Essay Edition
Foundations of Personal Valuation
Principles are the way in which we do things. Values are the things that we find valuable and important in life.
Each person has a set of principles, and this is a way for you to be true to yourself, to discover the way you really want to be. It is about knowing yourself. When you know your principles, you know how to engage in a certain situation. You can be cognizant of not being in integrity, of being pulled off your center. You can stay closer to your center.
It is the same with values, when you know what you care about. A value is something you find valuable in life. It might be love. It might be money. It might be fitness. It might be social connection. It could be a number of things, and it is important to find out what your top value is. What are you really seeking? What is the impetus for your actions, or the focus and the way in which you see and evaluate life and situations?
Everybody is different. You can look at somebody and see that their values are like this. If somebody works at a business, a lot of the employees and people at that business may have a shared set of values. Families tend to have a shared set of values. What might bring two friends together and create that friendship is a shared set of values.
The order of values matters as well. If one person prioritizes love and then fitness second, versus fitness first and love second, that might be a very different profile of evaluation in life.
When we meditate, we can become clearer on what our values are because we can feel the subtlety of what matters to us. One way to find your values is to ask, if I were presented with a choice, which one would I choose first? You can compare two at a time. Of course, it may be more complex than this, but we are seeking to describe something that is perhaps infinitely complex with a list of five words.
For me, a top value is love. I would rather not make money at the cost of love. Everything centers around love. My principles are very much connected with my values, too.
What does love mean? Each value is semantically defined. One person might say love means a whole bunch of romantic relationships, but a Buddha might say love means a deep kind of compassion.
Another value of mine is truth. I find that value in mathematics. Mathematics is the study of truth in one of its expressions. An equation is an incontrovertible truth. It is so clean and clear, and it is devoid of opinions. Opinions really obscure truth.
When you watch two people argue their opinions, you recognize that they are not interested in the truth. They are interested in being right. In mathematics, we are interested in uncovering something that is beyond ourselves, something that is true. That is something I love about mathematics. Somebody else might love mathematics for a different reason.
I also love meditation because it is about truth. To me, math and meditation are both centered on that value. They are a way for me to engage with it.
When we know our values, it empowers us. This is all about progressing along the path to enlightenment, becoming clear in mind, becoming powerful. The reason we come together is perhaps that we have a shared set of values. Some people leave because they are not fulfilling the value that is inside of them, aligned with them. Perhaps they are not interested in truth. Maybe they are interested in being right, and that conflicts with what they want. Or maybe truth is further down on the list for them, or not on the list at all.
A lot of times, principles and values are interchanged in the English language. We are using them here with very clear definitions, semantically. A value is something you find valuable. A principle is a way that you do something. You do everything, in fact. It applies to all actions, independent of the action.
You may not always apply all your principles, but if you were in total integrity, you probably would. Maybe your principles apply in certain situations and not in others. Maybe you move between a more diverse or more manifold form of principles. It is perhaps not as simple as one all the time.
There are a lot of subtleties. How do you want to be? In enlightenment, we are learning to express ourselves honestly, properly, and correctly, as a full expression of who we are. Each one of us is different. The soul has a complex and unique profile of predilection and expression. Perhaps each incarnation also has a subtly shifted profile within the deeper context of the soul. If we are perceiving incarnation directly, that is worthy. Otherwise, it is just an abstraction we are considering as a possibility.
Take a moment and see if you can come up with five things you find valuable in life. These are things that have always drawn you. You want more of them. You live for them. They are not always as idealistic as you might think. Your value might be athletic ability. Some people have athletic ability as a top value, and they play all the sports. Your value might be something super idealistic as well. Love is probably one of those. Peace of mind can be a value. Efficiency can be a value. It can also be a principle. Sometimes you have to be able to differentiate between value and principle.
Applied Value Discernment
It is a challenge to find your values. Sometimes what appears to be a value is actually what gets you to the value. Being heard may mean being understood, and being understood means, perhaps, love. In order for there to be love both ways, not just to love another but to be loved, one needs to know you.
This was Erich Fromm's philosophy: When you love somebody, you know them, you accept them, you hold them in freedom, and you do not exploit them. You love them for who they are, and you know them as they are. You cannot love if you do not know the other. You cannot be responsible and attend to the needs of another if you do not know them, either.
Perhaps the value is to be free. Maybe you want to be more of who you are, so it is the freedom to be who you are, or to be loved back. Maybe it is just a deeper expression of that first value. Love and to be loved, love all around. You should have love. You should give love.
Maybe connection is the value, a deeper level of connection with the people you love and who love you. They could see and understand you. What would you get from being seen and understood? Deeper connection.
Think of a treasure chest. The red ruby is love. The diamond is clarity, and you want to hold a bunch of rubies. More rubies means more love. The blue sapphire is spirituality. You want more sapphires. By being heard, more sapphires are created.
Is there a jewel in there for being heard? Maybe. Ask, is that a thing I want? Some people may just want to be heard. They want everybody to hear what they have to say. But I am not sure that is actually the most loving orientation on its own, isolated.
