https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=H9-OOklMJCY

Welcome. Welcome to Meditating with John Vervecki. We livestream every weekday morning at 930 a.m. Eastern Time with Mondays alternating between a new lesson, Dharma Day, and this Monday is such a Dharma Day, and a review of the whole ecology of practices of Paya Dharma Day, which will be next Monday. Every day we sit together and at the end there’s Q&A. Please limit your Q&A’s to this course, this ecology of practices. If you’re joining us for the first time, you’re most welcome, but for previous lessons and sits, see the description. I recommend doing lesson one immediately, and then you can continue to practice with us and meet with us, and every Saturday or Sunday do the following lesson, and you’ll catch up with us quite quickly. A reminder, if you have more general questions beyond those for the Q&A, that every third Friday of the month we have a more general Q&A livestream on YouTube at 3 p.m. Eastern. We just did one this past Friday. We ended up going longer than normally we go because I really, I guess this sounds a little bit to 1968, but I really got into it. It was really enriching and enrapturing, and I really appreciated that a lot, so I hope people also found it equally resonant for them. A couple more general things before we get into the Dharma Day. This is again a reminder for the long term for those of you who want to commit to the Wisdom Sangha, you need to order this book, The Wisdom of Hypatia by Brian McLennan, and I’m pretty sure it’s available relatively inexpensively on Amazon, so please consider doing that as soon as you can because we’re going to be moving towards that in the summer. So today is Dharma Day, and what I want to do is show you a seated practice, but it’s a particular type of practice. I’m also going to start teaching you some of the principles by which you construct an ecology of practices because I want it to be clear that I’m not offering any kind of exclusive ecology. I’m offering a philosophically grounded pluralism, which is there’s shared principles that are grounded both in the best cognitive science and convergence from the wisdom traditions, but each one of those principles can be enacted by various families and practices, and you want to put them together in a fashion. One of the things we’ll talk about is you want various practices to have a complementary relationship. They have corresponding strengths and weaknesses. What’s an example of that design feature within this ecology that I’m showing you so far? Because we have a complementarity relationship between meditation and contemplation. They compensate for each other. They self-correct for each other. So you want to be looking for … and we have seated still practices and then moving practices, complementary relationships. So that enhances the capacity of the whole ecology to be as self-correcting as possible. We also have layering practices where we take a practice and we build one layer of practices and then we exact it up into a higher order practice. Let’s see an example of that. Prajna. We take Metta and Vipassana and we integrate them and then they get exacted up into Prajna. And then you have linking practices, practices that are designed to bridge and help you to transition between practices more smoothly. Let’s see an example of that. A clear example of that is Lectio Divina, which helps to transition and get dialogos and the mindfulness practices to talk to each other. So now I’m giving you another one of these practices that’s both a linking and a bit of a layering practice. So it’s designed to be … it’s a sitting practice, but it’s a moving practice. So it’s designed to bridge between the standing and we’ll eventually do some meditative walking, moving practices and the seated practice. So one more time let’s review some of the design principles. I almost said divine principles. I wonder if that’s a Jungian slip of some kind. So you’re looking for relationships of complementarity so you get dynamical self-correction. You’re looking for relationships of layering so you get dynamical development and exaltation and you’re looking for relations of transition so that you get dynamical progression between the practices. So what is that practice? Well it’s a form of Qigong, but it’s influenced, it’s influenced significantly also by Kundalini. And so some of you who do chakra work, as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t get too much out of the chakra system and I’ve practiced Kundalini a bit. I have had once in my life, and I don’t know what it means, I mean it was helpful to me, but I don’t want to set it up as anything. I have experienced a very powerful Kundalini experience so I have some sense of what is going on there. But I’m not going to put so much emphasis on that. I’m going to put an emphasis more on how that gets integrated with the Daoist practices because that will more smoothly integrate with the ecology of practices. So let me describe it to you and there’s sort of two things to it. There’s a sort of a more movement of body and then a movement of mind. And then the movement of mind won’t be that foreign to you. So I’m going to describe each one to you and I’ll demonstrate a little bit. Please keep your eyes open and watch because then we’ll do it together and I’ll also talk you through it. Okay, so the first practice, right, so let’s say we’ve done, you know, we’ve brought down the heavens and now we sit. Okay, so we’re going to put our hands in front of our face like this and we lift our, and you’ll recognize, you’ll see how this links to what you’re already doing. So I do ah, and I inhale and then I exhale and I close my eyes and I come into the prayer position like this. Now when I inhale, I press my hands, not like, not like, like ah strain, but I press my hands and I try to like move towards the center of my mind like in the depths of the plasma. So I’m pressing my hands and moving to the very center. So it’s the most imminent aspect of my experience. Okay, so inhale, exhale, inhale, press, and then exhale, put your hands out, keeping your eyes closed, and then open your eyes again and then inhale, ah, and then exhale, close, inhale, press, exhale, hands out. