Dear Friends,
In his book Meditation and Relaxation in Plain English, Bob Sharples gives this advice:
Don’t meditate to fix yourself, to heal yourself, to improve yourself, to redeem yourself; rather, do it as an act of love, of deep warm friendship toward yourself. In this view there is no longer any need for the subtle aggression of self-improvement, for self-criticism, for the endless guilt of not doing enough. It offers the possibility of an end to the ceaseless round of trying so hard that wraps so many people’s lives in a knot. Instead there is now meditation as an act of love.
I love this idea of meditation as an act of love. So I’ve decided to dedicate Sundays this month to the heart. Perhaps, to cap off our month together, you’ll be able to join us for the ultimate Sunday for the heart at Jeanne’s day-long retreat on January 31.
If you were at the November loving kindness retreat with Susie Harrington, you might recall Susie led us through a metta (loving kindness) meditation on Friday evening. The tail end of that meditation included a reminder of the precepts and refuges, which are often taken at the beginning of a retreat. We’re not on retreat here, but in keeping with the theme of intention that we’ve been exploring the last few days, I like how the precepts give us a framework to guide our intention.
You can listen to the meditation from the retreat via this link.
(~20 minutes): https://goo.gl/G67Pto
(I believe you have to download the file to listen to it. I don’t think Dropbox gives me a way to let you stream it directly.)
Other recordings from that weekend are available here: https://goo.gl/iTZaxT
I appreciate your comments and participation over these past few days. This is a new adventure for me and for our sangha, so feedback and suggestions are welcome.
With best wishes,
Andrea G