Showing posts with label Interspirituality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Interspirituality. Show all posts

Thursday, November 1, 2018

Synthesized Guidance Meditation


The following Synthesized Guidance Meditation is the result of the researcher’s creative synthesis process used to translate the findings of this inquiry into a more tacit and practical form. It evolved from the researcher’s self-experimentation with various guidance-related methods (see Appendix C), and was used by the researcher in combination with the daily morning Synthesized Guidance Practice (see above) and as a stand-alone tool and practice for the seeking, receiving, and following of guidance from a perceived divine Source. Although this meditation emerged organically from an intuitive and guidance-based process, it appears to correlate with the basic concepts also discerned by the researcher during the creative synthesis process (see The Experience of Divine Guidance, Chapter 5 and Appendix P).

Seeking—Removing the Obstacles:

  • Close your eyes and breathe deeply into your abdomen, allowing your stomach to expand as you breathe in and contract as you exhale.
  • See yourself as a hollow reed or membrane, expanding and contracting.
  • Continue in slow, deep breaths, while silently repeating: 
    • I am not my thoughts. I am not my feelings. I am not my perceptions. I am empty of all disturbances. I am empty of all desire and need. I am empty of all fear, expectation, and attachment to outcome.

Receiving—Opening the Channels:

  • Continue the slow, deep breaths and silently repeat the following words while trying to visualize and feel the process they describe: 
    • I am open, ready, and willing to receive guidance from my Highest, Deepest, Most Expansive Source of Beingness.
  • Then be still for a few moments and be present to any thoughts, feelings, or sensations that occur within you.

Following—Discerning the Message:

  • Silently ask: 
    • Am I open to guidance from my Highest, Deepest, Most Expansive Source?
  • Try to discern a “yes” or “no” answer within you by performing this simple muscle testing procedure to seek the answer through subtle body channels: 
    • Make a circle with the thumb and middle finger of one of your hands, and hold them firmly together. Press the thumb and index finger of your other hand together to form a “beak,” which you then insert into the finger circle of the first hand, and then try to press open the circle. If the circle opens, it likely indicates a “no” answer, and if the circle holds, it likely indicates a “yes” answer.
    • If the answer is “no,” take a few breaths, and repeat the exercise, trying to more fully “feel” the words and remember the receptive state you experienced during the morning practice.
    • If the answer is “yes,” proceed to inwardly ask your questions. Use the above muscle testing technique for yes or no questions, and/or seek your answers by merely being in the receptive state and inwardly listening for the answer, which could come in the form of an inner voice or vision, a thought-sense, and/or a felt-sense.
  • When you receive an answer test it in various ways by asking: 
    • Is the answer I am receiving the correct answer? Am I interpreting this information correctly? Am I asking the right question? Do I need to ask a different question? Is there an action I need to take, and if so what is it? Is there more I need to know?
  • After feeling complete with the preceding process, silently repeat: 
    • I am grateful for the gift of guidance. 

Notes. Major adaptation sources for this practice can be found in The Experience of Divine Guidance, Appendix C. 


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Monday, November 17, 2014

Announcing LIVING A DIVINELY GUIDED LIFE Online Course


LIVING A DIVINELY GUIDED LIFE
A Special 8-Week Interfaith and Integral Spirituality Holiday Season Course

With Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D., internationally-acclaimed film and spirituality scholar-practitioner and author of the newly released book “The Search for a Divinely Guided Life

MAKE THIS HOLIDAY SEASON A SACRED DANCE BETWEEN THE DIVINE AND YOUR SELF

From: December 7, 2014 (Sunday) at 1:00 pm Pacific Time 
To: January 25, 2015 (Sunday) at 5:00 pm Pacific Time 

Eventbrite - Living a Divinely Guided Life (8 Week Course)

About this Course
The LIVING A DIVINELY GUIDED LIFE course is a transformational interfaith and integral spirituality journey through the holiday season. It is designed to foster a more sacred and deeply transformative season, and to help you more fully open to and embrace your own evolutionary quest for the Divine. Using holiday season celebrations from many cultures and traditions as archetypal containers, we will explore how the Divine has already been guiding your life through the creation of your own spiritual autobiography, uncovering and reframing your past and current life situations and challenges in the context of your evolutionary journey toward a higher, deeper, and more expansive way of being. You will also learn how to develop your own integral spirituality guidance practice for seeking, receiving and following guidance from your highest, deepest, and most expansive Divine Source on a daily and moment-by-moment basis.

Location:
This event takes place online.

Who is this Course For?
This course is for anyone who is interested in exploring and living a divinely guided life from a non-denominational, interfaith, and integral spirituality evolutionary perspective.

