Practice

Adam Wes Namaste, everybody. Well, we'll just get started.

The sermon for today is practice and routine elements. This sermon is paramount because, without it, all of these teachings, all of the wisdom that we gain, remain in a state of potential. Practice is the means by which we bring the teaching into manifestation in our lives.

Practice is a lifestyle. It's a part of our identity. The Olympic gymnast wakes up every day and goes and practices with their coach before school, perhaps while it's still dark out. But they always walk with that gait of practice. Something within them is reverberating with their form of mastery, whatever it is that they're practicing for the Olympics.

So practice can be a part of our identity, part of our life. It's a part of the way we feel, the way we live. If you go to a yoga class on a regular basis, you're already benefiting from this. That's a part of your life, versus somebody who does not have some form of practice that cultivates them, that directs their attention on a regular basis.

We have to fall in love with practice as a lifestyle. It becomes a part of who we feel we are, who we get to be. In spirituality, we walk around with a gait of spiritual quality. When you see somebody who's perhaps cultivated a very strong practice in spirituality, you can feel them. You can feel their refinement in mind, in spirit, their connection with the teachings. They're reverberating with it. They embody it, and we can see that in certain individuals. It is a direct reflection of practice.

This doesn't just happen. This happens from practice. There's a rule called the 10,000-hour rule. It was perhaps coined by Malcolm Gladwell, but I think he may have picked it up somewhere else. I'm not sure. Maybe I should give him full credit for it. In one of his books, he talks about how, to achieve a degree of mastery, true mastery, it takes 10,000 hours. It doesn't matter who you are or what aptitude you have. The people who become great at what they do actually did spend 10,000 hours doing it.

This is a very empowering sentiment because it says that I can be anything I want to be. Given time, consistency, and practice, I can evolve to a level of mastery that is perhaps the best in the world, or one of the best in the world. I like that rule. It's very empowering, and it's very true.

I think there's a great misconception that so-and-so is a natural. They never had to practice, and therefore that's why they're so great. I don't think that's the case, and I don't think there are very many exceptions to that rule. Yeah, there's a Mozart who's five years old every now and then. But even then, I wonder, is he just bringing in past-life memories?

Practice is the decisive factor in the way that we become expressed in form. We may have a dream. Practice is the means by which that dream takes shape in reality. You dream about becoming enlightened? Well, 10,000 hours of meditation.

When you read about great enlightened beings, you'll discover that they meditated a lot. They studied a lot. Practice was a significant element in their mastery. The individual who has spent 10,000 hours doing something, mathematics, yoga, writing, meditation, is embodying that identity in a very profound way.

When you look at Bruce Lee, and he's walking with that swagger of martial arts, he just is martial arts. That's a result of practice.

Because we are here, ideally, to become more conscious and progress along the path to enlightenment, practice is a key element. I think it's worthwhile to take some time and consider the intricacies of it, and really emphasize it as something that we should do if we want to become more conscious.

You have to fall in love with practice. It's not a chore. If it's a chore, I think you can shift your inner orientation and relationship to it and make it a joy. Sometimes practice is difficult initially, but once you get going, it becomes more enjoyable. There's that learning curve you have to get through.

Recently, we spoke about three pillars of transformation: meditation, mindfulness, and contemplation. Let's focus on those today as the three key elements of practice. Of course, there are many other things you can do and should do, like exercise and reading, which perhaps, you could say, is related to contemplation, or certainly helps prepare you for a more valuable form of contemplation because you've opened your mind to ideas and can assimilate them because they've entered your awareness.

So, practice and routine elements. In order to practice, and practice, and practice, my teacher has said before, "Practice, practice, practice." I liked how he said that, and he said it with so much joy. It was one of the most beautiful things I've seen him articulate, in the way he said it.

Practice requires routine. Routine means that you schedule it. You do it, and you have a way that you put that practice into your day. There are three key elements: space, time, and frequency.

When you practice, you could practice in a particular location, at a particular time, and with a particular frequency. A daily practice is the main form that I'm referring to here, but it could be a weekly practice as well, a monthly practice, a yearly practice, or a practice you do every five years. Every five years, you travel to Japan, that sort of thing. Every day, you meditate. Every week, perhaps, you take a sabbatical for a day to yourself.

Frequency plays a role, but space and time are important as well. Your meditations may be on the beach at sunset, in front of your meditation table, or at the park.

Consistency in space, time, and frequency develops the practice. If you don't have consistency, practice becomes this amorphous engagement that never crystallizes into being an integral part of who you are.

