Day 1 Video 4: Thinking with Juan Continues (1:34:10)

Juan speaks on the enjoyment of thinking moving us forward spiritually, and the plays a short, encouraging clip from Kalindi.

Next he introduces an insightful exercise. Make sure you can see your computer screen easily. See if you can read the message you see on your screen. Meditation helps us refocus in a way that reading the message also required of you. If we apply ourselves, we can succeed.

Now Juan addresses laziness as a primary way we avoid thinking, and he plays a talk titled “Laziness” by Gourasana (see sidebar for reference). He introduces the next series of exercises to help us get out of laziness.

Exercise: Think about how you are lazy. Write 20 ways you can see you are lazy in doing the thinking part of meditation, or thinking things through in your life.

Exercise: Follow Annette’s instructions to do 1 minute of letting go of laziness. Then calm.

Exercise: Follow Kalindi’s instructions. Turn to a new page in your notebook. At the top of the page, write the area area of your life in which you need major movement – either material or spiritual. You can choose one of the 3-4 areas you identified on Day 1 – or if something else is more pressing, write that.

Now write a set of questions you want to ask yourself about that area. Listen to the examples Juan gives to help you think what questions to ask yourself. If you think of something in that area that seems like something you should do, but you’ve been avoiding it out of fear, write it down anyway. When we ask the right questions, we get the best answers. And if you ask the right questions, fear may arise, because you may need to make some changes.

Finally, one last activity before a break.

Exercise: Follow Karin in this exercise.
Exercise: Solve this math problem: 6/ 2(1+2) = ? (And don’t accept the first answer you find!)