It is complicated. A lot of times, when there is a lot of love, you feel full and you do not need to be heard as much. But maybe that would mean that, in your closest relationships, there is a lack of connection, a lack of shared experience, and a lack of other values, like spirituality. Maybe you were really into business and you wanted to be heard about business and share about business, but if nobody cares about business, you cannot talk about it. So there is less business, less of your value.
Why go into this depth? Because I am trying to help you see the subtlety. Part of the practice is to ask, what is a principle? What is the difference between a virtue and a principle? What makes a principle a principle? It is the same with values. The challenge is to refine it more completely so that it is more powerful for you. That is where the clarity comes from.
Values are meant to be expressed. When we have an expectation of them, we can dissipate energy and get into conflict, and then it becomes a desire. But the soul incarnates with a dream of existence. That dream is not desire as much as it is destiny, as much as it is fulfillment of integrity, of these values.
There is the freedom of a flower to be itself. But a flower must be itself. A flower wants water. That is not a desire, per se, in an unhealthy way. It is living according to its nature.
To know that your destiny is to have a romantic experience with a particular kind of person who is beautiful in a particular way is not as much a desire. It is just true to who you are. That would actually be something of value. There is nothing in enlightenment that goes against that. Tantra, Tibetan Tantra, White Tantra, is all about the flow of life and recognizing that anything can bring us into higher states of consciousness.
We want freedom from desire and to be true to ourselves, but we also want to fulfill the subtle intimations of our heart and our dreams, because there is a form of love there, a form of truth there, and a form of freedom there.
A value is something that makes you say, yes, more of that in my life. It is not a way as much as it is a true expression, an aligned expression of why you are here and what your life is about. You do not incorporate a value into your life. It is something you care about always, whether it is there in abundance or not. You love gold, but there might be an empty chest of gold. You still love gold.
There is value in following our principles because we get to be who we are in a principled action. It is a challenge to make the differentiation. It took me a couple of years. When my teacher asked about my values and principles, I wondered, what is the difference? For a long time, I kept asking, what is the difference?
Some things can be values for one person and principles for another person. One person may say, my life, I just love efficiency. Another person may not really care as much. They care about efficiency, but they see it as a means to something else.
Humility can be a value, but it can be a principle. You could say, all I care about is humility. I want to be nothing. I want to be what I am without self-reflection. I love that. It means so much to me. I just want more of that. I want more of that around me.
Another person might say, humility is the way I do things. It is the way that feels right to do things. But really, love is what I care about. Humility is just a way to love. There is a little bit of a difference there. It is the same with honesty and flexibility.
I like the imagery of a treasure chest with jewels in it. Would you have a lot of humility jewels in there and feel, yes, nice? Or would you have a lot of love jewels in there? Perhaps humility gets you more love jewels.
Symbolic Framework of the Nine Jewels
There are nine jewels: love, light, truth, freedom, peace, energy, understanding, health, and wealth. In a way, these are shared values. There is a jewel for each one.
Love is spiritual wholeness, the completeness of being that asks nothing of the world. Light is communion with Source through dissolution and cosmic power. Truth is stillness, mental abeyance, and revelation without perspective. Freedom is spiritual independence, liberation from compulsion through inner sufficiency.
Understanding is direct perception, the self-evident seeing of structure unoccluded by symbolism. Health is honoring the bodily temple as our connection to love and life. Wealth is integrated service, when the part acts on behalf of the whole as a true expression of its intrinsic nature.
To live in truth, one must value stillness.
To be absorbed in light, one must long for dissolution.
To live in freedom, one must treasure spiritual independence.
To reverberate in peace, one must abide in the constants of existence.
To awaken understanding, one must revere direct perception.
To be charged with energy, one must enjoy the purification and the transmutation of density into light.
To embody wealth, one must value deeply a life of integrated service.
To abide in love, one must treasure spiritual wholeness.
To be gifted health, one must value first the pleasure and joy of vitality.
The jewel and its origin are one. Cause and effect are one.
When you value stillness, you value truth. They are connected. If there is no stillness, you cannot see through the cloud of self, which is a lack of stillness.
One of the values is light. Light comes from dissolution and absorption in spirit.
Heart Center Meditation Practice
Bring attention to the heart center. The heart center is in the center of the chest. It is an energetic vortex that can be purified, cleared, and activated. It is our center, so it is very important. All you need to do is consciously direct your life force, chi, your kundalini, to that center. It is a worthwhile endeavor. Prioritize a clear and purified heart.
In yoga, it is called Anahata, the heart center, fourth of the seven chakras. Taoists call it the middle dantian.
As a vortex of bioelectromagnetic energy, it is not only confined to the physical body, but it has an aura of influence, an aura of awakened power and vitality outside your body, too. You can reach out with it and expand it. It can stay right at the point on the chest. Simply feel that spot.
When we do this, it produces a transformation of consciousness that awakens love, not as an idea, but as an actuality of energetic flow. We generate love by meditating on the heart center. A substance accumulates, and we gain that spiritual sufficiency, detachment, and wholeness.
Connect with that love. You can put your finger there. You can put your palms there, or you can just sit up straight. Reach out with the heart center. It can generate, through intention alone, warmth in the heart.
If you have access to the light, use the light to awaken the heart center. Use the awakening of the center to bask in the light, the visual luminosity of the spirit within. Focus into the light and feel the heart.