Say you're learning music software. If you do it every day with consistency, every day at 5 p.m. before dinner, you sit down for half an hour and practice that music software for composing music. You do it for 30 minutes, and you do it in this office. That builds a groove in your psyche.

What's most valuable about this is that every day, you don't have to decide everything. You build a practice. It grows like a plant. Over time, this practice grows into the way that you live your life.

If you had to wake up one day and say, "Okay, how am I going to optimally do my day today?" and every day you had to decide, it would take a lot of energy. Not only that, but you wouldn't benefit from the time-tested design of your practice and routine.

When we develop a routine, we say, "Okay, well, I'm going to try this." Eventually, you realize, "Oh, well, I should be meditating there, not there, at this time, not that time, with this frequency, not that frequency," and you refine it.

Your practice is like a beautiful sculpture that you chisel away at until it's a perfect masterpiece. And that's your life. It's paramount.

I care about all of you very much, especially you, Andrea. No, I'm just being silly. I do care about you, though. Especially all of you.

I care about our sangha, which is our collective gravity of consciousness. I'd really like to encourage you to revise your practice. If you don't have a practice, begin your practice. Hopefully, these principles are helpful.

A practice is something for you to come home to. When life becomes messy, when you're pulled off your center, when people aren't supporting your journey, the grooves of your practice are just like pathways in a forest that have been walked by people many times, and they get those little dirt pathways. They're there to bring you home to yourself.

Times are not always easy. With practice, we prepare for difficult times in life. At the same time, we lift ourselves up day after day when things are going well. It gives us a connection to our own integrity. It reminds us of who we are.

We can have a new friend, a new relationship, or a new situation come into our life. When it starts to push against our practice, we can say, "No. I've spent 10 years building this practice, or 10 months building this practice. This is who I am, and I've already figured that out. I know myself. I know what matters to me, and I know what I need to do on a daily basis to be me."

This brings us to the next aspect of this, which is karma. When you do your practice, you enter into a state of mind that is what you are. If you're a musician and you never play, you don't get to be yourself. You have to play. You may go through decade after decade betraying your own... And it's precious, and time is of the essence. We must engage in our practice now and not put it off.

When we know our dharma, when we know how to meditate, when we know how to contemplate and how we want to contemplate, we can build that into our lives. This is where integrity and strength come from, because we know who we are and we build an energy.

The karmic repercussions, the energetic results of the actions we take, are in our practice. Practice is action. Karma means action. Karma, as a principle, means the actions you take inform your state of mind. That implies that practice makes you a state of mind you want to be. Therefore, it's paramount.

Why would one not practice, and why would one practice? Well, if one does not know the cost of something, they don't do it. Somebody who doesn't exercise goes to the doctor, and the doctor says, "You're in danger if you don't exercise." They get a scare, go and exercise, completely change, and they're fine.

Somebody sees their kid really happy because they had a tutoring lesson in something, and they see the benefit. Then they want to do it. We need to have an impetus for our reason to practice.

Why meditate? Why engage in mindfulness? Why engage in contemplation? I think it's important to really connect with the reason and the cost.

Without contemplation, we have a degree of confusion. If we don't understand the way things are working in our lives and truly sit down and take some space to say, "Okay, what really happened here?" then we just get pulled around in our own lack of understanding, our own confusion. What even happened? It disempowers one.

But somebody who's empowered has a high degree of lucidity that results from contemplation as a practice. They understand things. That's part of the reason I love to give these sermons. This is a part of my practice, my weekly frequency of contemplating something, sharing something, and empowering others, which really empowers me at the same time. I'm empowering the people I care about.

When I sit here and give these sermons, I get to cultivate a degree of lucidity around a very important topic. That empowers me. I'm connecting with practice. When sangha does that, we all hold lucidity around particular principles.

Contemplating practice would be an example of contemplation. You could also contemplate Schrödinger's equation for quantum mechanics. It's relevant because it changes your mind. You become the equation, and then you know what you are.

You can practice contemplating your relationships and how you really want them to be. Husband and wife: Do we treat each other really well? Do I get what I want in this relationship? How can we make it better? What's actually happening in that relationship? All of these things can be contemplated.

What is enlightenment? What is existence? What is life? What is time? What is space? What is the self? What's the true self? What's the meaning of life? These are all things you can contemplate.

If you sit down and contemplate these, you walk around with a degree of lucidity that most people do not have and therefore are not empowered.

