Exercise

Choose, from the given list of feelings, three that are noteworthy. Discuss each one from three perspectives – past, present and future – and comment upon how these feelings have influenced your life direction.

Teaching

Taking stock of how we feel is important, especially when we bring into our awareness the profound impact that certain feelings have had, and may still be having. This is an important step towards bringing them under the control of conscious will.

absorbed, adventurous, affection, alert, alive, amazed, amused, animated, appreciation, aroused, astonished, 
blissful, breathless, buoyant, calm, carefree, cheerful, comfortable, complacent, composed, concerned, 
confident, contented, cool, curious, dazzled, delighted, eager, ecstatic, effervescent, elated, electrified, 
encouraged, energetic, engrossed, enjoyment, enlivened, enthusiastic, exalted, excited, exhilarated, expansive
expectant, exuberant, fascinated, free, friendly, fulfilled, gay, glad, gleeful, glorious, glowing, grateful, and so on.

Exercise

In pairs, spend 10-15 minutes asking questions and listening to each other carefully, discovering details of the partner's life. Then, in the larger group, each introduces their partner to the group.

Teaching

It is both helpful and encouraging to hear yourself spoken of. Also the ability to listen to another is of primary importance, as is the skill of assimilating information and reporting it in summary.

Exercise

Record the circumstances of your life at this time in factual terms, according to these 7 categories:
1. Physical. Health, exercise and diet.
2. Mental. Social involvements, financial well-being.
3. Emotional. Home, family, love and joy.
4. Growth. Work, challenges, examinations.
5. Vision. Goals, purpose, intentions.
6. Learning. Spirituality, philosophy, conscience.
7. Freedom. Faith, adventure, joie de vivre.

Teaching

A major interference with our development arises because of silliness and false appraisal. It is very important to ground our feelings and ideas by taking stock occasionally, perhaps monthly. In this exercise, we focus on facts and we dispel certain areas of delusion. When it is done regularly and frequently, it offers an excellent system of self-appraisal by which we can measure how well we are progressing.

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Exercise

In 2s or 3s, each person chooses 3 qualities that they recognise and admire in the other person/s and speaks of them.

Teaching

Giving and receiving sincere compliments generates love and confidence.

Exercise

Discuss any proposition or idea within a small group and find a way to focus on what is said rather than attaching yourself to a staunch position.

Teaching

Few people have developed the ability to discuss the merits of an idea free of personal emotion and ego. It takes practice to do this, then the mind becomes clearer, and deeper insights unfold.

Some aphorisms and ideas
A charming personality is great riches.
A consent after refusing is worse than a refusal.
Accomplishment is more valuable than what is accomplished.
If you avoid wrongdoing, it will avoid you.
Love's reward is love itself.
Man seeks freedom and pursues captivity.
Man sees in another his own fault.
No one would do wrong if he knew the wrong of it.
Silence speaks louder than words.
The greater the responsibility, the greater the person.
The more one can bear, the more one is given to bear.
The more you depend upon God, the more God becomes dependable.
When the world is let into the temple, the temple is lost
A person’s grade is shown by what makes then laugh and cry.
The shortest and easiest way to reach God is to serve others, not to bother others and to make others happy.
The price of relationship is attention; the price of power is responsibility
The perfection of love leads to harmony. The perfection of harmony leads to beauty.
Self-effacement is key to self-expression
Be indifferent to phenomena.
Truth, Love and Limitation create wisdom.
Control of desire is control of life. Suppression of desire is suppression of life.
Attention is the devotion of mind

Exercise

List the 12 things in life that you value most in order of importance.

Teaching
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It is very revealing to discover what is most important to you, especially if you go on to consider how that is reflected in your decisions about allocation of time and money.

Exercise

Imagine you are a reporter whose task is to summarise fairly, in a paragraph or two, the life qualities and achievements of someone recently deceased – and you are that someone.

Teaching
How we appear to society is not the deepest part of who we are, and yet social appraisal is a useful guide that measures something important about us. To be able to see ourselves as if through the eyes of an objective observer is a true skill and a definite stage of development on the spiritual path.