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah. Okay. And you’ll do like four of those and then on your last exhale, instead of your hands coming in front, you go to your side like this. And then you take four in breaths and with each in breath, you open your hands more and this is the part of your mind that’s expanding out and you’re giving your mind an anchor for that in the gesture, but you’re also moving towards the center. So you’re doing something like prajna, you’re trying to integrate the two together. So with each inhale, and then you hold your breath for a count of four. And then as you exhale, you bring your hands to your throat like this. You do those four inhales and hold your breath again. And then you rotate one way four times and then four times this way. And then whenever you exhale, you move your hands to the next plot, next plot. So now you move to your heart, four inhales. Rotate. You’re trying to feel that warmth like you do in the moving exercises between your hands, but now into your body and then this way, holding your breath throughout. I can’t hold my breath because I’ve got to talk. And then as I exhale, move to your solar plexus, four in breaths. Rotate one way, four the other way. Okay. And then the dantian. I’m going to talk you through all of this again. Okay. Now for the last one, like the microcosmic orbit right above, right sort of your pelvic area right here. And you tighten the sphincter muscle, four in breaths. Then rotate one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Then exhale and then exhale again. And then draining and like in rooting, draining, melting, sinking into the earth, opening, melting, draining, sinking into the earth. Put your hands in whatever position you would for the meditation. And then we do the next part, which is more the movement of mind. So you center your mind above your head. And then as you inhale, you expand to the horizon. And then as you exhale, you contract to the core. And then in the pause between breaths, you drop to the center of your skull, your head. Inhale to the horizon. Exhale to the core. And the space between your breaths, drop to your throat. You don’t move your arms. I’m showing you what you’re doing with your mind. Your arms stay still. I’m just showing you with my arms what your mind is doing. You drop to your heart again. And try to make this 360. You’re not just expanding this way. You’re expanding this way. It’s like a sphere expanding. And then solar plexus, same thing. All right. Dantien, same thing. Again, contract the sphincter muscle, the root, and then drain into the earth. Okay? So this is a practice that’s designed. And you notice that that’s already getting you into some proto flow, some proto rooting. And now when you center and root and flow, you’ll find that they’re even more powerfully engaged. So this is a transition. Okay. So again, we’re looking for complementarity relationships, layering relationships, and linking relationships. So now let’s do it. And what we’ll do is the following. We’ll set the timer, Jason, if you could adjust for this. We’ll set the timer for 15 minutes. Because what we’re going to do is I’m going to take you through, I’ll talk you through both the, well, they’re both movements of mind and body, but one is emphasizing moving the body. The other is emphasizing moving the mind. I’ll talk you through the whole sequence. And then without interruption, I’ll just say, and now go into your practice, like Vipassana or Metta or Prajna. And then we’ll come out of it, and then there’ll be time for questions and answers. Okay? So that’s what we’re going to do. Okay. So let’s begin. Okay. So you start with your, you’re going to tilt your head up slightly. So this is James, I’m just going to say Gene Austin. James Austin’s work on Zen and the Brain and a bunch of things. I got to talk to him in person. And the idea is by orienting your vision and your affective state, you can, right, you move between first person and third person processing, you’re actually activating fundamentally different areas, sort of stratum of the brain. And so these kinds of practices are sort of trying to point towards some really good cognitive science to support their functionality. So we start with our hands in front like this. We lift our head up, and we’re doing the awe again, like awe, like experiencing awe, and we’re pantomiming it. And then we exhale, and we’re coming in, and this is a primordial thing too, right into the prayer posture. This is like they’re getting into a hot bath. And we inhale and press, and press into the core of the mind. Exhale, keeping your eyes closed, put your hands out back into their original position. Now inhale and repeat the sequence. We’ll do it three more times. Now on this last exhale, bring your hands beside you. And four inhales, moving the hands out. So your mind is going both out and in, like in prasana. And hold it for a count of four. And then you exhale, bring your hands to your throat. And then you exhale, bring four in breaths and hold your breath. Four rotations one way. Feel that heat. Then the other way. And as you exhale, drop your hands to your heart. Four inhales and hold your breath. One way, four directions. Four times in one direction, I should say. Four times in the other direction. And exhale. Move your hands solar plexus. Repeat. Four inhales and then hold your breath. And exhale. And then you exhale. And then you exhale. And then you exhale. And one more time. And on the other way. And as you exhale, drop your hands to your dantian. Four inhales and hold your breath. And on the other way. As you exhale, pass On the other way, as you exhale, pass here, tighten your sphincter, four inhales, hold your breath, rotate. As you exhale, everything melting, draining into the earth like the root of your tree and the rooting exercise. Bring your