Next is mindfulness. Mindfulness means you give your full attention to doing something, and you do it with impeccability, refinement, and complete attention for that thing and that thing alone.

If you're a yogi, for example, you like to do hatha yoga. You go and do yoga, everything in your life falls away, and you're sitting there giving it your full attention day after day after day. Or say you're a martial artist, a dancer, a roller skater, or whatever. It could be anything, right?

The point is that you're cultivating a strong attention field. Without this, we get lost in thought. We don't have mastery of our own capacity to direct our attention. That's a massive cost.

If you don't do 15 minutes a day of something where you're being mindful, and not simply being mindful but cultivating greater mindfulness year after year, to the point where you're doing it in light, you're in yoga class and there are waves of light washing through you because you're doing it with such divine perfection, then it's not truly mindfulness.

You have to practice an autotelic quality. Autotelic means you do the thing for the sake of doing it, and you do it with a continual expansion of refinement. You never jump too far. You build gradually over time, like the plant that grows.

Let the practice be developed with autotelic quality. It evolves slowly over time. You first go for a walk, then you go for a faster walk, then a longer walk, then a small jog, then a long jog, and then you go for a run. Eventually, you can run a marathon, whereas you couldn't even walk very much in the beginning.

This is an example of autotelic. But you don't try to run a marathon on day one. That's not autotelic.

What are the costs of not being mindful? You end up with a weak attention field. I would say one of the greatest costs is that you miss beauty. Without a strong attention field, we cannot be present. We miss the clouds and their glorious splendor. We miss the sparkling water on the lake or the ocean. We miss the feelings in our beloved's heart when they're trying to tell us what matters to them. We miss the things that matter most.

If you don't do mindful things, you don't cultivate the karma of mindfulness, and you miss part of life. Your life is not at the fullest potential it can be as a subjective experience.

Next, and notice I'm going to the center from the outside, is meditation. What's meditation? What's the point of meditation? Meditation isn't just about relaxing. That's a benefit that can happen initially.

But in meditation, we come to know who we are. Who am I? Am I a body, or am I witnessing a body in my time and space? Who am I, ultimately? This is Jnana Yoga. This is the inquiry in Jnana Yoga: Who am I?

We come to know who we are and that we are light. Without the light, everything is lackluster. The light brings a divine vitality to the mundane, the worldly, the gross. Without it, we lack sacredness. Life is just material, and day after day passes. We miss the sacred element that's waiting there to be seen.

Without meditation, how can we cultivate the light? Without the light, how can we come to know who we truly are? How can we experience the divine in our embodiment? How can we experience sacredness when we're merely shopping at the grocery store? But it's radiating off us, and people can feel it, and they give you a free meal because they just feel so lovely around you.

Meditation makes magic happen.

In meditation, we learn to become free. We learn to go into nirvikalpa samadhi, which we talked about last week. This is to be completely free of the fundamental thought, "I am an individual," and to immerse yourself in the unknown, in existence beyond ideation, in existence beyond an identity formation.

Can you do that? What would be the benefits of that? Does one feel truly free if they can't do that? Are we truly free if we can't eradicate aham vritti?

Aham vritti means the "I" modification. Aham means "I." Vritti means modification or perturbation in Sanskrit. I believe I have those words correct.

It's an interesting thought. It's saying that in the universe, there is no "I," and when we modify it with the thought "I am," then all of a sudden I arise as a being. Aham vritti is this seed thought that gives rise to all the different types of vritti modifications, which arise as illusion.

It's not necessarily a bad thing. It's good to be able to focus on that thought, but the question is, can you go beyond it? Can you connect with something beyond it?

Ultimately, when we meditate, we generate love. If you find yourself irritable, depressed, unhappy, or without a sense of meaning, and you sit down and meditate, feel your heart chakra, go into light, and generate an abundance of wonderful feeling that's there and uncaused, not caused by anything other than your meditation, then you can go into the world with that abundance. You can be benevolent, be kind, and be full of sacredness. People feel it, and you bring that into the world.

What could be more important than that?

Practice, practice, practice. Meditation, mindfulness, contemplation. Do it with routine, space, time, frequency, and consistency. Build it with an autotelic form of refinement. Get started, because there's a beautiful state of mind waiting for you, a new, higher, more beautiful state of mind waiting for all of us, always, even when we're already enlightened completely.

It's just the beginning, apparently. That's what a lot of enlightened beings say.

Namaste. Thank you. Any questions?

