2025
Winter/Choosing to love the world with all of its challenges
Exploration into the unbounded ground of being through love.
Some questions to ask yourself:
- How were you raised to think about the world, and your place in the world?
- Did you have a religious background, if so, how was the world depicted?
- Are your self judgements like your judgements of the world?
"Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves. If we are at war with our parents, our family, our society, or our church, there is probably a war going on inside us also, so the most basic work for peace is to return to ourselves and create harmony among the elements within us - our feelings, our perceptions, and our mental states."
- Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
Buddhism teaches that everything is interconnected so loving the world means loving all beings and the environment.
"When you connect to the silence within you, that is when you can make sense of the disturbance going on around you. "
- Joseph Cambell
"The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it."
- Henri J.M. Nouwen
"Love for oneself does not mean the self-centered love of the ego. It means to love life."
- Sri Mato Amritanandamayi Devi
"Love is the bridge between you and everything"
- Rumi
"If the deepest ground of my being is love, then in that very love and nowhere else will I find myself, the world, and my brother and my sister in Christ"
- Thomas Merton, Choosing to Love the World
"Come out of your temples and your places of safe keeping. Open your eyes to your neighborhoods and your streets. See them as the grounds around your shrines and your cathedrals. Our world community is our sacred space, place your candles and your incense on the maps of the world. Sing your prayers to all our children's children."
- Amita, You Long For Me
2024
Winter - Devotion and the Mystery
"When we bring together the personal path (devotion to realize the essence of our True Nature, and the universal unbounded true nature of reality, we form a meeting place for the inner conversation or felt knowing and understanding. This meeting place can come in the form of a deity, teaching, chanting, silence. The meeting place can be a spiritual experience with the natural world and its medicine, teacher/student relationship, personal commitment to presence, living in divine love with the beloved."
- Amita
2023
Spring - Kindness, Compassion, and Discernment
"Acting with compassion is not doing good because we think we ought to . . .It is giving ourselves into what we are doing and being present in the moment. It is acting from our deepest understanding of what life is and not compromising the truth."
- Ram Dass
2022
Fall - Awareness Acceptance Surrender Flow
2021
Spring/Heart As Transmission
Fall/Living Silence
Winter/Choosing to love the world with all of its challenges
Exploration into the unbounded ground of being through love.
Some questions to ask yourself:
- How were you raised to think about the world, and your place in the world?
- Did you have a religious background, if so, how was the world depicted?
- Are your self judgements like your judgements of the world?
"Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves. If we are at war with our parents, our family, our society, or our church, there is probably a war going on inside us also, so the most basic work for peace is to return to ourselves and create harmony among the elements within us - our feelings, our perceptions, and our mental states."
- Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ
Buddhism teaches that everything is interconnected so loving the world means loving all beings and the environment.
"When you connect to the silence within you, that is when you can make sense of the disturbance going on around you. "
- Joseph Cambell
"The spiritual life does not remove us from the world but leads us deeper into it."
- Henri J.M. Nouwen
"Love for oneself does not mean the self-centered love of the ego. It means to love life."
- Sri Mato Amritanandamayi Devi
"Love is the bridge between you and everything"
- Rumi
"If the deepest ground of my being is love, then in that very love and nowhere else will I find myself, the world, and my brother and my sister in Christ"
- Thomas Merton, Choosing to Love the World
"Come out of your temples and your places of safe keeping. Open your eyes to your neighborhoods and your streets. See them as the grounds around your shrines and your cathedrals. Our world community is our sacred space, place your candles and your incense on the maps of the world. Sing your prayers to all our children's children."
- Amita, You Long For Me
2024
Winter - Devotion and the Mystery
"When we bring together the personal path (devotion to realize the essence of our True Nature, and the universal unbounded true nature of reality, we form a meeting place for the inner conversation or felt knowing and understanding. This meeting place can come in the form of a deity, teaching, chanting, silence. The meeting place can be a spiritual experience with the natural world and its medicine, teacher/student relationship, personal commitment to presence, living in divine love with the beloved."
- Amita
2023
Spring - Kindness, Compassion, and Discernment
"Acting with compassion is not doing good because we think we ought to . . .It is giving ourselves into what we are doing and being present in the moment. It is acting from our deepest understanding of what life is and not compromising the truth."
- Ram Dass
2022
Fall - Awareness Acceptance Surrender Flow
2021
Spring/Heart As Transmission
Fall/Living Silence
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