Beloved students, I greet you once again as Earth greets September. With the autumnal equinox, may you all know balance and joy. May your meditations and activities be blessed with grace and abundant joy, and may the balance of daylight and night fill you with the wonder of life on planet Earth. In all activities and at all times, look at the world with fresh eyes, and contemplate the adage: “As above, so below; as within, so without.”

Last month we focused on generating insight, a topic that offered many possibilities for contemplation. Flashes of insight are not always purely a product of spiritual work. While often associated with objects of contemplation or meditation, they may also arise when taking in the beauty of a flower, the elegance of a tree, or the magnificence of a mountain. Insights arising along these lines are gratifying to receive and can be quite uplifting. While they may bring about a peaceful mind, that peace is usually fairly transient, and sooner than most would prefer, the mind returns to its fixations and preoccupations.

As we noted, the most important aspect in generating flashes of insight is to develop a capacity to see into the true nature of something. At first, flashes reveal the empty nature of the self, or ego, and then the nature of the body and mind. As the mind becomes still and rests in the space between thoughts, the breath begins to dissolve into the present moment. Finally, the breath and the present moment become inseparable, each revealing something precious about the other.