Colleen I don't know what you do to me, so I got the gist of it. I'm apologizing because when I talk to you when you're not doing this, I'm fine. But somehow, you put me in some kind of a trance. I don't know what happened. I'm in and out of something already, and we haven't even started meditating.

Adam Wes That's beautiful. Well, the darshan is an empathic attunement that occurs. You and I spend a lot of time together, but also, I'm going into the energy right now.

Colleen You're pulling me with you or something.

Adam Wes Yes.

Colleen So weird. I mean, it's strange. I apologize if I nodded off a bit.

Adam Wes That's wonderful. Good. Also, there is an element of routine. Your body knows routine. Your mind and body know we're about to meditate, and perhaps there's that anticipation subconsciously, that feeling: "This is time for samadhi. We're going to go into light." Good job. Thanks, Mom.

What a small group we have here today.

Colleen Andrea disappeared.

Adam Wes Yeah, she only has a half hour to join us. Ariella, any comments? I like that you're writing so much down.

AriellaShira L Yes! So much of what you're saying is so relevant to me. There have been so many intense things happening in my life that I have not been focused on my meditation.

Adam Wes The one before bed that you do, right? You do that thing before bed?

AriellaShira L What I was doing, you had us doing something at five o'clock in one of your classes.

Adam Wes Have you been doing a five o'clock meditation regularly?

AriellaShira L But recently, with my mom passing, then organizing her celebration of life, and then last week, Alyssa having her first child, I haven't been doing that anymore.

Colleen Mine's the 12th.

Adam Wes Yeah.

AriellaShira L So what you were saying is very important.

Adam Wes Beautiful. I'm glad. Remember to protect your practice. Once you develop a practice, it's important that you protect it. You can build a practice to be a six-hour practice, but it's good to have your minimum practice. Say, "Okay, no matter what, I'm going to do this every day."

It's a precious jewel. You don't want to let it slip away. You can forget it. You can lose it. If you wait too long, you start to lose the practice, or it takes time to really build it back up. There's a momentum involved, so you have to maintain that momentum.

Remember, if things get difficult or busy, or wonderful and busy, these things cultivate a part of you that you want to bring into your life.

I recommend 15 minutes a day of meditation, 15 minutes a day of mindful activity, minimum, and 15 minutes a day of contemplation. Now, that may seem crazy to you, but I would ask...

AriellaShira L So, two separate times, or was it all one time?

Adam Wes Well, you could do all three of them in the morning. You could do all three of them at 9 p.m. That's just 45 minutes.

After a long day, you sit down and contemplate whatever's top of mind or whatever's inspiring. You do something mindful for 15 minutes. You sit down and work on your art, whatever that is, for 15 minutes, and you give that to yourself.

You sit down and go into the light, go into the stillest state you can in meditation, or simply observe and stop acting on behalf of an agenda. You renounce. You deny your becoming, your agenda.

Otherwise, if you don't do these things, you just go faster, faster, faster, faster, faster, faster. You're like a rat that's going to spiral out into space on a rat wheel. You have to stop it.

You might say, "Well, I don't have time for that." These are the things that empower the rest of your life to be done with more efficiency, more presence, more freedom, and more love. It's just 45 minutes. If you really don't have time, you must be an MD working a double shift or something like that.

All right, let's start meditating. Can you hear the music fine?

Bring your attention to the heart center.

Focus into the light.

Become aware of the brightness and luminosity.

Become brilliant.

Wash away all but love and sacredness.

Namaste. That was wonderful.

Mel, would you like to share? Would you like to share? Can you hear me?

Colleen How about Dad for a change?

Adam Wes Okay. No, you first. Consistency.

Colin I'm not going to do it. I don't share, so get used to that. And Colleen, you can say no.

Colleen No, I'm not going to. Just a bunch of swirly colors and peace. Thank you.

Adam Wes Beautiful. Wonderful. You're welcome. Namaste. Ariella, would you like to share?

AriellaShira L Yes. In the beginning, I would go into the light, and then, I don't know if it's spacing out or going to sleep, but then I would be aware of myself again and go into the light. Then it would happen again. It happened three different times.

Adam Wes Beautiful. Well, thank you for sharing.

AriellaShira L Thank you, Adam. It was such a pleasure.

Adam Wes Thanks for being here. Scott's showing up at seven? Let's see.

I'm not sure if you know about this, Ariella, but I released my first book.

AriellaShira L Yes, I've read the first 11 pages.

