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.
2 comments:
For some reason, blogger assigned this comment to the first post. I copied it and put it below this post which it references.
I apologize for any inconvenience or confusion
--Joe
Hi :) your statement, '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.'... Is this to mean that without love there can really be no life... that a world without love is in a sense, doomed...and that to love, really starts with yourself and that you must share it (love) to make any sense at all out of life? And, that by sharing the love and compassion from within yourself life can have more meaning..
...
There's nothing you can know that isn't known
Nothing you can see that isn't shown
No where you can be that isn't where you're meant to be
It's easy
All you need is love
: )
SoulSurvivor
SoulSurvivor, thanks for you comment.
I think I would agree that without love there is no spiritual life. I am not sure if physical life can exist without love, but I know that people who are alive and feel completely unloved often want to die, or may lose the will to live.
One idea that helps me when I think of love is the idea that love is a verb more than a noun. So if Spirit is love, then Spirit is a verb more than a noun. And if I am love, then I am more a verb than a noun.
Hope this helps.
Peace,
--Joe
Post a Comment