Class Summary 9-26-2008

This class focused on a number of comments and questions.

One comment was regarding a practice of sending peace to an ever widening circle of beings until one was imagining sending peace to the whole world.  The comment/question was that this seemed like something that was too big to really imagine.  My impression is that it can be useful to imagine stretching one's awareness to include the whole world, however one also needs to realize that extending peace to the whole world is not as important as extending peace to those in one's immediate vicinity.  I would summarize this as "Meditate globally, love locally."

Another set of comments/questions was regarding some of the popular literature on the idea that our thoughts determine our experience in life, especially our material or social attributes.  My impression is that the idea our thoughts control what we get in life is nonsense.  Spirit is not someone we can manipulate by finding the right magic formula.  Sprit's kingdom is the kingdom of love, and Spirit's power is the ability to bring love into all situations.  Spirit is all-powerful, not because of Spirit's power over the material world, but because eventually there will be no material world, only a world of love.  Love is where we are headed.

We can ask Spirit for help, but the most effective help will be in expressing love or compassion.  Asking Spirit for material goods or even health is not the most effective use of prayer.  Imagine that you are playing a game of cards.  Praying for material goods, health,  or other things in the physical world is like praying for the cards you want.  Unfortunately, Spirit is NOT in charge of what cards are being dealt.  Praying for the ability to be loving no matter what is like praying to play your hand well.  That help is always available from Spirit.

Compassion, or love, is complex, so one can simplify the development of compassion by meditating on simpler elements of it.  For example, one can have the intention of being more gentle.  Remember from last session that there are three general realms of experience, body, speech and mind.  So one could place one's awareness on the body and move more gently, or make sounds more gently or gaze more gently.  One could place awareness on verbal experience and practice speaking more gentle words (this would be different than making the sounds more gentle) and thinking thoughts with a gentler meaning.  One could imagine relating to the world in a more gentle manner, both in situations where that was easy and in situations where that was not so easy.

Of course, compassion is not just gentleness.  Sometimes compassion demands firmness instead of gentleness.  But you can develop a number of qualities in turn and then reflect on how to apply each of those to the practice of compassion.

Class Summary 9-16-2008

Meditation: Remember that meditation can refer to both the process of training specific mental qualities and to the applications of those mental qualities to generate specific effects. These are two separate aspects of meditation as the techniques for training the mental qualities are somewhat different from techniques which apply the mental qualities.

Attending meditation:
Training - Develops the mental qualities of flexibility and warmth, or tolerance.
Applications - Increases breadth of awareness about the center of attention. Increases ability to explore emotionally charged topics without being caught up in or avoiding the emotions.

Exercise I - Place attention on the sensations associated with breathing. One set of sensations is the tactile sensations of air moving across the nostrils or the lips. Another set of sensations is the sense of expansion and contraction in the lower abdomen as you breathe. Simply notice the sensations associated with breathing without trying to control them and without trying to judge them.

If your attention moves away from the sensations of breathing to thoughts, then simply label the thoughts as “thinking” and return your attention to the sensations of breathing. If your attention moves to other sensations, then label those as “sensing” and return your attention to the sensations of breathing. It is not “bad” or “wrong” to be distracted. Just gently return your attention to the sensations associated with breathing.

This is an attending technique and trains your mind to accept distractions without chasing them or being upset with them.

Exercise II - Place your attention on the sensations of breathing as in Exercise I. Now deliberately extend your awareness to thoughts and every now and then create a thought that expresses a positive quality about your breath. For example, “My breath is gentle,” “My breath is peaceful”, “My breath gives me life”, “I enjoy my breath”, “I am thankful for my breath”, “My breath is a gift”, “My breath is Spirit”, “I breathe in Spirit, I breathe out love”, etc. You can even use single words as thoughts, "gentle", "peaceful", etc.

Keep most of your attention on the sensations and only a little attention on the thoughts. The thoughts are sort of in the background and you think them every now and then, without much energy.

Notice how this exercise differs from the first one. Try to reflect on the difference. One is not “better” than the other, merely different, and you can practice either one as you like.

Exercise III - Place your attention on the sensations of breathing as in Exercise I. Now, instead of thinking, extend your awareness to an imagined experience of something positive associated with the breath. For example, imagining a healing energy extending outward with your breath, a healing energy coming into you with your breath, your breath carrying away tension or disease, your breath like light filling your body, ...

Again keep most of your attention on the sensations and only a small amount on the imagined experience. Notice how this exercise gives you a different experience than the first two.

Principles - There are three general realms of experience. These sometimes referred to as: body, speech, and mind. The body refers to the realm of sensory or physical experience. Speech refers to verbal experience including verbal thought. Mind refers to non-physical, non-verbal experience. Meditation techniques train our consciousness to be increasingly aware of these realms of experience and to shift its attention among them in various ways.

The three exercises above are examples of this. In each the main realm of awareness is the body. In the first one the body is the only realm of awareness which is given attention. In the second some attention is given to the realm of thought, and in the third some attention is given to the realm of mind (imagination). These changes in attention yield different results.

The results also vary from one person to another. You are invited to explore these techniques to find out how each one affects you.

In subsequent sessions we will explore other phenomena to place attention upon in order to obtain various physical, mental, and spiritual effects.