mind above your head, open a circle outward as you inhale to the horizon, exhale to the core, and then in that space between breaths drop to the core of your head, open to the horizon with the inhale, collapse to the core with the exhale, drop to the throat, inhale to the horizon, exhale to the core, drop to the heart, repeat. Lower plexus, down to the end. Breathing into the earth, reconnecting with your root. Slowly come out of your practice, trying as best you can to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness, cognition, character, and communitas, perhaps by reciting the five promises to yourself. Okay, we have time for a couple questions. Hi Victoria. It’s good to see you, or at least see your name and know that you’re there. Is the four breath words out related to the levels and the view from above? I haven’t thought of that. Hmm. I haven’t thought of that. That strikes me as an insightful bridging or maybe layering to explore. I don’t know. That’s a really good question. I think that’s worthy of exploration. That strikes me as insightfully worthy. That has never been explicitly part of my practice, but it strikes me as plausibly insightful. Diane Nicholson, for the beginning of the practice, is the rotation about the vertical axis? Do you mean like here? Yes. You’re rotating this way and this way. This is the vertical axis. You’re rotating clockwise and counterclockwise. The plane of rotation is this plane. I hope that answered your question. This is one of the difficulties about doing this all virtually. We’ll make it work. We’ll work together and we’ll make it work. We’ll make it work. Kira Kroger. Hi Kira. Is practicing a musical instrument something to be included in oncology practices? Definitely. Definitely. It’s not something for which I have any expertise or any in-depth experience. So I am speaking from the outside. I cannot be a guide in this for you, but so many of the traditions emphasize the participation of music. I wish I did because the – notice the musical metaphor. The resonance between a musical practice and what you’re doing in Tai Chi Chuan is deep and profound. I would definitely include that. I definitely include that. As long as the – and this is sort of a concern Plato had about music. As long as the music is like what we do with the Five Promises, that you’re practicing it mindfully, carefully, lovingly, that you’re trying to remember the being mode. You’re trying to experience reverence and respect for religio and you’re trying to cultivate wisdom. And if music is that for you, most definitely, excellent, excellent proposal. Again, I don’t have such a talent or skill, but there’s clear converging evidence from so many Western traditions that that should be part of any good oncology practices. When I was on sabbatical, I was going to take up the shakuhachi, but time and financial resources and other things have a life of their own and went another way and I couldn’t do it. Most definitely. So last question from Kelly Myers. Is your recommendation we do this moving seated practice before the core four? Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. So thank you Kelly, that’s exactly it. So this is a linking practice. It’s designed to help you transition from the standing and moving qigong into seated practice and then you can go into the core four, but you’ll find especially the rooting and the flowing have been prepared. They’re already sort of activated and partially actualized. They’re in potencia actuarial, right? They’re actualized potential on the beginning to flow. And so you’ll find that there’s a bit there’s layering as well. So doing that practice will layer into the core four in a powerful way. Remember when you’re doing that breathing, all of that breathing aspect, although you’re holding your breath and you’re doing the end, you don’t hyperventilate. You don’t hyperventilate. So if you’re getting lightheaded, you’re hyperventilating and you need to reduce the sort of the intensity of the effort and the extremes of the breathing. Okay, I will review this like I’ll talk you through again about both the movement of body and the movement of mind practice on both Wednesday and Friday. So thank you all for joining. I want to thank my dear friend and techno major Mar behind the scenes making things happen and my beloved son, Jason, always making things happen, coping with the unexpected and the novel, which is great. Please subscribe to this channel to be noticed. I’ve been noted of the next video. You’ll find links to the lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis into the Deal Logos series Voices with Reveki that will set this into a broader spectrum, a more encompassing framework and way of seeing and being, way of life. Please like this video, raise its profile on the YouTube search algorithm. Please share this with as many people as you possibly can. This whole ecology of practices. Please remember to order the Wisdom of Hypatia if you want to do, go into the long-term practice with the wisdom signup. You can continue this practice and deepen and enrich it by going to the Discord server where there are people who have been doing this practice. There’s larger communities. I will be on the Discord server tonight at 6 p.m. Eastern for the bi-weekly Q&A. We’ve had just a wonderful set of people on there. My dear friend and collaborator, Christopher Master Pietro was on. I was just listening to that last night. It was wonderful. Jordan Hall was on. Jordan was like, oh my gosh, that man is brilliant. Oh my gosh. All right. You’ll find links to the Discord server in the description of this video. I’m reminded we’re doing this practice, this ecology of practice every morning at 9.30 Eastern time. Remember, continuity of practice, more important than quantity of practice. There is no enemy worse than your own mind and body. There is no friend, no ally, no true companion on the path better than your own mind and body. Relapse unto yourself and to each other. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Take good care.