Sometimes just ten minutes of meditation can really shift things. That is why you should do your meditation practice every day, even if it is just ten minutes.
Meditation, Healing, and Spiritual Lineage
When you start to meditate, you process thoughts and occurrences intellectually, and this is one of the things that maintains clarity. Initially, if you are having some thoughts, it is okay. They will settle down, and they will work themselves out if you are doing it right. You may gain clarity on your values because you thought from silence and stillness.
It is better to keep the attention on the thing because it is elusive. It is like when you wake up and write your dream down. If you first explain a bunch of things, you forget the dream.
Meditation is really all about an actual experience and direct encounter with mystical states of awareness and energetic flow, kundalini and chakras. You can feel them. There is this mystical ability to experience energy and awaken healing profoundly through energy. Perhaps that is the most powerful way to heal, through the purification of the energy body. It has a manifestation in the physical as well, of course.
You should exercise, eat healthily, and do things like that. But neglecting the energy body or not having access to it definitely prevents a very deep quality of healing that is complementary to those.
Our lineage comes from Tibet, but it is also nondenominational. My teacher, our Param Guru, and I see all of them as one. Buddhism is yoga. Ultimately, the heart of all of them is meditation and mindfulness, and the three pillars: meditation, mindfulness, and contemplation. That is the heart of all of them, even Christianity and Judaism. They are all really talking about the same awakening and the same enlightenment.
There are different descriptions, techniques, books, and histories, but ultimately there is one ontological reality of awakening.
A lot of times when I contemplate, it is like meditation, but it is not dissolution. It is stillness and the revelation that occurs within that stillness, so you can see the truth.
Full Transcript
Foundations of Personal Valuation
Payton L Hello, hello?
Adam Wes Namaste. Welcome, everybody. Ariella, you were five minutes late. Please be respectful and show up on time. Kira, you were four minutes late. You knew the class was at six.
Colleen That would be silly.
Adam Wes No, I'm being serious. Praveen, you were two minutes late. Andrea, you were five minutes late.
Colleen I was three minutes late.
Adam Wes You were three minutes early, actually.
AriellaShira L I mean, I started at six, but it took me a while to...
Adam Wes Payton, thank you for showing up. Payton was a couple of minutes late, but it's his first time here, and he doesn't know about the importance of being on time, so that's totally fine.
Payton L Oh, yeah. Actually, I had trouble. I misunderstood how it worked, like you had to sign in.
Adam Wes Yeah, you have to sign into Zoom. But everybody else has been here a long time, so it's important to be on time, because otherwise we start the energy without the reverence, without the togetherness. Look, Kira dropped off.
AriellaShira L But I didn't come on through Zoom today. I came through sfi.school.com live.
Adam Wes That is Zoom.
AriellaShira L Oh, it is Zoom. Okay.
Participant1: Yeah, and for some reason I'm showing up as Zoom user. I see you now. I don't know why.
Adam Wes Okay. So we'll start with a talk or sermon on the topic of the week today.
AriellaShira L Can I just show you something? This was my Mother's Day gift from my husband. It's called a Chakra Tree of Life.
Adam Wes Beautiful. Really? Chakra Tree of Life. I'll have to look that up.
So, we talked about principles a few weeks ago, and we talked about enlightened beings last week. Principles are the way in which we do things. Today we'll talk about values, which are the things that we find valuable and important in life.
Each person has a set of principles, and this is a way for you to be true to yourself, to discover the way you really want to be. It's about knowing yourself. When you know your principles, you know how to engage in a certain situation. You can be cognizant of not being in integrity, being pulled off your center. You can stay closer to your center.
It's the same with values, when you know what you care about. So I suggested going over what five principles you live by, perhaps in order of importance. Today we'll be going over the values that you perhaps live by.
A value is what we find valuable. Andrea, are you here? Perhaps Andrea's not here. Praveen emailed me, so he's off camera because he can't be on.
A value is something you find valuable in life. It might be love. It might be money. It might be fitness. It might be social connection. It could be a number of things, and it's important to find out what your top value is. What are you really seeking? What is the impetus for your actions, or the focus and the way in which you see and evaluate life and situations?
Everybody's different, right? You can actually look at somebody and say, "Oh, their values are like this." Perhaps if somebody works at a business, a lot of the employees and a lot of people at that business have a shared set of values. Families tend to have a shared set of values. What might bring two friends together and create that friendship is a shared set of values.
The order of values matters as well. If one person prioritizes love and then fitness second, versus fitness first and love second, that might be a very different profile of evaluation in life. Right? Where's Kira? Kira was going to love this.
When we meditate, we can become clearer on what our values are because we can feel the subtlety of what matters to us. One way to find your values is to say, "Okay, if I was presented with a choice, which one would I choose first?" You can compare two at a time.
I might say, "What's more important to me?" Of course, it may be more complex than this, but we're seeking to describe something that's perhaps infinitely complex with a list of five words.
For me, a top value is love. I'd rather not make money at the cost of love. Everything kind of centers around love. My principles are very much connected with my values, too.
What does love mean? Each value is semantically defined. One person might say love means a whole bunch of romantic relationships, but a Buddha might say love means a deep kind of compassion. Right?
