April 3 - Review of Chapter 1 Awakening through Love & Receptive Mode Meditations1-3
April 10 - Chapter 2 The View of Dzogchen Tradition & Meditation-2 - Becoming More Deeply Receptive to Love & Compassion
April 17 - Chapter 2 The Purpose of Spiritual Practice,Taking Refuge, Dedication & Meditation 2
April 24 - Including Difficult Emotions on the Path & Meditation-4 Compassionate Presence to Feelings
Review
Before moving to Chapter 2, we reviewed the Key points of Chapter 1 of Awakening Through Love and Markansky’s Meditations 1-3. *If you're new: the key points below briefly summarize the material and meditations we have covered during the month of March. Reading these key points and practicing with the meditations linked below them will help you transition into the group smoothly, however, you are welcome to join the group with or without any experience with this material.
1. Qualities of absolute goodness lie deep within all of us. Within each of us are radiant qualities of absolute goodness – pure and unconditional love, compassion, wisdom and equanimity. By reconnecting with this innate inner goodness, we can foster a more compassionate, fulfilling, and transformational life.
2. The Importance of Receiving Love: Truly receiving love from others is as vital as extending love. Allowing ourselves to be open to love and care helps dissolve barriers created by past conditioning and enables a deeper connection with ourselves and others. We can deepen our capacity to receive love through daily practice of the meditations mentioned below and by recognizing and receiving loving kindness from others in our daily lives.
3. Field of Care Meditation is the foundational practice within Sustainable Compassion Training (SCT), developed by John Makransky. In the field of care meditation we bring to mind what is called a field of care, that helps us sense that we are held in an environment of love, care and compassion, and helps us access the loving qualities of love, acceptance and care from our own underlying awareness. There are 3 options offered to establish our field of care: (1) a caring moment when someone was happy to be with you, or see you or listen to you, (2) a benefactor – someone that you feel grateful that has been in your life or in the world now or in the past, or (3) a spiritual figure – that holds you and your world in unconditional, enduring love, care, compassion and wisdom. You choose which option is most effective to help you sense that you are held in a field of warmth, deep acceptance, love and compassion. Once you start to experience the loving qualities in your meditation, you just relax into them, letting the loving qualities embrace you and become a healing environment for all your physical and mental feelings.
There is a useful metaphor that we can use for the field of care meditation. It’s like when you are thirsty, you drop a bucket into the well to draw up the water for you to drink. Once you draw up the water, you just drink it. You don’t spend time playing with the bucket or ruminating about the field of care and whether it is good enough. When we inhabit that field of care it draws up qualities from our own underlying awareness and like drawing up water we simply drink it.
4. Receptive Mode Meditation Practice (Makransky’s Meditations 1, 2, and 3) allows us to become increasingly receptive to the powers of love and compassion that are available in the depth of our awareness. In these meditations we bring to mind our field of care. Once we start to experience the loving qualities that come with that, we notice whenever a part of us comes up that has doubts or wants to think about something else. When we notice that happening we let that part of us and its feelings be gently included within the spacious warmth, acceptance and compassion of our field of care as a loving healing environment.
5. Becoming a healing environment for ourselves and others. We are learning that our basic awareness can embrace all of our parts and feelings in unconditional care and compassion as a healing environment. The utter openness, clarity and compassion of our basic awareness is our ultimate secure base from which to extend love and compassion to others sustainably and inclusively without emotional exhaustion or compassion fatigue.
Meditation Practice
Practice daily one of John Makransky’s Meditations 1-3, narrated by Ken Lenington of Open Circle Mindfulness Asheville. *If you're new: listen to Intro to Field of Care by Paul Condon on the Sustainable Compassion Training website before listening to Meditation 1- Field of Care. https://sustainablecompassion.org/audio/field-of-care-meditation-2/
Meditation 1 – Field of Care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5PGqp_dLUE
Meditation 2 – Becoming More Deeply Receptive to Love and Compassion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIDAkVrYlNI
Meditation 3 – Being a Loving Figure with another Being
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1dIeCO0cJU
Suggested Reading
Begin reading Chapter 2 of Awakening Through Love by John Makransky. *If you're new: begin with Chapter 1 of Awakening Through Love.
April 10 - Chapter 2 Letting Be: Relaxing into Natural Wisdom & Meditation 2 - Becoming more Deeply Receptive to Love & Compassion
Review
Chapter 2: Letting Be: Relaxing into Natural Wisdom
· Reading Tips
o This chapter presents the “vast & all-encompassing view” of the Dzogchen tradition of Tibet, which the author asserts is impossible to understand merely by thinking hard about it.
o The author invites us to “engage not only our thinking mind but also our aesthetic appreciation, intuition and heart,”
o Do not worry if you don’t fully understand the material. Simply allow it to “gently evoke your intuitive capacity to relax deeply and to enjoy the essential goodness of your being”
· The Innate Pure Nature of Mind
o Dzogchen means “Great Perfection.” It is not about becoming perfect; it’s about recognizing that our mind’s true nature is already perfect, and it has been pure and perfect from the beginning.
