We are excited to share with you the Weekly Recap of our most viewed and new resources that you may have missed on the website. Thank you for your support and interest!
We delved into the topics of Prospering, Transformational Path and Loving Kindness.
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Have you ever wondered about the existence of varying types of intelligent civilizations across our vast universe? Surely you must have. But have you ever wondered how those civilizations may have evolved in very different ways than ours, physically, emotionally, and spiritually? Have you ever considered that there could be other planets across our vast universe(s) where all of the inhabitants have figured out a way to cooperate together and truly create a system where every lifeform is afforded the inalienable right to live long and prosper? Not just for individual benefits, but for the benefits to society on the whole. Can you imagine a planet where the inhabitants aren’t plagued by selfish ambitions that hurt so many of their own planets inhabitants? A society where inhabitants individual good hearted ambitions are rewarded – yet no man, woman, or child is left behind? And one where no man or woman with the ability to contribute allows themselves to be a drain on the system?
Here’s what we know… We know that there are billions of galaxies in our universe, and we know that generally speaking, much of the universe is made up of common life sustaining elements such as carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. Therefore, it’s verypossible that life can exist elsewhere.
So if life has potentially propagated and evolved with intelligence in hundreds, thousands, or millions of other galaxies throughout the universe, can you imagine if we were able to track the progress of all of these pockets of sentient life to see which ones have thrived and which ones failed? And which ones truly acted in love toward all of the creations on their planet?
To take that further, how do you think we “earthlings” would rate on the overall inter-galactic scale of universal love and compassion if that was the case? Some of these planets inhabitants would probably be dominated by incredibly stringent dictatorships where all life-forms reported to one brutal regime, similar to some primitive tribes. Others would adopt a live-and-let-live libertarian environment where no one meant anyone else any harm, but at the same time there was a percentage of the society who lived in severe poverty and pain and received little compassion. And then there might be every other kind of society as well, including very utopian ones. Star-Trek and Star Wars certainly explore these ideas.
If you could look at it from that transcendent viewpoint as if through the eyes of our creator, how do you think Earth’s population would rate on the overall context of possible outcomes? Would the fact that we have so many human beings packed in prisons, starving in third world countries, oppressed in militant regimes, and marginalized by inequality, be looked upon as a seriously failed creation? Would the fact that we have knowingly poisoned our environment and developed weapons with the capability to blow our entire planet to bits at the push of a button be looked at as “evolved” in the universal landscape?
If we knew that hundreds of other planetary civilizations did exist, and that some were much more utopian than ours, might we band together in solidarity with a little more “earthling pride” so to speak – similar to how college grads from one school create a common bond that transcends their native geography and culture? If that were the case, might we express more common dignity and try to be the best darn civilization in the universe(s)?
It’s interesting that in a number of our earliest Biblical creation stories we see humanity portrayed as a seriously flawed and sinful from the get-go. Is this perhaps the view of humanity that has defined us? Has it, perhaps, become a self fulfilling prophecy of sorts? And does it have to be that way now that we can understand those stories as ancient tribal explanations for the world as they perceived it at that time?
Are there any steps that we can take in order to increase the quality of earths inter-galactic life quality rating (the “IGLQR”) in relation to those other civilizations around the solar system? Assuming they existed of course…
// Eric Alexander is an author, speaker, and the founder of Christian Evolution. Read more articles and interviews by Eric here.
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I have explained in many places my understanding of Jesus’ idea of God’s Realm, or Kingdom, or Heaven, or Sacred Unity. This was not a place where one goes after death, but rather are descriptive words that refer to a state of mind. It is not a place but an experience of the Divine which is available to any of us in the here and now. And I believe Jesus laid out a path for us both by his teaching and his life which could lead one to a personal experience of this elevated state of mind. The Christian contemporaries refer to this as illumination brought on by kenosis or self-emptying. The Buddhist might call thisenlightenment, kensho or satori, achieved by meditation and living the Eightfold Path. A Hindu might use the term, moksha, meaning freedom.
If we dig a little deeper, we can find some differences in these respective teachings intended to lead to transformation. I believe these differences may be more nuance than substance. For example, the Eastern teachers seem to put more emphasis on withdrawal, silence, and meditation. Jesus’ path seems to emphasize more engaging, reaching out, and risk-taking. While we do know that Jesus went off to pray frequently, it is not clear if he had an active meditation practice. It may simply have been assumed by his followers and even his culture at the time. My own presumption is that he did.
