Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Understand through compassion or you will misunderstand the times.



"As a Buddhist monk, the cultivation of compassion is an important part of my daily practice. One aspect involves merely sitting quietly in my room, meditating. That can be very good and very comfortable, but the true aim of cultivation of compassion is to develop the courage to think of others and to do something for them." -The Dalai Lama

Thursday night January 12 at 7:00 pm is the last of the series of classes on the Aquarian Sutras of Yogi Bhajan. Tomorrow night's class will explore the sutra "Understand through compassion or you will misunderstand the times."

This sutra brings up two very important questions: 1) What is Compassion? and, 2) What are "the times"?

Compassion is the opening of our hearts to the feelings of others without allowing our judgments to get in the way. How do you start the opening of your heart? The Dalai Lama says "By removing the greatest hindrances to compassion: anger and hatred.
As we all know, these are extremely powerful emotions and they can overwhelm our entire mind. Nevertheless, they can be controlled. If, however, they are not, these negative emotions will plague us - with no extra effort on their part! - and impede our quest for the happiness of a loving mind."

"Compassion does not mean we do not see the mistakes others make; it means we have sympathy and understanding for their difficulties, knowing we are not really different from them. We are all born and live in this human realm in which ignorance and delusion strongly influences our lives."-Rev. Kinrei Bassis

When Yogi Bhajan came to the West with the message of the shifting from the Piscean to the Aquarian Age, he taught people how to prosper with the new flood of energy and cope with the changes in how human beings behaved with one another.This is a list of characteristics of the times that Yogi Bhajan compiled. You can see that there is a general shifting from the ME to the WE and this is where compassion comes in.

THE CHARACTER OF THE AQUARIAN AGE

  • Change and learning is continuous and life-long. We must maintain mental. emotional. and physical flexibility.

  • Intellect is not enough. We need a new relationship to intuition, emotion and instinct.

  • Information is not enough. Neither is knowledge. We need wisdom.

  • Learning is not enough. We must learn how to learn.

  • Complexity is increasing as is our need to deal with it.

  • Our sense of personal identity and its foundation is shifting.

  • This is an age of paradox-more global and more individual. with fewer boundaries and more demand for political separations. Everything is faster and we have less time. We need far more love and unity, for we have more fear and tremendous insecurity.

  • Stamina and constant peak performance are the common benchmarks to evaluate all people and their work, and the need is to go inward and regenerate.

  • We require a reconciliation and integration of the spiritual side of life with the technological and material sides-a spiritual fitness to sense values and meaning.

  • There is no isolation. Each action we take must be considered ecologically, and globally, because each person does affect, directly or indirectly, vast networks of people, and other living beings and places.

Thursday's class will root out anger and open the heart so that experiencing COMPASSION will be the natural result. We'll get rid of the major hindrances, anger and hatred ( that the Dalai Lama spoke about) so that you can start to feel the infinite connection with all you encounter. As the world changes and we are becoming more sensitive and aware, we need to open our hearts to put that sensitivity and awareness to good use. If you shut down your heart and ride the wave of mass fear and aggression ...the new age will be a mind-blowing challenge. If you open your heart and figure out the direction of the wind, you can sail your ship effortlessly towards your soul's purpose.

Bring a blanket, pillow, or mat. class is held on a donation basis ($15 rec). Yogi Tea is served after class. for more info visit www.eaglerockkundalinicenter.com

Sat Nam,
Raghubir Kaur

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