Every day I'm learning. I still feel like a new student of vedic psychology. Here are some hints that are helping me on me way, given to us by our beautiful, saintly teacher Dr. Vasant Lad.

Watch the watcher. The watcher is the mind and the body but spirit is beyond both. Watch thoughts as if they are a movie. You will see what is inside you.

Organs create emotions and the brain searches for a thought. So mind is in the organ. We make a decision then create the rationale. Mind is body and brain. Mind is also the universe around us that we created. Yoga psychology cleans the mind by cleaning organs. Yoga squeezes the blood out of organs and then opens them up again. It clears the channels.

When the body wants change it creates a thought. A thought indicates discomfort or toxins in the body. When the body is content there is no thought. Bliss is the state without thought. If we are quiet we can sense thoughts coming before they happen. It feels like a vibration. We bless the thought and bring attention back to the breath.

We can't know the truth but we can be with the truth. We merge with the unfolding dynamic. Joy of the sunset happens before we realize it. The moment we become conscious joy is a memory and becomes desire. Desire is the memory of past pleasure.

I see the tree and the tree is me. The internal is the macrocosm. The universe my creation. God is the creator but I am the hand. This chair, I brought my body to this place and the chair became manifest. This bird that chirps in the wilderness, my echo chirping in the wilderness. Where is the tree? My eyes catch light and the tree appears, from photo cells I recreate the tree in my mind. The tree that I see is the one in my mind. Do you see the same tree?

All of creation is a manifestation of God. Evil thinks that it exists but in yoga there is no separation from the divine. When you become the tree and the tree becomes you there will be no violence. If I give my attention to the darkness, it creates the darkness. If I give my attention to the light it creates the light.

Experience nourishes the ego. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge and were cast from the garden. Knowledge is knowledge of difference, comparison, measuring, separation. The mind wants to have experiences because it wants to know. God is beyond knowledge. God is being without a thought; God is the act of listening.

All effort denies the existence of God. Creation happens. Love accepts all things. Love is listening. When we try to change creation, that is effort. Thoughts are effort and effort comes from ego.

The mind creates the abyss and the heart crosses it. The mind is comparison which is separation and measurement. Comparison is judgment and judgment is violence. Comparison is desire. The mind is the cause. With meditation all thoughts can be digested into pure love. It is the heart.

An emotion comes to us. We healed it through the body with yoga. We healed it in the mind through the breath. We healed it in the spirit through prayer and meditation. Body, mind, then spirit. Speech is surgery. We release our frustrations upon the world but the world is us. We cut open the external with a word. Speech comes last, last resort. Emotion the root cause of disease. World change is not the objective of yoga; it is the by product of self-awakening.

Traditionally, yoga is preparation for prayer and meditation. Meditation has no purpose or goal. It cultivates 'is-ness'.

This journal entry is a work in progress. Please send your ideas to joseph@greenbookcafe.com.