Let me be clear, I am referring here to the path and not the end goal. I am certain any Buddhist who is trying to live by the Nobel Eightfold Path is by nature engaging, reaching out and risking. What is common to all of these paths, in spite of their differences, is the assumption that if more people followed the path, they would become more awake to the suffering caused in large part by the inequality of social systems. If more people became awake to these inequities and lived with compassionate hearts, eventually the world would also be transformed. It is my sincere belief that Jesus, in spite of his difficult situation, believed there could be a new, transformed world order.
ProgressiveChristianity.org is frequently challenged by those who believe we do not address social justice issues often enough or some would suggest, not at all. It should be obvious to anyone who actually reads our material that we do address social injustice and social issues. However, it has always been my belief that if we take on these issues and conflicts without an open heart, without some kind of internal transformation, it is too easy to become angry, add to the conflict, and frankly be less effective. It is also a recipe for burnout.
In his book, The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg writes Christian life should be relational and transformational. According to Borg, there are really two transformations needed and they are “twins.” He suggests one is a personal and spiritual and the other is communal, social and political.
In other words, if we are going to be effective change-agents for a more compassionate and just world, we must come at this change with open minds and open hearts. We first need to work on our own internal transformations through our own intentional path. Only then can our effort to transform our society and our world have any long term impact. This is what the early followers of Yeshua, people of The Way, believed. This was and still is the path or Way of Yeshua.
Clearly Jesus told us if we want to experience Sacred Unity, or the Realm of God, we need to go where there is pain and try to alleviate the suffering. But we are challenged to do this with an open and compassionate heart. Our hearts and our eyes will be opened when we reach out and actually serve. One of reasons he suggests that we serve is to gain this awareness, to become awake to the fact that these are “God’s children.” Compassionate serving, even sacrifice is part of the path. You cannot serve with a compassionate heart without eventually seeing those whom you are serving as your brother, your sister, your mother, your father, or eventually as yourself, even when it is “the least of these” whom you have compassionately served. All boundaries are erased. The served and the server become one. The ultimate goal however is to break down divisions and separation and move to a new understanding of our interconnectedness and oneness.
Today some of the world’s issues seem so big, the needs so great, we can become frozen, often feeling helpless. We wonder if we can have any impact as an individual or even an organization. Much of this, I believe, is caused by “too much information.” With television, social media and satellites we have instant knowledge of suffering everywhere and anywhere in the world, in 3D and color. With few exceptions most thinking people in this country know the world does face a real, life ending, ecological disaster unless we make radical change in our behavior. What in the world can we do that would have any impact besides recycling and driving cars with better gas mileage?
On the other hand in part because of technical world and the social media we are also given the opportunity today to experience oneness or interconnectedness the world has never experienced before. Young people from over 25 countries go on our website every week. We have a whole generation of young adults who have grown up, in some ways, without geographic or language boundaries. They know what is going on in countries many of us never knew existed until recently. They travel with ease all over the world and communicate regularly with other young people in what we older folks might have referred to as a foreign country. Many of them no longer see ethnic or racial differences any more than we might notice someone with blond or red hair.
They are inheriting a very different world than it was only fifty years ago. But they are still human and will still have to overcome some of the weaknesses of the human condition in their attempt to forge their way. The survival of the human race may be dependent on their ability to move past the egoic mentality that has plagued our tiny planet for the last ten thousand years.
There must be a transformation in the world if the human race is going to survive. According to scientists we can now actually calculate a deadline for human life on our planet, and it is not that far out there. Many young people all over the world are aware of this as well. Take a look at the movies and television programs today that are about end-times and the final survivalists. What a strange way it must be to grow up with this idea as a major influence.
So the question I leave you with is what can we do? Are we part of the problem? Do we have wise teachers today to help these young people while we can? Do we offer a model or a path for both personal and world transformation?
I believe we do and it is time we started making this clearer.
The Metta Bhavana, or Development of Lovingkindness, practice is one of the most ancient forms of Buddhist practice, one that has been passed down in an unbroken line for over 2,500 years.
We’re often taught as children that we should love others. Religious teachings say, for example, that we should “love others as ourselves.” But how do we learn to love others? And what happens if we don’t particularly like, never mind love, ourselves? The development of lovingkindness meditation practice is the practical means by which we learn to cultivate love for ourselves and others.
The practice helps us to actively cultivate positive emotional states towards ourselves and others, so that we become more patient, kind, accepting, and compassionate.
It’s part of a series of four practices which lead to the arising of:
lovingkindness
compassion (empathizing with others’ suffering)
empathetic joy (rejoicing in others’ wellbeing and joy)
and equanimity (patient acceptance of both joy and suffering, both our own and others’).
The metta bhavana is the foundation practice for this series of meditations.
The practice, leading as it does to the realization of compassion, is central to Buddhism, to the extent that the Dalai Lama has said “My religion is kindness.” While this statement may appear almost platitudinous, it’s actually indicative of something profound about spiritual practice.
