà! Light. Sahaja Samadhi. Truth. All the things we seek. Love.

Cool. Being a part of the Sangha, we can live our lives exactly the way we're meant to and grow toward enlightenment.

It's enlightenment, not the short path. It's the middle way. It's not in the monastery. It's meeting life more beautifully, more completely, more happily. It's meditating for a certain amount of time, doing your Dharma formally for a certain amount of time, and living in alignment, clarity, and health for the rest of the time.

We're trying to bring all of that together. I'd like to create a big group of us doing that because a big group creates a support system and normalizes these practices. It gives us an opportunity to connect over what we care about and have friends who are doing what we're doing.

If you get really into it, it's hard to be friends with people who are living a completely different life. You can be friends with them, but the connection isn't as deep because, if something is deeply meaningful, we connect on the things that mean a great deal to us.

All right, thank you. Sorry, we went a little over today. Sorry about that, Daddyo.

Let's begin our meditation. Thanks for your wonderful questions, Kira. Honestly, I love having you here because you ask these good ones, and I know you're super into Dharma. Kira and I have been talking about this for five years now, maybe six years.

Just get your music out, or whatever it is, and do it. Make it better. Study it.

We'll do a 29-minute meditation. We don't have much time to talk today. Let's dive in.

Hi, Mom. I hope that was meaningful for you, Jen.

It takes courage to do your Dharma, and the heart helps with that, so let's do a heart meditation.

Generate love in the heart center. Really feel the heart center. Generate love in the heart. Just sit down and generate love.

Really open the heart by feeling gentleness, accepting the moment, and gratitude.

Just a couple of minutes of silence.

Let's listen to the sounds.

Focus into the light.

Generate love.

Submerge in the bliss of being.

Feel the completeness from within.

Invoke that.

Namaste.

Kira, if you're still around, you can share, or I can go with somebody else first.

Namaste, Mom.

Colleen That was good, Adam. Do you want me to share something?

Adam Wes Yeah.

Colleen I don't think this is a conversation for now, but I just want to ask you: At what point can you just be content and not have to think about your Dharma?

If I were much younger, maybe I would be struggling toward something, but I'm just content. Does it just mean enjoying what you like to do sometimes, or do you need a specific thing?

Adam Wes Yeah, I'm just suggesting that you can reserve some time in your day to do something artistic for yourself. That's really what I'm saying.

Colleen Just something I enjoy?

Adam Wes An activity, something that you can grow in as a skill set. You might sit down and draw cartoons for an hour. I don't know. It could be anything, something creative.

It's not about becoming somebody. It's about the joy of giving yourself some time to be creative.

Colleen It feels stressful to me, so am I allowed to just be content?

Adam Wes You don't have to do it. I think you should be intuitive about it. If it doesn't feel right for you, then it might not be right for you. If it doesn't feel right for you because you are limiting yourself, maybe you'll notice that, if that's the case. Perhaps it's not. Perhaps it is.

Colleen I don't want to take up people's time, but I just wanted to say that and ask you that.

Adam Wes I do see a possibility for you to do something joyful for you. You're such a good drawer, for example. Remember when you used to make those big signs? When was the last time you drew for the joy of drawing, and sat down and gave yourself that? I think there would be some peace in that. I think there would be some contentment in that, actually.

You're one of the most creative people I know, and yet I don't see you spending time in creativity. I see you spending time in service, for sure, but not as much time in your own joy of doing something.

I think it might be a little uncomfortable for you to do something for the joy of it, for yourself. I think that's probably quite common.

Colleen No, I don't have lots of things to do. I'm just content. I don't want to feel I have to find something to do. It almost feels stressful to me.

Adam Wes Okay.

Colleen But thank you.

Adam Wes No pressure.

Colleen We can talk more about it. I know everybody has to go.

Adam Wes Yeah. Well, how was your meditation?

Colleen Meditation was good. It started with some weird stuff coming from the left side, like dark gray or navy blue or something. Then that went away, and my usual other thing came along with purple, green, and a little bit of red in it. But it started off with this interesting difference.

Adam Wes Do you think you were clearing something in the beginning, or were you having a deeper experience?

Colleen I have no idea. It was just different.

Adam Wes Okay. Navy blue can actually be a very deep quality of energy as well.

Colleen Thanks, Adam.

Adam Wes Namaste, Mom.

Colleen Thank you.

Adam Wes Good job. And yes, no pressure. You can do whatever you want. It's just a suggestion. Maybe feel into it.

Praveen, I'd love to hear from you.

Praveen S Adam, I'm really thankful to you.

