Integral Institute's Roger Walsh, author of Essential Spirituality: The 7 Essential Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind, is a distinguished scholar of East\West studies, holds 3 doctorates, and perhaps most importantly, is the husband of his spiritual teacher—Frances Vaughan! During a summer visit to the Denver\Boulder area, Roger generously offered an intimate, enlightening gift to the local Integral community, A Karma Yoga Seminar. We invite you to enjoy Roger's wit, sincerity and heart as he brings illumined awareness to the mystery of our daily, workaday lives, to both the sacred and the profane, and everything in between. Our series begins with an introduction by Ken Wilber....
What's so obvious that it's impossible to avoid? Everpresent Awareness, Ken explains. And yet... how exactly does one practice, or "apply" awareness if it's everpresent? Karma Yoga.
With Karma Yoga, we continue to do what we're already doing—work our jobs, be with loved ones, do fitness training, etc.—but there's one key difference.... According to Roger, the 9 essential steps of Karma Yoga provide a new context for work, play and relationships, which means a new attitude overall.
In this clip, Roger explains steps 1, 2 & 3 of Karma Yoga—Stop, Reflect and Dedicate the Activity to a Higher Goal. "Here's where it gets really powerful: the meaning and importance and impact of any activity or experience is not something that is just given to us, it is the function of the intention that we bring to it." Yet first we must pause, and take a look within....
As we practice impeccably, the fear, anxiety, happiness, and agitation begin to arise in our awareness, and we get to work with it. The beauty of this process is that we don’t have to do anything with this "stuff" except to be aware of it, and through time, it will work itself out. The mind is a self-healing, self-trancending organ; it doesn’t need us—that’s the good news!
Not only is it OK to have a good time while doing spiritual practice, you actually do a much more effective practice if you're having fun. "Enlightenment is about lightening up!," says Roger. However, it's also essential to attempt to practice impeccably.
