Lost Coin Class Notes Notes from Lost Coin 2-19-2008

Administrative

The group is looking for meeting space, if anyone has any ideas, please speak up.  Thanks.

Daniel's mother passed away and he'll be out of town from Thursday through Saturday.

Daniel will be holding a workshop for the German Group from May 2 through May 4, 2008 in Dusseldorf.  Everyone is welcome to come along.

There is a group of students in Florida looking for a teacher who would like Daniel to move there and teach.  Daniel is considering teaching them from afar.

Focus for this week

You absolutely must be practicing all day.  In a monastic system, you would learn how to do all kinds of things in a meditative way.  When you dispense with this, you're affecting more than just the ability to drink and have sex (which they were doing in monasteries anyway).  The big deal is the division between a contemplative life and a very active regular life.  So how do we make up for this lack of time in a monastery?

You absolutely must be practicing in every moment that you can remember to do so all day.

Daniel likes the buddy system.  At the end of sitting each morning, make a VOW that you will spend the rest of the day practicing also.  This will help and it is a big deal.  Do not take the vow lightly.

Everything that we do each week as our "exercise" from this class is the effort to stop the story in your head.  For example, Daniel stated that his Mom never got out of her story.  How different would her life have been? Daniel's mom was an excellent piano player; she was able to hear and play by just reviewing the music.  Being excellent at something is great, but it is not THE THING.  Daniel's mom had the ability to play amazing music but this did not help her because happiness doesn't lie in the making of the story of your life better.  Stopping the story makes happiness.

Assignment for the week:

In the Fourth Way, we talk about the three centers:   mental (intellectual), emotional, and physical. This week study your fear, jealousy, anger, self-hatred, sadness, being deceptive with yourself, guilt, anxiety, dissatisfaction.  What are you habitual patterns?  What are the things that you believe are part of your story?  Where are you stuck?  Look at it not as the truth but where your mind is stuck.

In class we did contemplated on this for about five minutes.  Interestingly, the class largely indicated a lack of acceptance about ourselves and our capacity.  After going around the room, talking about where each of us perceive ourselves to be stuck, Daniel pointed out that nothing that we talked about was created by anyone other than US!  Each of us created this stuckness into a thought about ourselves- no one did it to us.  It is obvious to others that it is just in our heads, but it is not obvious to us.

Look at your own story- what does it do to your relationships with others? How do others see you because of the story you carry?

Have you lost your eyes for yourself?  Can you see your power?  Do you have the ability to see yourself?  You need to be your own audience.  Would it be better to feel good about your own life or to have someone else validate that you are great?

This cycle is never going to end by someone else's approval.  Connect this to the assignment for the week:  observe your negative emotion and see that you are creating your own negative story.

A reminder

Please be kind to each other.  Appreciate that the women in the group bring in a vulnerability and honesty about inadequacies.  Men bring to the group the burden they bear socially and they don't believe others want to hear about their vulnerabilities.  This means that we, as a group, can help each other and learn to appreciate others.  When you learn to be friendly, honest, open, nice- HUMAN- with each other, this is a major part of what Daniel is attempting to teach us and what we should be working on.
