Teacher Training Manual: Lesson 07 - Lifestyle

OBJECTIVES

At the end of the session, the students would be able to: 1. Appreciate the different disciplines of the spiritual study 2. Appreciate the benefits of a healthy lifestyle especially vegetarianism. 3. Decide to adopt a spiritual and healthy lifestyle for a period of time and experience the benefits of this lifestyle

PROCEDURE

Start with 10 minutes meditation with commentary.

Explain the importance of routine, regularity and concentration in order to attain maximum benefit in being a spiritual student.

Enlighten the students about self-transformation as aim of this spiritual study. (experiential learning process; learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior manifested in performance lokik definition) Explain the learning process in the context of being a spiritual student. Meditation is the bridge between knowledge and practice. Practice makes perfect. If I want to perfect any art or skill, I need to allot regular time every day to harness that art or skill. In the same way, as a spiritual student spends 15 minutes out of your daily routine to concentrate, then it will increase easily. Spend 15 minutes to write on any topic related to the spiritual knowledge. Churn on any theme or point of knowledge. Churning helps develops concentration power.

Benefits of Understanding and Experiencing Spiritual Knowledge

Makes the soul feel powerful. It makes you aware of your powers and self -respect. Any inferiority complex ends and one experiences oneself as a great soul. Self-confidence awakens as weak thoughts diminish. Thoughts such as "I won't be able to do this. Will I be able to do anything with my life?" Weak thoughts will be replaced by more powerful thoughts such as "God Himself is with me. I will definitely be successful." Such confidence and courage is attained to undertake every possible task.

Feelings of happiness dominate the consciousness

Happiness and intoxication can only be attained by understanding and experiencing knowledge. Natural and unruffled peace in my outlook: Understanding and experiencing takes us to the depths of the ocean of knowledge. The depth of knowledge finishes all our attractions. In the depths, there are no storms, but only the peace and bliss of limitless treasures. Knowledge that we have become more real. We can give more effectively to others. We can use the jewels of knowledge in service. This knowledge will have much greater power and be of much greater help to others than any form of scholarly knowledge.

Our personality changes

Limited views and thought patterns which give birth to various obstacles can be finished by churning. Our view of life becomes so broad that name, fame, respect, insult, superior, and peer don't affect us, they seem totally insignificant. Natural bliss: By understanding and experiencing the knowledge, we experience bliss. Because of the spiritual happiness that comes from experiencing, our faces will become radiant and automatically there is service.

Benefits of Following Spiritual Discipline

Meditation (for 20-30 minutes twice a day: Regular meditation during the day is a way to build and strengthen your spiritual awareness, experience the natural positive qualities of the soul and achieve freedom from fear. You should have regular meditation as soon as you wake up and before going to bed. It has been recognized that the most effective time is the early morning before the routine activities of the day begin. Take time every morning to meditate, and understand spiritual principles and values. The best time to meditate is between 4:00-5:00 in the morning when the atmosphere is relatively pure. This routine provides both mental and spiritual nourishment for the whole day.

Traffic Control

As days become busier in an increasingly busy world, here is a short, practical and empowering exercise, which you can integrate into your daily lifestyle. At regular intervals throughout the day (7:00AM, 10:30 AM, 12:OO NOON, 3:00PM, 5:30PM, and 7:30PM) stop whatever you are doing (if practical at that time) and withdraw your attention from everything around. Bring your attention back to yourself. You will become aware of the heavy traffic in the form of your thoughts passing through your mind. Now, step inward and begin to observe your thoughts and they will naturally begin to slow down. As your thoughts slow down, begin to remember who you are "I am a peaceful soul who is the master of my mind and body." Keep this consciousness for 2-3 minutes and experience calmness, focus and inner silence. The practice will enable you to re-charge yourself and get added energy, which you can redirect and use in accomplishing your task and activities more effectively.

==Maintaining a chart for self progress== By having a chart we can change our old body-conscious habits and enhance our practice of soul consciousness.

What questions do I ask myself:

1. For how many minutes did I remember "I am a soul, a peaceful soul."? Did I practice seeing others as souls?

2. For how long was I in body consciousness? Experiment for few days (5-7 days) and observe the effect on your early morning meditation. Observe also how your waste and negative thoughts are minimized by this practice of hourly chart. Chart means a hourly written record of your practice in minutes. Maintaining an hourly chart allows us to go twice as fast since remembrance and concentration with Baba allows us to burn the past. While working we are free from waste and so are not creating new, negative accounts of karma.

Churning & Writing Down Your Realization

To churn means to go into the depths of any point of spiritual knowledge. The purpose of churning is to extract insights and learning from them which we can use to manage better our personal life and relationships. Churning also helps us to put into practice spiritual knowledge. Spend 15 minutes daily and churn (think deeply) about any point of spiritual knowledge and write down your insights and realization about it. Churning is also a form of meditation using pure and elevated thoughts. Some other benefits of churning:

1. Churning spiritual knowledge makes us a complete authority of that knowledge.

2. We need the power that comes from churning and the remembrance of God to overcome obstacles and to make us aware of our powers and Self-respect.

3. Happiness and intoxication can only be attained by churning knowledge.

4. Our personality changes, limited views and thought patterns which give birth to various obstacles can be finished by churning.

Healthy Lifestyle

Physical exercise

15-20 minutes of physical exercise every other day help your physical instrument (the body) to remain healthy. Brisk walking in meditation is a good way to do two things at the same time.