Adam Wes Oh, wonderful. I'd like to show you, though. You may not have the newest edition.

Every sermon is up here in the sermon library. This is from last week, and they're very high-quality essays and transcripts now. I've gotten them to be very, very nice. Most of the irrelevant things that are said are taken out of the transcript, and the essay is quite polished.

If you click here, you can download the newest version of the book. You click "Download Your PDF," and you can see the newest version, which says "Version 1.1" on the second page. If yours doesn't say "Version 1.1" on the second page, it's not the newest version.

I haven't actually changed any of the sermons, so whatever you read is fine. There are just a few more things that were added, that's all. I'm really, really excited about it.

AriellaShira L When it says download, is there a place to download it?

Adam Wes No, it'll just bring it up in your browser. I'm really excited about that.

AriellaShira L Congratulations.

Adam Wes Thank you. All our work we've done here for the last year, plus a few weeks, is in that book. Scott, are you here?

Scott J Yes, I am. I just didn't accept the AI warning. I didn't permit it.

Adam Wes Oh, did you know that our meditation started an hour ago?

Scott J No, I thought it started...

Adam Wes Same time every week.

Scott J No, I did not. It's embarrassing. That's funny.

Adam Wes That's okay. I'm so happy that you chose to come and visit us.

Scott J It starts at seven?

Adam Wes Six p.m. Pacific time.

Scott J Oh my goodness. I'm sorry. I apologize. I'm in several meditation groups. I just kind of lost track of time today.

Adam Wes It would have been great having you here. We talked about practice today.

Another thing I wanted to show everybody is a new addition I created in the sermon library. Now you can actually play the audio right here on the page, so it doesn't go out to Zoom. This was quite a bit of work. It's cool, though, because you can actually play it on the page.

When I have this up, Scott, you'll be able to listen to the whole thing. If you want the video recording, I can always send those out as well. I just don't like to put them publicly on the page, for people's privacy. They all have this now, which is fun.

Scott J Very cool.

Adam Wes "Be Here Now," audio right on the page. Boom. You can hear it right there.

AriellaShira L That was amazing, Adam!

Adam Wes Yeah, thank you. Then there's the download. Also, remember, if you want to do a quick browse of the quotes from the week and you don't want to read, that's a nice way to get the juiciest part of the sermon.

AriellaShira L I really don't need to take notes anymore because it's all down there.

Adam Wes You don't need to take notes. It's very much there. But you can take notes if that's a part of your process.

All right, 7:05. Let's get going. Nice to see everybody.

Colleen Can you put me and Ariella, and maybe Dad, in a room so we can talk about something?

Adam Wes Just sign back in, because it's recording.

Colleen Oh, yeah.

Adam Wes All right, guys. Thank you. Nice to see everybody.

Colleen Thanks.

Adam Wes Bye. Bye, Scott. Namaste.

Scott J Thank you. Bye.

Practice brings the teachings into manifestation and becomes part of identity, integrity, attention, freedom, and love.

• Without practice, teachings and wisdom remain in a state of potential.
• Practice is a lifestyle and a part of identity.
• Routine gives practice a consistent space, time, and frequency.
• The grooves of practice bring a person home to themselves and support integrity during difficult or busy times.
• Meditation, mindfulness, and contemplation are three pillars of transformation.
• Contemplation develops lucidity by creating space to understand what is happening.
• Mindfulness cultivates a strong attention field through complete attention, impeccability, and refinement.
• Autotelic practice develops gradually, doing the thing for the sake of doing it while continually expanding refinement.
• Meditation is an inquiry into who we are and a means of cultivating light, sacredness, love, and freedom.
• Practice is action, and actions inform the state of mind.
• A minimum daily practice protects momentum and keeps practice from slipping away.

Develop and protect a minimum daily practice of meditation, mindful activity, and contemplation, giving each a consistent place in life through space, time, frequency, and gradual refinement.

• A consistent space, time, and frequency for practice.
• Fifteen minutes of meditation, going into the light, entering stillness, or simply observing without acting on behalf of an agenda.
• Fifteen minutes of mindful activity, art, movement, or another activity given complete attention.
• Fifteen minutes of contemplation focused on what is present or inspiring.
• The reason for practicing and the cost of not practicing.
• Gradual refinement rather than trying to move too far too quickly.
• Protecting the minimum practice during difficult, busy, or wonderful times.

• What practice brings me home to myself?
• What do I notice when I give something my full attention?
• Who am I?