Unconditional Love 2 Class resources | The Knoxville Community of Mindfulness

Unconditional Love, Part 2 Class Resources

Unconditional Love, Part 1 Refresher

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unconditional love part 1 refresher.MP3
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Class 1: October 29, 2023

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Summary of Class 1

Audio Recordings

Things to Learn ("Learnings")

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Summary of Class 1

Summary of UCL, Part 2, Class 1: Things to learn

There are three modes of meditation in this training: Receptive Mode, Deepening Mode, and Releasing Mode. We practiced Receptive Mode in Part 1 of this class.

In Receptive Mode, what are we receiving? Love or Care.

Learn what is meant by the word, “love”? John Makransky’s definition: “The powerful and enduring wish for beings to be deeply well and happy and to possess the inmost causes of such happiness.” (p.3) It will serve you well to memorize this.

Learn to recognize that this powerful wish —call it love, caring—is all around. Pay attention. Look for it.

Learn to receive love/care. How?

Learn to establish a FOC in order to have a direct exp. of what that feels like.

Learn to allow FOC to expand into a larger and larger relational fieldHow?

Daily meditation practice followed by many moments during the day when we recall our FOC and experience the feelings, which we are calling the qualities of awakening, for a moment or two.

Learn to extend this FOC to many others.

Learn to practice compassion for yourself.

Learn to extend compassion to others.

Learn to allow the mind to relax and trust.

Learn that there is a reality beyond the sense of self, and that that reality is who and what we really are.

“A moment of enlightenment is a moment when we realize the blessings that are always pouring forth.” — Nyoshul Khenpo (John Makransky’s teacher).

It will serve you well to memorize this.

Audio Recordings

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Class Recording
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Guided Meditation 1
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Guided Meditation 2 10-29-23
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Things to Learn ("Learnings")

Things to Learn

There are three modes of meditation in this training: Receptive Mode, Deepening Mode, and Releasing Mode. We practiced Receptive Mode in Part 1 of this class.

In Receptive Mode, what are we receiving? Love or Care.

Learn what is meant by the word, “love”? John Makransky’s deﬁnition: “The powerful and enduring wish for beings to be deeply well and happy and to possess the inmost causes of such happiness.” (p.3) It will serve you well to memorize this.

Learn to recognize that this powerful wish —call it love, caring—is all around. Pay attention. Look for it.

Learn to receive love/care. How?

Learn to establish a FOC in order to have a direct exp. of what that feels like.

Learn to allow FOC to expand into a larger and larger relational ﬁeld How?

Daily meditation practice followed by many moments during the day when we recall our FOC and experience the feelings, which we are calling the qualities of awakening, for a moment or two.

Learn to extend this FOC to many others.

Learn to practice compassion for yourself.

Learn to extend compassion to others.

Learn to allow the mind to relax and trust.

Learn that there is a reality beyond the sense of self, and that that reality is who and what we really are.

“A moment of enlightenment is a moment when we realize the blessings that are always pouring forth.” — Nyoshul Khenpo (John Makransky’s teacher).

It will serve you well to memorize this.

Class 2: November 5, 2023

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Meditation Instructions

Audio Recordings

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Meditation Instructions

Deepening Mode: Meditation #4: Compassionate Presence to Feelings

About the Meditation

In this meditation, we learn how to welcome feelings into a compassionate space where they can relax, ﬁnd their own place, settle in their own time, and deeply heal in their own natural way. “Feelings” here refers to the pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral feeling tones that accompany our physical and mental experiences, and to all the emotions with which they are associated. To train in this meditation prepares us to become compassionately present to all of our feelings in the same deeply healing way as they arise throughout our ordinary days.

Intense, stressful aspects of our daily lives trigger many diﬃcult feelings in us. We typically try to avoid unpleasant feelings by trying to suppress them or distract ourselves from them. But when we repeatedly avoid or suppress feelings, over time, we tighten up inside, which manifests also as physical tightness. This inner stress and tightness make it diﬃcult to open to the qualities available in our basic awareness that we cultivate in all of our practices—qualities of spaciousness, love, compassion, equanimity, and wisdom. Such stress and tightness also make it hard to be fully present to other people in an open-hearted and discerning way.