Another value of mine is truth. I find that value in mathematics. Actually, mathematics is the study of truth in one of its expressions. Is that interesting, Ariella? Think about that. An equation is an incontrovertible truth. It's so clean and clear, and it's devoid of opinions. Opinions really obscure truth.
When you get on the news and you watch two people argue their opinions, you recognize that they're not interested in the truth. They're interested in being right. In mathematics, we're interested in uncovering something that is beyond ourselves, something that's true. That's something I love about mathematics. Somebody else might love mathematics for a different reason.
I also love meditation because it's about truth. To me, math and meditation are both centered on that value. They're a way for me to engage with it.
I'm giving you some examples so that you can ultimately find out: What's your value? What are your values? When we know our values, it empowers us. This is all about progressing along the path to enlightenment, becoming clear in mind, becoming powerful. Perhaps I'm naming some values here. Is clarity one of your values?
The reason we're here together is perhaps that we have a shared set of values. Some people show up and then they leave because they're not fulfilling the value that is inside of them, aligned with them. They come here and they're like, "Oh, Adam's very centered on truth." Maybe they're not interested in truth. Maybe they're interested in being right, and that totally conflicts with what they want. Or maybe truth is just further down on the list for them, or not on the list at all.
A lot of times, principles and values are interchanged in the English language. We're using them here with very clear definitions, semantically. A value is something you find valuable. A principle is a way that you do something. You do everything, in fact. It applies to all actions, independent of the action.
You may not always apply all your principles, but if you were in total integrity, you probably would. Maybe your principles apply in certain situations and not in others. Maybe you move between a more diverse or more manifold form of principles. It's perhaps not as simple as one all the time.
My principle is gentleness, and part of me really hated giving you guys a hard time for not being on time today. I don't like that because then I feel like I have to not be gentle, and I don't want to not be gentle, because that's the principle I love to be. But if I don't say something, then perhaps we continue to have a very unrefined sensibility around our punctuality and our observance of this meeting that we have once a week for one hour.
There's a sort of love and devotion that comes from showing up early and on time. If my teacher were giving a talk, I'd show up 30 minutes early to make sure none of my day interferes by the time he starts. I'm there, and I've been meditating in light for at least 15 minutes before he even shows up. There's a sort of reverence that says, "This matters." I'm trying to actually convey and share that.
I wonder if Kira got off the call because I did that. Perhaps she did. I don't know. Maybe not, though. I think she's quite busy and has some responsibilities.
You can see that I recognize, "Okay, well, maybe gentleness is still the way," because I didn't like being the other way. But I also like truth, and I was speaking the truth. There are a lot of subtleties. How do you want to be?
In enlightenment, we're learning to express ourselves honestly, properly, and correctly, as a full expression of who we are. Each one of us is different. The soul has a complex and unique profile of predilection and expression. Perhaps each incarnation also has a subtly shifted profile within the deeper context of the soul. If we're perceiving incarnation directly, that's worthy. Otherwise, it's just an abstraction we're considering as a possibility.
Andrea, are you here? Join us! Such a small group today.
Maybe take a moment and see if you can come up with five things you find valuable in life. These are things that have always drawn you. You want more of them. You live for them.
Let me use some examples. They're not always as idealistic as you might think. Your value might be athletic ability. Some people have athletic ability as a top value, and they play all the sports. Your value might be something super idealistic as well. Love is probably one of those.
Take a moment. Peace of mind can be a value. I think that's one of your values, Dad. Efficiency can be a value. It can also be a principle. Sometimes you have to be able to differentiate between value and principle.
What do you think, Ariella? Have you come up with any values?
Applied Value Discernment
Colleen Ariella, you're muted.
AriellaShira L Thank you, Colleen. The first one is love. The next one is that I value being heard. A lot of the time in my family, my spiritual way of seeing things and my views on life and things, I'm not heard.
Adam Wes This is really interesting. Let's go into that, because there's actually a deeper value there. What do you want from being heard? What is it that being heard gets you? That's the value.
AriellaShira L Being able to express myself.
Adam Wes What's the point in expressing yourself?
AriellaShira L Expressing my truth.
Colleen Being understood.
Adam Wes Let's say somebody was sitting in front of you and they heard you completely. What are you feeling?
AriellaShira L I feel cherished, gratitude, and radiance.
Adam Wes For what? What made you feel gratitude? Why did you move into a state of radiance?
AriellaShira L They heard me, because lots of my family do not care.
Colleen Can I put something in there?
Adam Wes Hold on. Okay, go ahead.
Colleen I've put my five in the chat, but I would have liked to have said being heard because I think, Ariella, people can hear you, but you want to be understood. You want to be validated.
AriellaShira L Yes.
Adam Wes I would like to make a differentiation here. Is it that you want to be validated, or do you want to share with another what is meaningful to you?
AriellaShira L I want to share what is meaningful, and I would like them to be open to it.
Adam Wes Okay. This is interesting because it's a challenge to find your values, actually. Being heard, we're just looking here and trying to uncover the truth, right? My sense is that that's not the value itself. The value is what comes from that.
Being around people who value what you value, and being able to share, or being able to be who you are and not pretend to be something else. Complete self-honesty. To be free to be who you are. To be accepted as you are.