DETAILS

Join Mark for this transformative interfaith and integral spirituality course, which explores how we can open to, connect with, and more fully and deeply enter into a co-creative and co-evolutionary dance with the living universe. This course will be taught through eight weekly 90-minute conference calls (recordings for the calls will be posted for participants who are not able to join a call). Each week we will deeply explore a dimension of the process of opening to living a divinely guided life with assigned practices, readings and self-reflection assignments, along with online threaded discussions to connect with fellow participants and deepen your understanding and application of this work. Throughout this process we will be uncovering the signs and stories of your life that reveal the divine’s participation in your life journey, and developing skills and practices to help you more fully engage with and participate in your divinely guided life adventure.

Topics covered will include:
  • Searching for the Divine Through Time and Memory;
  • Deconstructing and Rebirthing our Relationship with the Divine;
  • Transforming the Primal Wound into the Primal Calling;
  • Cultivating the Witness;
  • Tapping into the Evolutionary Impulse;
  • The Art of Transformational Reframing;
  • Interpreting Life Situations and Events from a Transcendent Educational Perspective;
  • Using Holy Days as Gateways to the Personal and Collective Kosmic Curriculum;
  • Discovering and Applying Universal Patterns and Practices of the Experience of Divine Guidance;
  • Living in the Divine Flow in the Everyday World.

This course uses an Integral Spirituality approach, which is a form of spirituality that seeks to integrate the theories and practices of all faith traditions in a way that recognizes the universal aspects of all paths while also honoring the unique gifts that each path offers. In addition, the Integral spiritual approach helps us integrate spirituality itself with all other dimensions of our being and becoming. From this Integral Spirituality perspective, the “Divine” refers to a higher, deeper and/or more expansive source of wisdom and guidance that can be perceived in various ways, including as a 1st Person Higher or Deeper Self; a 2nd Person “Thou” or “Other;” a 3rd Person Force or System; and/or a simultaneously individual and collective Evolutionary Impulse.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity – to open more fully to the blessings, graces, miracles, and tender mercies of a divinely guided life.

Dates: 8 weeks: December 7, 2014 – January 25, 2015   

Cost: $345.00 USD plus handling fee (Includes a free download of the book The Search for a Divinely Guided Life* in PDF eBook format)


Eventbrite - Living a Divinely Guided Life (8 Week Course)


Scholarships and Discounts: Discounts and Sliding-Scale Scholarships are available for those in need – For more information contact:  divineguidanceproject@gmail.com

Number of Participants: Up to 20

Instructor: Mark Allan Kaplan, Ph.D.

Weekly Conference Calls:  Sundays 1-2:30 pm Pacific Time

  • December 7
  • December 14
  • December 21
  • December 28
  • January 4
  • January 11
  • January 18
  • January 25

PRESENTER
MARK ALLAN KAPLAN, Ph.D. is an internationally-acclaimed integral and transpersonal film and spirituality scholar-practitioner. He has conducted and published groundbreaking lived inquiry and academic research in integral and transpersonal approaches to art, media and spirituality, and practices professionally as an interfaith spiritual director, transformative personal development coach, award-winning filmmaker, and media psychologist and consultant. Mark is also a celebrated transdisciplinary artist, author and educator. His spiritual writings include the newly released "The Search for a Divinely Guided Life" and "The Experience of Divine Guidance," and he is the founder and Executive Director of the Divine Guidance Project, a trans-denominational research initiative devoted to the study and advancement of the experience of Divine guidance across religious traditions, cultures and domains of experience. Mark has studied and practiced the experience of divine guidance for over twenty-five years both personally and in an academic setting, and he is the researcher and author of one of the first cross-cultural and cross-traditional academic studies on the experience.


Eventbrite - Living a Divinely Guided Life (8 Week Course)


*The Search for a Divinely Guided Life book is also available in paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon.com. SPECIAL OFFERS INCLUDE: Free Kindle Edition with Purchase of Paperback Edition and Kindle Unlimited Subscribers Read for Free




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Friday, June 21, 2013

Evolutionary Guidance



In evolutionary or integral psychology and spirituality, the evolution of consciousness is a key element. Taping into and consciously working with the evolutionary process is also a key element, and an essential way of tapping into the evolutionary process is by attempting to connect with the guiding force of evolution itself.

Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen call this force the “evolutionary impulse:”
“The evolutionary impulse is the consciously experienced choice-in-action to take form and become the whole universe. It is the energy and intelligence that burst out of nothing, the driving impetus behind the evolutionary process, from the big bang to the emerging edge of the future. And that impulse is active right now, throughout the life process, and at every level of your own human experience. In fact, that life-pulsation is the most important part of who and what we are. When you locate that impulse in the depths of your own self, you will become aware that it is inherently free and explosive in its freedom. It is dynamic and completely unrestrained in its nature. While Being feels like eternal peace, Becoming feels completely different. The evolutionary impulse is felt as a sense of tremendous urgency, an ecstatic urgency. At the level of consciousness, it is experienced as a sense that something unthinkably important must occur NOW” (Andrew Cohen, Evolutionary Enlightenment).
Jean Gebser called this guiding force the “inner commission” and saw it as pointed to a greater force or intelligence at work within our lives:
“How do we live? Whichever way we may live, we need to remember that we are also lived by an authority or a power for which there are many names. And, above all, we must remember one thing, namely that whichever way we live, we follow, whether we know it or not, an inner commission that points beyond ourselves” (Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin).
When we explore the teachings of the various spiritual traditions and the personal anecdotes of those who have attempted to seek, receive and follow guidance from a perceived Divine Source, we discover that at the heart of the guidance experience is that the guidance always appears to be guiding us toward a higher stage of evolutionary development. Each tradition has their practices for seeking, for receiving, and for following, from purification practices that attempt to help us remove the obstacles in our personality and consciousness that keep us from accessing and receiving the guidance of the “evolutionary impulse” to mindfulness/awareness practices to help us be fully open and present to receive to discernment practices to help us understand, clarify, validate, and act on the guidance received. This evolutionary guidance appears to be communicated through many different forms, including 1st Person inner promptings, like hearing an inner voice or getting a “gut feeling;” 2nd Person messages from a higher “Thou” or outer “others,” like receiving a message through the presence of a Divine other or having something that someone else says resonate into a deeper and higher meaning; and 3rd Person lessons from external events and circumstances.

One of the simplest and most universal ways of connecting with Divine or evolutionary guidance is attempting to be in the present moment and holding all that is happening as the guidance you need in that moment…
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment” (Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth). 

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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Communicating Meaning Through Art



As an artist of many different mediums (film, drawing, text, photography) I can honestly say that on one level it feels like a miracle when a viewer understands my work in the way that I intended it. And there is often another miracle, when the viewer sees something in my work that I did not consciously intend, but when they speak their truth it rings true for me as well.

I have studied the language of my mediums and how each of their material elements communicate differently across cultures and societies; I have studied the psychology of how individuals perceive and view art; I have studied symbols, metaphors, and archetypes across cultures; and I have studied how different states and stages of development in the viewer and the work communicate with each other. I believe all of these are factors in how the artist communicates to the viewer.

Yet, there is also something else involved here; something I learned in the form of both direct experience and teachings from some of the masters of art I have studied with over the years...this something else is that the more a creative work comes from a deeply personal meaningful place in the artist, the more universal its meaning becomes. This is the great paradox of art and meaning; the more personal the work the more universal and the less personal the work the less universal. Actor and playwright Sam Sheppard said it beautifully when he spoke to my class at the AFI many years ago. He said that if an artist starts with a deeply human truth, one from their own experience or one from the life of another, then the work becomes universal because what is true for one human heart resonates with all other human hearts.

In addition, as a practitioner of art as an integral spiritual practice, I see myself as a creative channel for the Divine; and that when I align myself with the Creative Source as the Divine Suchness, Thou and I AM, the Source speaks through me into the work and out to the viewer. From this perspective, in addition to my own personal meaning being expressed in and through the work, I believe there is a higher meaning being channeled through me and the work that I most often am not even conscious of. Sometimes I discover this meaning when a viewer shares what they received from the work; other times, years later, I discover this hidden meaning when viewing my work from a different place in my own life journey. In the end, each individual views the work from where they are at on their live journey and when a work of art is a channeled work; I believe it has the capacity to become a kind of magic mirror in which the viewer receives the message that is perfect for them at that particular moment on their life path.

From an Integral perspective, I would say that meaning in art is tetra-resonant, in that a work of art can have subjective, material, cultural, and/or social resonance. This resonance channels meaning between the work of art and the viewer, and one can gauge the general message of the art work through any and all of these resonance channels/dimensions. The more this meaning is rooted in a deep truth in any and all of these dimensions, the more universal the message becomes.

In the end, as an artist I never know for sure beforehand if my intended meaning will translate to others; I can only strive to speak the truth as I perceive and feel it and attempt to communicate it through as many resonance channels and dimensions as possible. I have found that I feel that I have communicated with the audience if I have touched them somehow, and I have come to feel that the reception of my intended meaning is not as important as the reception of the meaning that arises through the wondrous and miraculous process of channeling the creative force…

*Image: Enlightenment by Diana Calvario (dicalva)


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Thursday, December 22, 2005

Prayer for the Festivals of Light


The rebirth of the life-generating and life-sustaining sun
at the darkest moment of the seasons;
The oil of an ancient temple lamp burning beyond its limit;
A shining star in a dark sky illuminating the way;
The light of mercy revealed through prayer and devotion;
The guiding light of seven principles arising from the heart of
the Dark Continent.
This is the season of The Festivals of Light...
The Winter Solstice,
Chanukah,
Christmas,
Ramadan,
Kwanzaa
In the darkness of this Winter
during these terror filled and challenging times;
May we all find the light in darkness,
faith amidst struggle,
rebirth following change and loss,
and virtue and devotion in the face of great challenge.

Published in: Beben, M. T. (2002). New Wine: More Eucharistic Liturgies for 21st Century Small Faith Communities. Boulder, CO: Woven Word Press.
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