Meditation 4 shows us that we don’t have to avoid or suppress our feelings and reactions. Instead, we can become spaciously, compassionately present to them, in a way that helps them relax, settle, and ﬁnd their own place—ultimately a place of inner healing and releasing. This 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.

This practice has four principles: 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) Then just let everything be, with a sense of spaciousness.

Meditation Instructions

(1) Sit in a relaxed way, with back comfortably straight, eyes gazing gently downward. Come down from the thinking mind into the body, letting the breath settle into its own natural rhythm, while inhaling into the abdomen. Now settle into the feeling of the body as a whole.

(2) Notice the physical sensation in any part of your body, and become aware of it in a deeply allowing way, without trying to change it at all. Just let it have all the space it needs to ﬁnd its own way of being. If another physical sensation replaces it, become aware of that sensation in the same deeply allowing, spacious way.

(3) Sense whatever emotional feeling is present within you, from within your body. Not just thinking about it, but sensing how it feels from within. At ﬁrst you may think you are not feeling anything, but often you can become aware of a subtle emotional feeling that wasn’t fully conscious to you, such as a little anxiety or worry, or liking or disliking a little how things are, or a feeling of trying to hold on to things, or feeling a little confused. Or you may feel a stronger emotion, like fear, frustration, annoyance, or joy. Or you may just feel numb. Those are all feelings with which you can practice. Or, if you wish, you are welcome to recall an emotional feeling that is quite familiar to you and let yourself feel it now.

Become aware of that feeling within you, with a sense of deep permission for it—fully allowing it to be here, letting it have all the space it needs to ﬁnd its own place gently welcoming it. Not being enmeshed in it, not rejecting it, not trying to solve or change anything in it, not ruminating about why it’s here. Like a friend quietly present to a friend, let this feeling have all the space it needs to ﬁnd its own place and to settle in its own way. Rest with the feeling spaciously in that way, or rest within it, without trying to change anything, just letting everything be. One feeling may open into a further feeling and so on—just be with each feeling in the same spacious, accepting way.

If part of you is having diﬃculty with this practice, notice the feeling within that reaction and become compassionately aware of that feeling in the same spacious way, letting it have all the space it needs to ﬁnd its own place, to settle in its own time.

When the mind wanders into chains of thinking, notice the feeling associated with those thoughts, and become present to that feeling in the same spacious, allowing way.

As this practice deepens, you may ﬁnd your mind resting right in the essence of a feeling, which may open into a sense of spaciousness, warmth, and peace from within. If that happens, just relax deeply into that experience and let everything be.

(4) Releasing: After some time, just settle fully into this feeling of spacious allowing. Let this help your mind to relax deeply, settle back a bit inwardly, release all frameworks of concern, and become completely open like space, beyond reference points. Whatever thoughts and feelings arise, just let them unwind and release within this sky-like openness of awareness, by letting everything be.

Audio Recordings

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UCL-2 Class 2 Recording 11-5-23
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UCL-2 Class 2 GM 1
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UCL-2 Class 2 GM-2
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Class 3: November 12, 2023

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Homework & Note from John

Audio Recordings

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Homework & Note from John

Homework for Week #3

Please read once again pages 46-50 in the text.

Dear Friends,

As you do the Field of Care (FOC) practice, understand that once the practice is underway, attention shifts from the benefactor to the qualities of awakening as we begin to feel them. Be aware of this transition and gratefully receive the qualities you feel, resting in them, absorbing their healing, enlivening power.

Continue to alternate FOC with Meditation #4, Compassionate Presence to Feelings.

Wishing you a fruitful week of practice,

John

Audio Recordings

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UCL-2 Class 3 GM -2.MP3
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UCL-2 Class 3 GM -1.MP3
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UCL-2 Class -3 Class Recording.MP3
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Class 4: November 19, 2023

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Audio Recordings

Homework & Note from John

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Audio Recordings

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UCL-2 CLASS 4 GM.MP3
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UCL-2 CLASS 4 11_19.MP3
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Homework & Note from John

Note from John

Dear Friends,

In the coming days, please spend at least half of your practice time doing Meditation #4 and/or Meditation #5. Meditation #4 is called Becoming Compassionately Present to Our Feelings. Meditation #5 is called Letting Be of Body, Breath, and Mind.