Being heard means being understood, and being understood means, perhaps, love. In order for there to be love both ways, not just to love another but to be loved, one needs to know you. This was Erich Fromm's philosophy: When you love somebody, you know them, you accept them, you hold them in freedom, and you don't exploit them. You love them for who they are, and you know them as they are.
You cannot love if you do not know the other. You cannot be responsible and attend to the needs of another if you do not know them, either. Perhaps the value is to be free. Maybe you feel that you want to be more of who you are, so it's the freedom to be who you are, or to be loved back. Maybe it's just a deeper expression of that first value. Love and to be loved, love all around. You should have love. You should give love.
It would be more loving if you were heard. I'm trying to distill the particular frequency, because I'm not so sure you want to be validated.
AriellaShira L I feel loved by my family.
Adam Wes Would it feel more loving if they heard you? Would you feel that you could love them more if they heard you and knew you?
Colleen I think Ariella and her family are one of the most loving families both ways. They're so connected. They're so beautiful together.
AriellaShira L I feel confident and loving.
Colleen I think your ideas aren't always heard by your loving family, and you want respect for your ideas and your thoughts. It doesn't change how you love them, but you want them to hear what you're thinking about. I don't know. Sorry, Adam.
Adam Wes Maybe you want to be able to have shared experiences and shared connection. Maybe connection is the value.
AriellaShira L On a certain level, yeah.
Adam Wes A deeper level of connection with the people you love and who love you. They could see and understand you. What would you get from being seen and understood? Deeper connection.
AriellaShira L One of my other values is spirituality, and that's the area where I feel my family aren't on the same page as I am.
Adam Wes If they heard you, there could be more spirituality in your everyday life with the people you love. You could talk about it at dinner. You could talk about it in the car. You could contemplate it in depth with people in your family, so there would be more spirituality.
Think of a treasure chest. The gold coin is love, or let's say the red ruby is love. The diamond is clarity, and you want to hold a bunch of rubies. More rubies means more love. The blue sapphire is spirituality. You want more sapphires. By being heard, more sapphires are created.
Is there a jewel in there for being heard? Maybe. I'm suggesting you ask, "Is that a thing I want?" Some people maybe just want to be heard. "I want everybody to hear what I have to say." But I'm not sure that's actually the most loving orientation on its own, isolated.
It's complicated, right? A lot of times, when there's a lot of love, you feel full and you don't need to be heard as much. But maybe that would mean that, in your closest relationships, there's a lack of connection, a lack of shared experience, and a lack of other values, like spirituality.
Maybe you were really into business and you wanted to be heard about business and share about business, but if nobody cares about business, you can't talk about it. So there's less business, less of your value.
Some people may want to just be heard, like a professional orator. Cicero, perhaps, wanted to be heard. Although, actually, I think Cicero was more about truth. I don't know. Perhaps he was more about truth.
Why are we talking about it in this depth? Because I'm trying to help you see the subtlety. A lot of times when I talk about this, like Praveen, Praveen had a beautiful list a few weeks ago. Praveen, are you there?
Praveen S Yes, Adam.
Adam Wes You had a beautiful list of principles. When I looked through those principles, many of them were principles, but some of them I would have classified more as virtues. They were a little bit different.
Part of the practice here is to say, "Okay, what is a principle? What's the difference between a virtue and a principle? What makes a principle a principle?" It's the same with values.
I'm not saying maybe they weren't all principles and what you meant was subjectively in alignment with you. I'm simply challenging you to refine it more completely so that it's more powerful for you. That's where the clarity comes from.
Yes, Colleen, Mom?
Colleen I'm still stuck on Ariella's stuff. Because I know Ariella and some of her family members, I think that being heard in your spirituality is because you love them so much. You're such a loving family. You love them so much that you want to give them the gift of spirituality, but you're not being heard. Am I right?
AriellaShira L Yeah.
Adam Wes Beautiful.
AriellaShira L Thank you. You expressed that beautifully.
Adam Wes Yes. Two of your values, love and spirituality, are being limited by what maybe would be called a principle. It's more like a principle or a mechanism of transmission, of expression.
You can discover for yourself and perhaps share back with me if you feel that being heard itself is the value, although I don't see that in you. I don't see that as your value. I see love and spirituality as your values, 100 percent.
Beautiful. What about you, Payton?
Payton L Can you hear me?
Adam Wes Yes. Payton's value is technology.
Payton L For sure, for sure.
Adam Wes Is that what you're doing here? He's literally using his mouse with his fingertips?
Payton L I'm using a normal mouse now, but I have this air mouse, too.
Adam Wes He's literally controlling his computer like this in the air. That's somebody whose value might be technology, perhaps. Anyway, I would love to hear your values.
Payton L I definitely value good design, good, convenient, thoughtful design. From the perspective of a user of technology, there's so much design that can be better. Any kind of design that gets in your way.
But my list doesn't include that. Number one is actually health and healing. I think that's most important for me. Then I also have truth. I put additionally that I hate the opposite of truth, like dishonesty, especially people who seem to have authority, or people who are ignorant. If they have the big say and they're the loudest, to me, that's very primal and deep. It gets me. I can become angry, for example, if someone is clearly on a con or something.
