2017 The Year of Personal Transformation

I began the year with my first trip to India to study with a group of International meditators guided by Thom Knoles, Maharishi Vyasananda. It was truly the best thing I could have done for myself at this moment in time. I learned so much through purely observation and experience, as well as through lectures and discussions on the meditation retreat.

India is a magnificent teacher. She shows you lessons learned from her history of wars, her so-called rulers, her people/animals and her land/waters. She allows Nature to rule in ways the West has forgotten how to do and fears. Observing with an open heart taught me that suffering is another thing the West seems to capitalize on and that it doesn't exist in the obvious ways we have been taught to see. I learned the visceral difference between pain and suffering. I understand with more nuance what it is when Buddhists refer to life as suffering. In India, the poor and the stray did not necessarily suffer, as we might have been conditioned to believe. What may been interpreted as lawless is in fact more observant to natural laws that our laws in the America to be specific. There were lessons to be learned, so I dropped my expectations and just observed and interacted in this world as I would anywhere I might live. It changed everything.

Meditation and the teachings of the Veda also reframed how my eyes see, how all my senses perceive. I learned that the goal of a meditator is not to simply transcend, as it turns out to be the easy part, but to go beyond transcendence to greater understanding of the self, the world, the universe and all its manifestations and to live in the physical body interacting and meditating for the collective consciousness.

My heart is open and I am here in the service of what needs to be done. I feel that life has a clear and greater purpose and I am here to live my Dharma. Letting charm guide the way, I am open and grateful for all that came before and what lies ahead and the current moment , as they exist on a continuum that is alive as much as we are. 

I am full of gratitude and excited for growth and evolution. 

With love and gratitude,
Su-Jung

Bathed by the light in Rishikesh, India on site of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Ashram, now a historic ruin in a national park where tigers and elephants roam free. January 2017

Why We Meditate

I have been meditating since February and have found that I look forward to my two daily anchors to my day. In the Vedic Meditation method, a meditator takes 2 twenty minutes periods to meditate daily. In my experience so far, I have found that when you commit to taking the time for your meditation, you are investing in your wellbeing, awareness and overall productivity. You will find that you will be less reactive and more emotionally stable over time. And as you being to become more aware of your true self, you will bring out your best self and this will be reflected back towards you. I meditate because I can see that its good for me and that it changes how I live in the world and that changes the world around me.

Please ask me about meditation and how it may help you!

From Jeff Kober's Vedic Meditation Thought of the Day:

Why do we meditate?

• To feel better. 
• To release stresses.
• To have a vacation from our thoughts.
• To know ourselves as something other than our thoughts, feelings, opinions and our projections of the judgments of others, i.e. our place in the world. 
• To receive total consciousness.

A free introductory talk to find out more about meditation:

THU, SEP 22, 2016 AT 6:30 PM RSVP by following the link below.

"We are individual expressions of the whole of nature, and when we allow ourselves this experience of de-excitation, we begin to know ourselves again as this deeper, greater truth."

-Jeff Kober, Vedic Mediation Teacher & Blogger

The Miracle of Mindfulness

I had just come back from Paris when news of the tragic events in Nice on Bastille Day was being reported. I was struggling with the knowledge that overall the world is transitioning into more light, while the media focuses on the dark, when an episode of OnBeing with Thich Nhat Hanh aired that helped remind me of the bigger picture and shift my perspective. 

Please take a moment to listen to this moving piece called Being Peace in a World of Trauma by Krista Tippett of OnBeing.

From the OnBeing website:

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Zen monk, poet, and peacemaker. He co-founded the An Quang Buddhist Institute, the Van Hanh Buddhist University in Vietnam, and Plum Village, a Buddhist training monastery in France. He is the author of many books, including Being Peace, The Miracle of Mindfulness: A Manual on Meditation, The Art of Communicating, Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962–1966, and The Long Road Turns to Joy — A Guide to Walking Meditation.
 

The Meaning of Solstice

Summer solstice on June 20, 2016 will be the longest day of the year. The length of the day is measured by length of sunlight. In Chinese Medicine, we think of this day as the utmost yang of the year, which means it is the peak of yang in the yang part of the year, signified by the sun sitting at the highest point in the sky. The yang part of the year includes the spring and summer, while the fall and winter are considered yin, relatively. The measure of yin and yang are relative to one another and at their peaks, begin to transform into the other. 

Simply said, think about something new growing from inside something older. A constantly evolving flow with a forward momentum. 

So imagine Spring as yin within yang, while the Summer is yang within yang because summer is more yang than spring. At the summer solstice, once reaching the longest day then begin to shorten the following day. As the evenings start to grow longer, we will approach fall.

The Fall then can be seen as the yin within yang. The evenings continue to grow longer until the longest night of the year, which is the winter solstice, December 21, 2016. The peak of yin.

The summer solstice represents the maximum of yang possible, before implicit in this understanding is also that the yin begins to grow again and the yang wanes.

SPRING

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Yang within Yin

SUMMER

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Yang within Yang

FALL

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Yin within Yang

WINTER

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Yin within Yin