If you like, you may begin each session with the Field of Care practice (including Meditation #3, Being the Loving Figure with Another Being). But also experiment on a regular basis by starting a session with Number 4. Then for another session, experiment by starting with Number 5. Becoming adept at numbers 4 and 5 should be the next level in your meditative development.

Finally, the dates of our next retreat at the Well Being Center are May 31-June 2. Please put them on your calendar.

Thank you for your continuing study and practice. May we keep growing together.

John

Homework for Week #4

Preparing for Meditation 5: Letting Be

Meditations 1-4 above bring out powers of love, compassion, spaciousness, and deep acceptance that can embrace all of our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. In the final releasing phase of those meditations, we let those loving qualities help the mind feel safe enough to release its narrow frameworks and begin to settle deeply into the spacious ground of those loving qualities—a pervasive openness, clarity, simplicity and warmth of awareness that is beyond all constructs of mind. In that way, we start to settle into the deep nature of the mind, a unity of total openness and pure awareness—the empty, cognizant ground of experience. In the next meditation, “Letting be,” we learn to settle even more directly and fully into that spacious ground, to learn to reunify with it. That is the ultimate secure base from which to become more fully present to others.

MEDITATION 5: LETTING BE OF BODY, BREATH AND MIND

1) Abdominal breathing: Sit in a relaxed way, with back comfortably straight, eyes gazing

gently downward. Come down from the thinking mind into the body, feeling the body as a whole. Let the breath settle into its own natural flow, while breathing from the abdomen. Let the weightiness of the body help the mind settle deeply into it.

2) Letting be of body: Notice any feeling of tightness or holding on within the body and let that relax, allowing all the bodily feelings to settle in their own way. Deeply let be into the body, by letting the body draw you into oneness with it more and more. As if the body is meditating you.

3) Letting be of breath: Still breathing from the abdomen, let the breath flow naturally, while feeling the full inhale and exhale. Notice any sense of holding on to the breathing process, and let that relax. Deeply let be into the breath, by letting the feeling of the breath draw you into oneness with it more and more, breath by breath. As if the breath is meditating you.

4) Letting be of mind: Now raise your eyes to look ahead, with a gentle panoramic gaze that spaciously encompasses the whole visual field. Leave all senses wide open, and just relax with that panoramic sense awareness. (Pause) Notice any grasping in the mind to any mental construct—i.e. holding on to any sense of self, thought, or framework of mind, and let that feeling of grasping relax deep within. Now let the mind settle back a bit inwardly and come to rest in the background of its awareness, which is naturally wide open like space. In this way, let the mind relax into the spacious backdrop of its awareness—wide open, pervasive, and radiant. Let all mental activities settle there, in their own time. Let this expanse of awareness gradually draw you into oneness with it more and more, by letting everything be.

Let patterns of thought or feeling that begin to form just unwind and release in this spacious expanse of openness and awareness, by letting all be. Let thoughts and feelings subside by themselves, as the mind relaxes into its natural openness, clarity and simplicity.

When the mind closes up again, holding on to a narrow frame of thought or feeling, let the mind again settle back into the natural spaciousness and clarity available in the background of its awareness, naturally wide open and radiant. Let patterns of thought and feeling that start to form just unwind and release within this openness of awareness.

Unconditional Love, Part 2 Class Resources

Unconditional Love, Part 1 Refresher

Class 1: October 29, 2023

Things to Learn

Class 2: November 5, 2023

Deepening Mode: Meditation #4: Compassionate Presence to Feelings

About the Meditation

Meditation Instructions

Class 3: November 12, 2023

Homework for Week #3

Class 4: November 19, 2023

Note from John

Homework for Week #4

Preparing for Meditation 5: Letting Be

MEDITATION 5: LETTING BE OF BODY, BREATH AND MIND

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