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THE NOTION OF GROWTH
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EXAMPLE: We observe that the notion of growth arises almost exclusively in times of relative quietness, i.e. when our attention is not immersed in the events of daily life and when we have time and opportunity to reflect on us and on life in general (e.g. during periods of waiting and quietness, in open nature, etc.).
We discover that these moments of awakening occur more often when we intentionally prevent the intake of new karmas (i.e. when we stop refueling negative emotions, give up carelessness, laziness, indifference, put energy behind our intention to grow, actively maintain equanimity even though this takes effort, etc.).
We now transfer this insight into action and e.g. read books describing higher states of consciousness, search out the presence of those more advanced on the path etc.
- Consciously prolonging the duration (sthiti) - Initially this is a basic readiness to intentionally explore ever deeper dimensions of new insights as they arise. Once our insights begin to last longer, it is mainly our intention to prevent the intake of new karmas as in the previous step that makes them more stable.
The duration of an event also gives us concrete information about the stage or phase of development we experience.
EXAMPLE: We observe that initially our feelings of awakening (our notion of growth) appear only for a very short time. The respective descriptions inform us that the notion of growth arises in the fourth stage of development (gunasthana) and that it has three phases: - The first phase is characterized by fleetingness. - At the first rising of the notion of growth all karma that
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