Meditation and Prayer:

July 19, 2022

Do you have a meditation practice?

William Bloom and the Spiritual Companions Trust have very recently published Meditation Masterclass which can be downloaded (for a small fee).

‘How to Meditate’, in Momma Zen by Karen Maezen Miller  is recommended – it shares a practice of the simplest kind: breathing in and out to the count of ten, repeated. The work of The Lorians brings many rich resources for finding our way into an inner life that is congruently framed in terms that resonate now.

The vast subject of Meditation and Prayer also opens the door to the subject of Forgiveness. A few treasured prayers below bring some of these concepts into view, including Binnie A Dansby’s work with Forgiveness as a living practice, and arising from A Course in Miracles. This work has been and is of huge influence, and brings together the spiritual and the biographical in ways that make it clear that they are inseparable. A Course in Miracles focuses profoundly on the process of forgiveness as a metaphysical inquiry into the mind.

Binnie Dansby on The Process of Forgiveness:

You are invited to do your own research, and to write your own prayers. Let get as real as we can with each other about where you / we really are with your/ our inner practices.

It’s time to deepen, together. For most of us that means it’s time to start.

Again, and again. And again.

 

When the heart is hard there is no love

in the house no sap to bend the tree

no song to greet the rising sun

no dance, not free.

like a shrivelled hardened nut

it hides within its shell

it knows no overflow, 

it feels like hell.

But life in all its compassion knows

it will have to fashion mighty blows

to crack, to shatter open, 

to bring into the light this heart.

In these awakening moments

rivers of tears are cried

and hours of pain felt, 

very delicate moments

regaining a vulnerable state.

A softened heart bathed in tears

knows the enfoldments of the love of All love

and no longer needs to hide

pp61 Silently Within, Modern Sufi Poetry

Deborah O’Brien Bell

Self-directed learning experience

July 19, 2022

Self-directed learning experience

Work on your self-directed learning experience, and move into the action phase if you haven’t already.

Discuss with your study group, and if necessary, with your group tutor.

See the notes in Practical Guidelines for Year Two to guide you further, and start as soon as possible.

Study group

July 19, 2022

Study group

Maintain a broadly 4 weekly rhythm for these meetings.

The group should be held by a different member each month.

Create time for deep sharing, for including a sense of ‘sharing a cup of tea’, for spiritual practices, discussing the set readings and arranging visits together to sacred sites if possible, or encouraging each other to do this in your own vicinity.

This is also the space in which to practice your ceremonies, and is both important and very moving. Study groups typically meet for a minimum of 3 hours, and often for considerably longer in the second year.

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