Adam Wes I'm thankful for you, Praveen. You're amazing. I appreciate you so much every time I see you.

Praveen S I think today's sermon was very spectacular for me, Adam. I really loved the way you were talking about Svadharma.

My major takeaway is what you were saying about how we can find our Svadharma. When we're doing Svadharma, we don't feel exhausted. You were saying that it's a natural state in which we are.

I really loved the guidance you're giving to find our Svadharma because, otherwise, how do we find Svadharma? I think the answer to that was very special, Adam.

Adam Wes Thank you. I'm glad that was helpful.

It's one thing to give the theory, but it's always important to give some actionable steps that can be taken, right?

In fact, for every one of you, I almost feel like, if we found a time to sit down, maybe even for 15 minutes, I might be able to help you see what it is. I'd ask you a bunch of questions. Maybe I should make a Dharma questionnaire. It could help you find what your Dharma is. That would be fun.

My teacher actually told me, believe it or not. He actually told me it was math. I didn't know. Can you believe that? I'd been doing math my whole life, but I always thought it was physics or engineering. Math was always the fundamental thing in what I did.

One day, he told me, "You can do math for an hour a day."

I was like, "Really?" I felt like that was a waste of time. Then I said, "At least I have an excuse to do it now."

That's what it is. See? I needed the excuse to do the thing I wanted to do.

What would you do if you could just have half an hour a day to play? Usually, it's something you can get better at. It's something in which you can achieve a degree of mastery.

Namaste, Praveen. Thank you.

Praveen S Good. Thank you so much.

Adam Wes Yeah, Ariella.

AriellaShira L First, I just want to say that your shirt, or your top, whatever it is, keeps me captivated. My name, Ariella, is "lion." I use "Lion of the Goddess," so it has such a connective calling to me.

Adam Wes Nice.

AriellaShira L I spaced out a lot during the first part of the meditation. But at the end, when you had the silence and took away the sound, I was really able to open to the light.

Adam Wes Can you say that last sentence again?

AriellaShira L To open to the light.

Adam Wes What was the full sentence? That was the last half of the sentence. You cut out for a moment.

AriellaShira L When you stopped the music, I was really able to open to the light.

Adam Wes Oh, beautiful. Wonderful.

It's good to do a mixture. Silence is good sometimes. I like to end with silence. There's something about doing music and then stopping it, with the last one to five minutes in silence. It's very powerful.

We're in a state, and then it helps us get to the top of the mountain. Then we can stay and be there.

Namaste, Ariella. Good job. Wonderful. So you saw some light today. Good, good.

All right, everybody, thank you. Thanks for staying. We did a pretty good job. We're four minutes over. I went a little over on the sermon. I want to keep it to 20 minutes, but it just wasn't that today, I guess.

Bye, everybody. Namaste. Namaste, Mom. Namaste. Bye, everybody.

Svadharma is the practice of being true to yourself through an activity you love for its own sake, allowing meditation, mastery, and daily life to come together in integrity and non-resistance.

• In meditation, resistance falls away and the structural self becomes thin, allowing light and energy to flow freely.
• Karma means action. The way life is lived between meditations affects the depth of formal meditation.
• Svadharma is a formal practice of doing what you love for the sake of doing it.
• Your Dharma is woven into the fabric of your spirit. It is something you have always cared about and can continue to refine.
• Finding your Dharma involves self-honesty and attention to what has remained present throughout your life.
• Regular practice builds personal power, independence, mastery, and the habit of living without resistance.
• Your Dharma must contain joy in its subtleties. It cannot be only about usefulness or serving others.
• Other interests may support your Dharma, but there is often a central art, skill, or inquiry that gives them a larger scope.
• Dharma is implicit in the current moment. With clarity and stillness, the heart knows what to do.
• Formal meditation and Dharmic living can increasingly become one, allowing integrity and flow to infuse daily life.

Give yourself a regular period of time, even 15 or 30 minutes, to practice the activity that draws your heart for the sheer joy of doing it. Let it remain an open, multiyear inquiry into what has always been present in your life, what you can refine, and what feels most true now.

• What you naturally loved during childhood, school, adolescence, and later stages of life.
• The activity that draws you in without needing to be practical or useful.
• What your heart wants to do in the current moment.
• A short period of formal Dharmic practice each day.
• The subtleties of your art, craft, skill, or inquiry that invite continued refinement.
• Practicing without pushing, self-judgment, attachment, or resistance.
• The possibility of bringing a meditative quality and light into your Dharma.

• What has quietly remained present throughout my life?
• What would I do simply for the joy of doing it?
• What does my heart want to do now?