How to get started
1) Read the introduction to lovingkindness
2) Learn techniques for cultivating lovingkindness
3) Start cultivating lovingkindness
Much of our unhappiness comes from the desire to be happy at the expense of others. It’s really very ironic that in grasping after happiness in this way we end up causing ourselves pain. It’s like sticking your hand into what you think is a cool stream in order to find relief on a hot day, only to discover that the water is boiling.
Buddhist theory teaches, and practice demonstrates, that happiness comes from empathizing with others and from seeing their wellbeing and their suffering as being important as our own.
It’s not that we set aside our own needs entirely and become martyrs in the popular sense of the word, but that we recognize that one of our needs is to help others meet their own needs. In meeting our need to help others meet their needs we find that we become happier: a layer of self-induced (and selfishness-induced) suffering starts to dissolve.
Realizing this and working it out in our lives through the practice of kindness is a major part of Buddhist practice. In fact we could say, as the Dalai Lama implies, that developing a sense of connectedness with others and overcoming selfishness is the essence of the spiritual path.
1) Introduction to lovingkindness meditation
The Metta Bhavana is a meditation for developing lovingkindness.
“Bhavana” means “cultivation” or “development,” and “Metta” is a word that means “love,” “friendliness,” or “lovingkindness.” So this is a meditation practice where we actively cultivate some very positive emotional states towards others, as well as to ourselves.
This meditation practice helps us to bring more harmony into our relationships with others, so that we experience less conflicts, resolve existing difficulties, and deepen our connections with people we already get on with.
This meditation helps us to overcome anger, resentment, and hurt.
It helps us to empathize more, and to be more considerate, kind, and forgiving. We can also learn to appreciate others more, concentrating more on their positive qualities and less on their faults. We learn to be more patient.
In this meditation practice, we also cultivate Metta towards ourselves, so that we experience less internal conflict, and learn to appreciate ourselves more. This is a particularly important aspect of the practice. It’s traditionally held that we all cherish ourselves, and that what we need to do is to expand our love from ourselves to others. For example in the Buddhist text, The Udana, we read:
Searching all directions
with one’s awareness,
one finds no one dearer
than oneself.
In the same way, others
are fiercely dear to themselves.
So one should not hurt others
if one loves oneself.
And yet many of us in the west have been brought up to hate ourselves. We don’t thoroughly hate ourselves, of course. In fact we tend to treat ourselves very well! But we do tend to keep up an undercurrent of negative self-talk. And to the extent to which we hate ourselves, we’re unable to relate healthily to others.
Lovingkindness practice helps us to feel more positive, accepting, kind, and patient toward ourselves, in order that we can be more compassionate and loving toward others.
2) Ways of Cultivating Metta – Introduction
Sometimes when people are beginning to learn lovingkindness meditation they think that lovingkindness is something that’s to be manufactured. And so they make lots of effort to try to generate some emotion, as if they’re trying very hard to wring some emotion from the heart.
And sometimes, if you make a lot of internal effort, you can become somewhat excited and convince yourself that you’re developing lovingkindness. But more often a sense of disappointment and even despondency sets in, because you don’t get the expected result. So this isn’t a very useful approach.
You can’t actually make emotions happen — all you can do is set up the conditions for them to arise and then see what happens. Love can’t be manufactured through meditation. It can’t be squeezed out of our being.
It’s a bit like growing seeds. You can’t make a seed grow. All you can do is provide warmth, water, and soil, and then be patient.
In cultivating feelings of loving kindness we’re encouraging ourselves to wish others well. So how do we set up the conditions for doing this?
Emotional Awareness Exercise
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO GUIDED MEDITATION HERE
The first thing is to become aware of how we actually are feeling just now. This is essential groundwork.
Try this exercise:
Sit quietly, and bring your awareness into your body
As best you can, relax each muscle as you bring awareness to it
Bring your awareness to your heart area, and see what emotions are present, smile, and watch what happens
If you’re not sure what you’re feeling, pay attention to the kind of thoughts you’re having. Are they anxious? Critical? Self-critical? Depressive? Joyful? Your thoughts can give you a clue to how you’re feeling.
If you’re not sure about how you’re feeling, see if you can notice how you feel about not being sure about how you feel! Sometimes that makes it clearer.
Remember: whatever emotions you are feeling (good, bad, or even neutral) are fine. You can work with those emotions, and you can only start from where you are
See if you can be kind to yourself. Be patient as you attempt to find out how you’re feeling.
Don’t try to find out what you’re feeling. Rather than a frantic search, think more of relaxing into an awareness of what’s already there.