Adam Wes On?
Payton L A con, like they're a con man.
Adam Wes Okay.
Payton L Yeah, swindling people. Specifically, people who use spirituality. I think that's a major area where people are weak. In China, for example, there are a lot of people who claim they have some qigong or something, and they're just after your money. They're trying to sell their snake oil kind of deal.
That's number two. Number three, I have freedom. This is very strong. I like to be free. I also put freedom from desire. I think that's more of a higher consciousness.
Adam Wes Which is a part of freedom, right? Freedom from yourself.
Payton L Yeah, for sure. Freedom from fear, from desire, those kinds of things. But my fourth value is very much desire-oriented, which is romantic love. To give love, to receive love. So this is kind of opposing, actually.
Adam Wes Perhaps it's not, because there's the freedom of a flower to be itself. But a flower must be itself. A flower wants water. That's not a desire, per se, in an unhealthy way. It's living according to its nature. This is one of the things to talk about.
Payton L Right, right.
Adam Wes The soul incarnates with a dream of existence. That dream is not desire as much as it's destiny, as much as it's fulfillment of integrity, of these values.
It's interesting listening to you, because when you talked about the negative side of things, you were talking about obscurations and impediments to your value of freedom and your value of truth. People literally going against them. Exploiting another is to take away their freedom of choice. To delude another is to take away the freedom or the clarity of truth.
Payton L Right.
Adam Wes What you were saying is, "I value these things, and I value when other people don't interfere with them." Ariella was saying something similar. She said, "I want to be heard, because if I'm not heard, I don't get the value."
Do you see how we're elucidating this? There's a power in enlightenment where we are clear and understand ourselves. This is one of those places, just like studying geometry. You can get lucidity around it. You can elucidate yourself.
Values are meant to be expressed. When we have an expectation of them, we can dissipate energy and get into conflict, and then it becomes a desire. But to know that your destiny is to have a romantic experience with this particular kind of woman who's beautiful in this way, that's not as much a desire. That's just true to who you are. That would actually be something of value.
There's nothing in enlightenment that actually goes against that. Tantra, Tibetan Tantra, White Tantra, is all about the flow of life and recognizing that anything can bring us into higher states of consciousness.
You can still be very Buddhist about it, because I sense a lot of Buddhism in you.
Payton L Oh, yeah, for sure. Thank you.
Adam Wes I love that. It's funny, I'm just seeing that right now. We want freedom from desire and to be true to ourselves, but we also want to fulfill the subtle intimations of our heart and our dreams, because there's a form of love there, a form of truth there, and a form of freedom there.
I love your value of health. We've got a lot of shared values, Payton, you and I. That's cool. That's part of the reason you're here. Not everybody values those things.
All right. Praveen, would you like to share any of your values?
Praveen S Yes, sir. I'll share them very quickly because there's background music going on.
Adam Wes Maybe your value is music.
Praveen S I don't think so.
Adam Wes I'm just being silly. Okay.
Praveen S I have noted a few, but I would not say that I'm living by these values right now. I would like to incorporate them into my daily lifestyle. The first one is...
Adam Wes Hold on. The language you just used sounded like a principle. You don't live by a value, and you don't incorporate it into your life. It's something you care about always, whether it's there in abundance or not. You love gold, but there might be an empty chest of gold. You still love gold.
Praveen S That's true. So, maintaining integrity at any cost, number one. Number two is maintaining honesty. Third is reciprocity of love. Fourth is doing my daily sadhana. Fifth is maintaining a service attitude toward others.
Adam Wes What was the last one?
Praveen S Maintaining a service attitude toward others.
Adam Wes Beautiful. Some of those sounded a little bit like principles, and some of them sounded very much like values. I encourage you to differentiate. Remember, a value is something that makes you say, "Oh, yes, more of that in my life." It's not a way as much as it's a true expression, an aligned expression of why you're here and what your life's about.
There's value in following our principles because we get to be who we are in a principled action. It's actually kind of a challenge to make the differentiation. It took me a couple of years. When my teacher said, "What are your values and principles?" I was like, "What's the difference?" For a long time, I was like, "Wait, what's the difference?"
Praveen S Me too.
Adam Wes It's totally natural for you to mix them up. Just come to it on your own. Try to find the richness and the subtlety in differentiating between the two. Thank you, Praveen.
Praveen S Thank you.
Adam Wes How about you, Dad? You don't have to share? Okay. It's 6:45. All right, let's meditate for 20 minutes.
Participant1: I am here, but I don't want to share.
Adam Wes Okay. Good. Think about it if you like. Let's begin our meditation.
Oh, did you share your values, Mom?
Colleen I did in the chat, but now, after hearing everything, I can see there are principles. Maybe one is a value, and the four others could be principles. It's very interesting, because you're taking one word and you start to think that you can really talk about that one word. I almost feel like there's always a connection to many of those words, and they all seem to come back to love.
Adam Wes Yes. Perhaps they're expressions of love. Friendship?
Colleen Friendship is a value, but loyalty, honesty, flexibility, and humility might be principles. Let me just think about it.
Adam Wes Yeah. Some things can be values for one person and principles for another person. One person may say, "My life, I just love efficiency." Another person could say, "I don't really care as much." They care about efficiency, but they see it as a means to something else.
