February 15, 2023

Notes by Ambika Mishra

Review

Last week Sumanji shared a story about a girl at school who was asked to write what the seven wonders of the world were. The girl wrote that the seven wonders of the world were to see, hear, feel, taste, the ability to think, to be able to love,e and to be able to be kind. The girl focused on valuing herself and her capabilities over monuments. On the same note of valuing ourselves, we discussed self confidence, and how to build self-confidence. We have to keep the promises we make to ourselves first, and then others. When we make ourselves promises and keep them, then we build trust and confidence in ourselves. The RAW was to sit still for 5 minutes every day so that we could keep that promise and build self-confidence.

Story

Once upon a time, there was a colony of ants. Two of the ants went looking for food together, and they found 2 huge cookies. To them, the cookies were enormous, and could feed their families for months! One ant broke off a small piece of the cookie and started taking it home to his family. The other ant scoffed and said they would take the whole cookie in one piece! The first ant took the piece back home and brought his family to help break parts of the cookie off too, and eventually managed to carry the whole cookie to his home in bits and pieces, while the other ant still struggled to try to take the full cookie on his own in one piece, and eventually gave up. 

Moral

The two ants symbolize the two ways we can choose to deal with our goals, and the cookies symbolize our goals. The first ant took the cookie in small pieces and eventually managed to get it all. In the same way, we should try to break our goals down into smaller pieces so that we can eventually tackle them completely. For example, let’s say you had a watermelon. No one would swallow the watermelon whole! You would have to break it down and chop it up to properly eat it. We should also break down our goals so we can succeed at them. 

Activity

For our activity, Sumanji told us to visualize our favorite food. Imagine how it smells, how it looks, and your hunger for it. Imagine eating the food, and tasting its pure deliciousness. Imagine savoring the food bite by bite, wishing it lasted forever. Now, choose not to find that food and eat it after this class. Sumanji shared with us how we have to willingly learn to give up pleasures with our goals, and accept that pleasures don’t last forever. Not eating the food instigates self-growth and letting go of desires. 

RAW

The RAW this week was that whatever food you were imagining, choose not to eat it at all this week. This will help us grow and let go of desires.