Gently bring yourself back to the outside world
3) Stage 1 – Cultivating metta toward yourself
“Friendship with ones self is all important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Roosevelt expresses a psychological truth that the Buddhist tradition has espoused for two and a half millennia — that our attitude towards ourself conditions our attitude towards others. It’s for that reason that in the development of lovingkindness meditation practice we begin by cultivating metta first for ourselves.
“We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.”
– His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Before starting this practice, you will need to read (if you haven’t already) the sections on posture and ways of cultivating metta.
Once you’ve read them what will follow will make a lot more sense.
You can listen to an MP3 guided meditation that will lead you through this stage of the practice by clicking on the player below:
Audio Player
Stage One
In the first stage of the practice, set up your posture and deepen your awareness of your body.
Then become aware of how you are feeling. What emotions are present? You don’t necessarily have to label them, just be aware they are there.
These emotions will be your focus during the practice. Keep your attention focused on your emotions throughout the practice. If you get distracted, come back to your body, and then to your emotions.
To work with your emotions, use a word or phrase, or a memory, or your imagination. As you work with your particular method, be aware of what effect it is having on your emotions, which are your focus.
Stage 2 – Cultivating metta towards a good friend
Stage 3 – Cultivating metta towards a “neutral person”
Stage 4 – Cultivating metta towards a “difficult person”
Stage 5 – Cultivating metta toward all sentient beings
Walking Lovingkindness Meditation
It was a traditional practice at the time of the Buddha for monks and nuns to practice the Development of Lovingkindness (metta bhavana)meditation as they walked around. They would do this while walking through town, begging food. They’d radiate well-wishing in every direction as they walked along the streets and through the marketplace.
Monks would also radiate Lovingkindness towards wild animals as they walked through the forests and jungles. India at that time was heavily forested, and attacks by snakes and other wild animals were common. It was considered that this practice was a good protection against snake attacks!
Even if you’re not at risk from cobras, you might still want to try practicing radiating lovingkindness as you do walking meditation. It can be a beautiful feeling to radiate love as you walk past people. You can start doing walking meditation in the usual way, deepening your awareness of your body, feelings, emotions, and objects of consciousness.
Then you can keep your focus on your emotions or on your heart-center, and wish everyone well. You can imagine that you have a sun in your heart, and that you are radiating warmth and light in every direction as you walk. Or you can repeat the phrase “May all beings be well, may all beings be happy, may all beings be free from suffering.”
This may also be an appropriate point to talk about what you do if you’re practicing walking meditation and you see someone you know. My suggestion is that you deal with the situation as you feel appropriate. If it’s possible, and appropriate, for you just to say “hi” and keep on going, then do that.
If it seems appropriate to stop and talk to the other person, then you can interrupt the walking meditation, but try to bring the qualities of awareness that you have developed in the practice into your conversation. You might want just to stop for a moment and say something like: “Hi there! I’d really like to stop and talk, but I’m practicing my walking meditation just now. Can I call you later?”
What you have to watch out for is on the one hand being rude through clinging to the idea that you are doing something so special that it can’t be interrupted, and on the other hand using an encounter with another person to avoid the practice. We call this “being precious” about your practice. Sometimes also we act out of guilt. We feel we”have to” stop and talk to this person because we feel guilty about spending time working on ourselves. This is something we should work hard to overcome.
If you do happen to stop and talk to someone, then resume your walking meditation practice afterwards, and at the beginning spend a few moments evaluating what your motives were in stopping. There is always something to learn from these encounters.
You can adapt the practice of walking metta bhavana to activities such as riding a bus or train, or driving a car. Rather than have your mind spacing out, you can direct thoughts of loving kindness toward your fellow passengers and to other drivers, pedestrians, etc. This kind of activity can powerfully enrich our emotional experience and leave us feeling much happier. Rather than idly daydream, and have nothing to show for it, we can find ourselves more at peace with the world and ourselves.
There are various guided meditations on loving kindness available in their online store.
Events and Updates
Fierce Love: Healing Ourselves and the World with Ian Lawton + 25 ExpertsMarch 9-13, 2015
The world feels overwhelming right now. It needs an injection of fierce love. Let’s gather a collection of fierce love warriors who are making a difference in the world and know how to inspire all of us to heal ourselves and heal the world.
Fierce Love: Healing Ourselves and the World with Ian Lawton + 25 Experts
March 9-13, 2015
The world feels overwhelming right now. It needs an injection of fierce love. Let’s gather a collection of fierce love warriors who are making a difference in the world and know how to inspire all of us to heal ourselves and heal the world.
End: March 13, 2015
Location: online seminar
Contact: Ian Lawton
Organization: Soul Seeds
Website: https://www.entheos.com/Fierce-Love?c=Progressive-Christianity
Email: ian@soulseeds.com
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