Colleen That's what I mean. I think the more you think about the word, you can see it connects with a whole lot of other words.
Adam Wes Yes, exactly.
Colleen It makes you think.
Adam Wes Humility can definitely be a value, but it can be a principle. You could really say, "All I care about is humility. I want to be nothing. I want to be what I am without self-reflection. I love that. It means so much to me. I just want more of that. I want more of that around me."
Another person might say, "Okay, humility is the way I do things. It's the way that feels right to do things. But really, love is what I care about. Humility is just a way to love." There's a little bit of a difference there, right? It's the same with honesty and flexibility.
I like the imagery of a treasure chest with jewels in it. Would you have a lot of humility jewels in there and be like, "Oh, yeah, nice"? Or would you have a lot of love jewels in there and be like, "Okay"? The humility gets you more love jewels.
Colleen Okay, thank you.
Adam Wes You're welcome. I actually have a document that I'd like to share with you guys at some point. Maybe I'll have to find it. In fact, I better share it now.
Symbolic Framework of the Nine Jewels
The document is "The Treasure of the Nine Jewels." I'm going to share it in the chat. There are two links there. The first link is to join the Circle community in the Sangha, and there's a chat there. Please join that. Just click that link, Ariella. The second link is a document.
In this document, it goes over the nine jewels. In a way, this is what I would say are the shared values of our community. Or perhaps they're my values, and as I'm leading the community, perhaps they align with you a lot, or maybe they don't.
I've got love and light, and I describe them. There's a jewel for each one. Love is a ruby. Light is a diamond. Truth, you see, literally, Payton, a bunch of them are the same. The next is truth, then freedom, peace, energy, understanding, health, and wealth. There are nine.
I describe them very clearly. What is light? Communion with Source through dissolution and cosmic power. What is truth? Stillness, mental abeyance, and revelation without perspective. What is freedom? Spiritual independence, liberation from compulsion through inner sufficiency. What is love? Spiritual wholeness, the completeness of being that asks nothing of the world. What is understanding? Direct perception, the self-evident seeing of structure unoccluded by symbolism. What is health? Honoring the bodily temple as our connection to love and life. What is wealth? Integrated service, when the part acts on behalf of the whole as a true expression of its intrinsic nature.
You see what I've done here. I've gone very, very in detail with this little table. I've got a jewel for each: emerald, sapphire, citrine, pearl, gold. I've got the dimensions of intelligence associated with it, a description of them, and the chakra or chakras associated with it.
Was anybody able to get the document up?
Colleen Yeah.
Adam Wes Okay, cool.
Praveen S Yes, Adam. It was quite beautiful.
Adam Wes Thank you, Praveen. I'm sharing my heart with everybody.
Let me just read this to you:
"To live in truth, one must value stillness.
"To be absorbed in light, one must long for dissolution.
"To live in freedom, one must treasure spiritual independence.
"To reverberate in peace, one must abide in the constants of existence.
"To awaken understanding, one must revere direct perception.
"To be charged with energy, one must enjoy the purification and the transmutation of density into light.
"To embody wealth, one must value deeply a life of integrated service.
"To abide in love, one must treasure spiritual wholeness.
"To be gifted health, one must value first the pleasure and joy of vitality.
"The jewel and its origin are one. Cause and effect are one."
When you value stillness, you value truth. They're connected. If there's no stillness, you can't see through the cloud of self, which is a lack of stillness.
It's quite beautiful, right? I wrote that last summer as part of the summer course. Read the whole thing, and read the preface as well. The values are part of a sentient condition. What's the crown inscription? The why. We'll go ahead and read that later, but let's meditate.
We actually went over a bit. How did that happen? Oopsie. Thanks for sharing your values, Mom, and everybody. They're beautiful.
One of the values I mentioned was light, and light is what we're about to do now. It comes from dissolution and absorption in spirit.
Heart Center Meditation Practice
Let's bring attention to the heart center. We'll just do a 10-minute meditation.
The heart center is in the center of the chest. It's an energetic vortex that can be purified, cleared, and activated. It's our center, so it's very important. All you need to do is consciously direct your life force, chi, your kundalini, to that center. It's a worthwhile endeavor. Prioritize a clear and purified heart.
In Chinese medicine, they put a needle here, which helps. In yoga, it's called Anahata, the heart center, fourth of the seven chakras. Taoists call it the middle dantian.
As a vortex of bioelectromagnetic energy, it's not only confined to the physical body, but it has an aura of influence, an aura of awakened power and vitality outside your body, too. You can reach out with it and expand it. It can stay right at the point on the chest. Simply feel that spot.
When we do this, it produces a transformation of consciousness that awakens love, not as an idea, but as an actuality of energetic flow. We generate love by meditating on the heart center. A substance accumulates, and we gain that spiritual sufficiency, detachment, and wholeness.
Let's really connect with that love right now. We'll make this our last song of the session. You can put your finger there. You can put your palms there, or you can just sit up straight.
Reach out with the heart center. It can generate, through intention alone, warmth in the heart. If you have access to the light, use the light to awaken the center, the heart center. Use the awakening of the center to bask in the light, the visual luminosity of the spirit within.