o Dzogchen teachings help us discover a deeper awareness that has always been present.
o Sky-like Mind. The nature of the mind is open and spacious. Metaphor: Storms pass through the sky – clouds, thunder, lightning, wind, rain but the sky itself remains vast and untouched. In the same way our thoughts and emotions come and go, but awareness – the open luminous nature of mind remains.
o Mirror-Like Awareness. Reflecting everything just as it is, the natural mind is never stained by what it reflects. Like a mirror, we can learn to witness whatever arises in our mind, without clinging or pushing away.
o Ocean Metaphor: “Waves may arise and crash, but the depths remain still. Our emotions may surge, but our true awareness is vast and calm.” We can learn to reconnect with this deeper awareness and not get thrown around by every wave. “When we remember this deeper nature of mind, even in the middle of a stressful moment, we can pause — and instead of reacting, respond from spaciousness and love.” We usually identify with the surface layers of our mind – thoughts, reactions, emotions. We mistake the waves for the ocean.
Practice
Practice meditation regularly, listening to the audio of Meditation-2, Becoming More Deeply Receptive to Love and Compassion https://sustainablecompassion.org/audio/becoming-more-deeply-receptive-to-love-and-compassion
Session 7, April 17
April 17
Review
Chapter 2: Letting Be: Relaxing into Natural Wisdom: The Purpose of Spiritual Life
In the Dzogchen tradition, the goal of the path is to rediscover our original nature of pure awareness
It is our self-centered confusion that hides the great, innate capacities of goodness that abide in the nature of our minds.
We practice to become receptive to that tremendous capacity of wisdom and compassion allowing it to manifest spontaneously in our lives.
The spiritual path is a process of uncovering, not achieving.
Taking Refuge: We can begin our daily meditation bringing to mind our spiritual benefactors in our Field of Care meditation with reverence, receptivity and devotion. This evokes trust in the basic goodness of reality and allows us to relax more deeply in the loving qualities of our own wise and loving heart.
Dedication: Practices of reverence, devotion, love, and wisdom help our inner goodness to increasingly manifest. The benefit or "merit" of practice is the spiritual power of well-being and goodness. So as not to fritter this power away in trivial or self-centered ways, we conclude our meditation practice by dedicating the benefit (merit) of it to our own awakening and for the sake of all beings.
Example: May any benefit generated by our practice today be shared equally with all that we encounter, both near and far away, and may its effects ripple continuously to aid in the healing and transformation of the world.
Other examples of dedication:
"May all beings find peace and happiness".
"May all beings be free from suffering".
"May all beings be filled with wisdom, kindness, and compassion".
Practice
Meditation -2, Becoming More Deeply Receptive to Love and Compassion https://sustainablecompassion.org/audio/becoming-more-deeply-receptive-to-love-and-compassion/
Experiment with "Taking Refuge" in your spiritual benefactors at the beginning of your daily meditation practice, and "Dedicating the Merit" at the end.
Continue reading Chapter 2: Letting Be; Relaxing into Natural Wisdom.
Session 8, April 24
Review
Taking Difficult Emotions as the Path
· All of us have difficult, challenging feelings from time to time--anxieties, worries, annoyances, frustrations, envies, resentments, stresses, loneliness, longing, rage, confusion, fear, grief, jealousy, feelings of inadequacy, self-hatred, ego-centered pride. Intense, stressful aspects of our daily lives trigger these feelings in us.
· Typically we try to avoid difficult, uncomfortable feelings by suppressing them or distracting ourselves from them (working too hard, unconscious eating, harmful substances, social media and other addictions.)
· Repeatedly avoiding our feelings creates inner tightness and stress which makes it difficult to be fully present and open-hearted in our relationships and open to the qualities available in our basic awareness such as spaciousness, love, compassion, equanimity, and wisdom.
· Meditation-4 Compassionate Presence to Feelings is a direct way to become present to all our feelings in a spaciously compassionate and healing way.
· According to Makransky, the 4 principles of this meditation practice are:
1. Notice the feeling within any state of mind or body.
2. Fully allow it to have all the space it needs to find its own place.
3. Rest with or within the feeling.
4. And just let everything be, with a sense of spaciousness. This lets feelings metabolize themselves within a space of deep acceptance and warmth.
· Practicing this meditation transforms our ways of being with others, since our ability to be present to our own feelings with compassion is what enables us to be present to other people in the same way.
Practice
· Practice meditation with the audio: Meditation 4: Compassionate Presence to Feelings https://sustainablecompassion.org/audio/compassionate-presence-to-feelings/
*If you're new or want to deepen your practice, listen to the following audios:
Intro to Field of Care by Paul Condon
https://sustainablecompassion.org/audio/field-of-care-meditation-2/
Meditation 1 – Field of Care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5PGqp_dLUE
Meditation 2 – Becoming More Deeply Receptive to Love and Compassion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIDAkVrYlNI
Meditation 3 – Being a Loving Figure with another Being
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1dIeCO0cJU