Smooth sleep

Early to bed and early to rise. As a spiritual student, prepare yourself to sleep with pure consciousness by avoiding watching TV or reading novels or non-spiritual materials. Sleep at the latest at 10:30 PM after a 20-minute meditation. During meditation pack-up all waste and negative experiences of the day, and stay in the pure company of the Father. Our last thought will be our first thought when we wake up in the morning. Wake up at 4:00 AM, freshen-up by washing your face and brushing your teeth and then sit in meditation for 20-30 minutes. After meditation read more spiritual readings.

No smoking and no drinking of alcoholic drinks

These bad habits will not allow you to deepen your meditation. Nicotine and alcohol have adverse effect on the mind and our emotion.

Food

Natural food, plant-based (vegetarianism-non-violence), types of food and effect on the body and mind. The preparation of and taking in of pure or satwic food is necessary in sustaining a spiritual lifestyle. By pure food, we mean one that is strictly plant-based or vegetarian; i.e., no meat, no seafood, no eggs. A plant-based diet is not only a healthier diet for the body but also for the mind. (A brief explanation of how the negative energy of violence, anger, fear etc. connected to the slaughter of animals for food have a subtle negative effect and influence on the mind and intellect). It can also be mentioned that for a serious practitioner of meditation, onion and garlic are likewise not taken because they have a very stimulating/ agitating effect on the senses.

Note: Explain that this subject of taking pure food will be taken in depth later. Simply underline the importance of eating and preparing pure food - it helps purify the mind and the body.

Thought standard throughout the day

If you maintain an hourly chart and observe traffic control, you will be sure that the quality of your thoughts will improve. The different disciplines for the body and the mind will help you in your spiritual journey.

IMPORTANCE OF KARMA YOGA

• Meditation in Action is the spiritual consciousness during everyday action.

Raja Yoga meditation is much more than sitting down every now and then to meditate for a while. It will become a part of your life, it will become apparent in everything you do. With an elevated consciousness you can add quality to everything you do. What you do becomes less important than how you do it. Karma Yoga is the spiritual consciousness whilst in action. Yoga means connection with your real `I' and with the Supreme. Karma literally means 'action'. Our attitude and expressions reveal the consciousness we are in, that is, our underlying thoughts and feelings. It's important to realize that our thoughts, consciously and unconsciously, have a great effect on our attitudes and actions. Everyone vibrates something. We cannot hide this vibration, it is something that others feel. Even if our words are positive, if our inner attitude is negative, people will feel this. They sense it in the atmosphere. The vibration behind the words is what really accounts.

So, karma yoga is about being able to maintain the spiritual consciousness you experience in meditation in your everyday actions. Gradually the difference between how you experience yourself to be in meditation and the way you express yourself in everyday life will diminish. A karma yogi has learned to keep a state of soul consciousness anywhere and everywhere.

BEHAVIOR: Quality, Significance and Essence

Putting quality to your actions means performing actions with a positive inner attitude. So, you can do something with joy because you want to do it or you can do the same action with complaints because you are told to do it. In both cases your task will probably be accomplished, but the result will be very different. Cooking is a good example. You can literally taste how a meal is prepared, whether it is with love or with compulsion or in haste.

Significance

With the right consciousness you can add something to everything you do. Through this, feelings of boredom, uselessness and frustration begin to disappear. Thus giving the most significance to the things you do, making life more fulfilling. You don't have to do very important or great things for this. Anything from vacuum-cleaning, washing up, driving the car, to running an office, directing a company, etc. is a matter of your state of mind. There is a simple law that states "You can either influence the circumstances, or the circumstances influence you". If you feel controlled by a situation, you only react negatively, instead of being able to contribute to it. You'll feel there is nothing you can do. You then feel angry or apathetic, afraid or useless. You feel a victim of circumstances.

Essence

It is important in behavior and in speech. It has to do with the art of leaving unnecessary things out. Check your use of words and gestures to make something clear. How long does it take you to get to the point? Another aspect of being essenceful is of seeing others in their essential form as souls. A Raja Yogi learns to distinguish between form and the content. The form might be of anger or rude behavior, but inside there is a soul, a being who might be frightened or distressed. It's really an art to always see the essence. It's the art of living! Time-consciousness and action-consciousness prevent us from having that feeling of consciously adding something beautiful to everything we do in life.

Time-consciousness means `pressure'. These types of thoughts create haste, tension, stress and impatience through which the action loses quality. Often, while we are doing something, we are thinking of what we have to do next. Or maybe, we are still thinking of what we have just done. So, we are not living in the present. We are not `here'. Thus, we lose the power and opportunities offered by the present. Check how may times your thoughts took you away from what you were doing, even whilst listening to these words. Adding quality to your actions in the form of accuracy, contentment and patience is only possible when you live in the now.

Action-conscious is getting too caught up in the action itself, which makes us forget that we are supposed to be light and peaceful. We forget to be easy and contented since we are caught up in the desires of our actions. When we learn to pay more attention to our thoughts and motives, we get less tangled up in the action itself. Through meditation, you can develop the consciousness, which you could call, being a `detached observer'. You learn to look at things from a distance. You learn to look at your own thoughts and feelings without getting too caught up in them. You learn to look at others without negative feelings. Being a detached observer makes it possible to work on details without loosing sight of the whole picture. This doesn't mean you are less involved in what you do, it just means there is more balance.