Focus into the light and feel the heart.
Namaste.
It's a little bit of a short meditation, but sometimes just 10 minutes of meditation can really shift things. That's why you should do your meditation practice every day, even if it's just 10 minutes.
Would you like to share your experience, Mom?
Meditative Experience and Spiritual Lineage
Colleen A new color came for the first time: turquoise. A lot of turquoise. First, there were myriad reds, all different kinds of reds, and then suddenly there was this turquoise. I've never had turquoise before.
Adam Wes Turquoise is supposed to be very special.
Colleen Tranquil, maybe.
Adam Wes It's a love color because it's got the green, but it's like love and peace. That's a very special one, actually. Yay! Good!
Colleen Thank you.
Adam Wes You're welcome. Wonderful, thanks for sharing. How about you, Ariella? You're muted. How about you, Praveen?
Praveen S I'm good, Adam, but I think I need to work more and more on this.
Adam Wes Always. I like that you prioritize your sadhana. That's beautiful.
Praveen S Yeah.
Adam Wes Make sure that when you're doing it, you do chakra meditation and light meditation. Wonderful. Ariella, are you ready? Thank you, Praveen. Namaste.
All right, let's go to Payton. Payton, can you share?
Colleen Maybe you can unmute her.
AriellaShira L Yes.
Adam Wes Okay.
AriellaShira L Sorry, I was on that page you were talking about, and I couldn't get back.
Adam Wes That's okay. I see.
AriellaShira L So I opened a new one. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
Adam Wes How about your meditation?
AriellaShira L In the beginning, it was really hard for me. The thoughts about what we had been talking about kept coming into my head, but eventually I was able to connect with the light. It was just white light.
Adam Wes White light, beautiful. That's interesting. When you start to meditate, you process the thoughts and occurrences intellectually, and this is one of the things that maintains the clarity I talk about.
Initially, when you're meditating, if you're having some thoughts, it's okay. They'll settle down, and they'll work themselves out if you're doing it right.
Very good. Wonderful. Maybe you gained some clarity on your values. You're like, "Oh, those are my values," all of a sudden, because you thought from silence and stillness. Thank you, Ariella. Namaste. Good job.
You don't need to explain unless you really want to. It's better to keep the attention on the thing because it's elusive. It's like when you wake up and write your dream down. If you first explain a bunch of things, you forget the dream.
Thank you, though. Wonderful.
Hi, Payton. Would you like to share anything about your experience?
Payton L I don't have much to share.
Adam Wes Okay. We'll have to do a longer meditation next time. When we do more energy work, I'd love to help you connect with the energy more.
The meditation is really all about an actual experience and direct encounter with mystical states of awareness and energetic flow, kundalini and chakras. You can feel them. When we awaken them, it's good for the values, and it's also part of the math practice. If you can feel your third eye, it really helps with the math.
Feel free to message me about it. It's good to do a one-on-one for something like that, especially in person. That's how my teacher taught me. I'd sit in front of him, and he showed me things. That's an ideal approach.
It was quite a short meditation.
Payton L You have a teacher? Did you mention him before? I read part of the transcript of the last meeting we had. Is that the teacher you mentioned in that?
Adam Wes Yeah, the same guy.
Payton L Oh, okay.
Adam Wes He's not well known at this point, as far as I know, but I've been studying with him for 15 years. He's an enlightened individual, so he's got incredible things, and he's taught them to me over that time.
There's this mystical ability to experience energy and awaken healing profoundly through energy. In fact, perhaps I think that's the most powerful way to heal, through the purification of the energy body. It has a manifestation in the physical as well, of course.
You should exercise as well, eat healthily, and do things like that. But neglecting the energy body or not having access to it definitely prevents a very deep quality of healing that is complementary to those.
Payton L What was his name again?
Adam Wes His name is Shannon. He's a white guy. He's not Indian, but our lineage, his teacher's teacher, comes from Tibet.
Payton L Oh, okay.
Adam Wes We have a Tibetan background, I guess you could say.
Payton L Oh, cool.
Adam Wes I brought up Tibetan Tantra earlier. That's related. But really, it's also nondenominational. He, I, and our Param Guru see all of them as one.
Buddhism is yoga. Ultimately, the heart of all of them is meditation and mindfulness, and the three pillars: meditation, mindfulness, and contemplation. That's the heart of all of them, even Christianity and Judaism. They're all really talking about the same awakening and the same enlightenment.
There are different descriptions, of course, and different techniques, books, and histories, but ultimately there's one ontological reality of awakening.
Payton L For sure, for sure.
Adam Wes I'd love to talk to you more. I'll see you tomorrow, hopefully.
Payton L Sounds good. Yeah.
Adam Wes Thank you, everybody.
AriellaShira L What was the third one? Meditation, mindfulness, and...
Adam Wes Contemplation, which you were doing in a very profound way at the beginning of your meditation, by the way.
A lot of times when I contemplate, it's like meditation, but it's not dissolution. It's stillness and the revelation that occurs within that stillness, so you can see the truth, which I describe on that sheet quite a bit in terms of the value.
All right, everybody. Thank you. Good job. Nice to see all of you. Bye.
Praveen S Thank you, Adam. Bye.
Adam Wes Bye.