Copyright 2008 SOUL Research Institute
C
bliss
EVOLVING YOUR LOVE
(SEVEN STEPS TO PERFECT LIVING)
Weekly Sunday Meditation Gathering
and Potluck, 02/21/10
Join us on Sunday, 10am onwards with your family and friends.
"Love is not something you want to feel. It is something you feel without wanting"
"Love is not a sentiment. It is an emotion, a wholesome one."
"Love is not a destination. It is a journey."
Anonymous
"Love is not just looking at each other, its looking in the same direction."
Antoine de Saint
"If you love something, set it it free. If it comes back, it was and always will be yours. If it never returns, it was never yours to begin with"
Unknown
Pragmatically speaking, love is a way of life, a way of dealing with oneself and others. It can be evolved, developed gradually, here and now by each one of us as we live our ordinary everyday life. Evolving the love is the most pragmatic and effective way to perfect living.
If you are a seeker, gaining a theoretical understanding of seven steps which lead to perfect living is an appropriate beginning goal.
Step 1: Know where you stand.
Familiarize yourself with the pyramid (or ladder) of love (see image at the bottom or review previous newsltr). Find out where you currently stand. Through brief scrutiny, identify what form of love you experience predominantly. For example, if you are possessive of, lustful of, or attached to your relationships, then understand that you are predominantly experiencing worldly love.
Whatever form of love you may be experiencing predominantly, simply know it. Then make a lifetime commitment to climbing the ladder of love: to rising from worldly love to religious love all the way to perfect love. This does not mean leave worldly love behind. Instead, it means, purify and evolve worldly love to such an extent that it becomes perfect love. Climbing the ladder of love is about going higher and higher—transcending— and not abandoning.
Step 2: Rise from worldly love to religious love.
Have romance and friendship with another person and use worldly love to go beyond hatred, fear, and pain. Even though this kind of love is rudimentary in nature, it is monumental, because it breaks the barrier of hatred, fear, and pain. However, do not get stuck in the pleasures of worldly love. Rise higher by loving not only the romantic partner but also your parents, children, friends, country, religion, and so on.
Use the love of worldly relationships as a jumping ground and reach out to god of a religion of your choice. Start loving god and develop religious love. Do not abandon your worldly love but transcend it by arousing inspiration for a sacred relationship which is higher than worldly relationships. Loving god in a wholesome way will further purify your worldly love and improve your worldly relationships, and make you a better husband/wife, a better father/mother, a better son/daughter, a better brother/sister, a better countryman, and so on. In this way, evolve from worldly love to religious love.
Step 3: Rise from religious love to devotional love.
Do not get stuck in religious love. Instead, purify it by eradicating hatred for other religions, by reducing attachment to your religion, by removing blind faith and religious beliefs. Transcend religious love by developing stronger and stronger inspiration for attaining divine qualities rather than attaching to a divine entity. Transcend religious love by developing the faculty of devotion.
The Step 4: Rise from devotional love to beautiful love.
Continue to evolve devotional love by developing loving-kindness, compassion, and gladness through meditative and contemplative practices as discussed in previous newsletter). Let loving-kindness become established in you and let it become your love. Let this loving-kindness remove all the remaining ill-will or hatred there is in you and in others who come in contact with you. Let compassion become your love. Let it remove your suffering and the suffering of others who come in contact with you. Let gladness become your love. Let it remove all the envy, jealousy, and aversion there is in you and in others who come in contact with you.
SOUL RESEARCH INSTITUTE NEWSLETTER, FEBRUARY 18, 10
EVENTS AT S.R.I.
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INSPIRATIONS
Let gladness bring appreciative joy and cheerfulness to your love. If you do, you will start noticing the beauty of love and begin seeing everybody (including yourself) as lovable. In this way, let devotional love evolve into beautiful love.
Step 5: Rise from beautiful love to transcendental love.
Continue to practice loving-kindness, compassion, and gladness until oneness (the aptitude of equanimity) arises by its own accord. Let equanimity bring sublime balance and non-attachment to you so you can transcend all boundaries and look upon all as equal and serve all without preference and prejudice. Let the element of oneness arise in your love.
Step 6: Rise from transcendental love to noble love.
As you experience oneness and as the sense of selflessness is established in you, sooner or later, you will begin to develop intense liking for wisdom and enlightenment. Become aware of that change. Nurture it by developing specific attitudes and lifestyles ( ) and by deliberately and unconditionally abstaining from all forms of unwholesome speech, unwholesome action, and unwholesome occupation.
Step 7: Rise from noble love to perfect love.
Allow noble love to govern your way of living. Begin to view and experience all actions, reactions, non-actions, events, circumstances, situations, and so on as impermanent and selfless phenomena of soul (body-mind-consciousness). Make every moment of your abiding a moment of purification and insight. Let every moment of abiding result in the eradication of latent tendencies of delusion (the subtle ego) so that, ultimately, non-delusion can arise. Develop non-delusion to such an extent that all traces of ego are dissolved giving rise to pure awareness and understanding.
Abiding in pure awareness and understanding—in perfect love—is the perfect way of living here and now.
Weekly Soul Meditation Service
@
Colorado College, CO
In addition to our Weekly Sunday Gatherings at Flying Horse Location, we are now offering meditation practice for students and the likes.
Venue: The beautiful & historic Shove Chapel on Colorado College campus. Fridays, Starting Feb19, 10. Current time slot for soul meditation practice (6-7pm) followed by noble discussion (7-8pm).
Sam Adettiwar's Groundbreaking Book
Now Published and available on
amazon.com
Book signing event
At the famous local book store in downtown Colorado Springs: Poor Richards' at 320 N. Tejon Street. March 05, 2010, 4-7pm. All profits generated from the sale of books are donated to Soul Research Institute for conducting research and facilitating cost-free retreats and services.
! Cost-free !
Residential Retreats
Thanks to the selfless generosity of Paul Fuess and Nya Gregor Fluron and the contribution of old students, S.R.I. is now able to offer cost-free meditation and yoga residential retreats in Larkspur, CO, a 15-20 minutes drive from CSprings and 30-45 minutes drive from Denver, CO. Limited seats available.
"Soul Sisters"
(Women's Group Invitation)
From Patricia Ferraro Clarke and Nya Gregor Fluron: Being a woman in our time has its own challenges. Let's get together and discuss some of these challenges, be it raising kids, maintaining a household, holding down a career, or just keeping it altogether and holding on to our sanity. Coming together as a group can bring great empowerment, meditation and healing, and a much greater sense of support than is often available to the individual.
When: Saturday, Feb.20,10,2-4 PM
Where: 7625 Delmonico Dr, Colorado Springs, 8092
Phone: 719 533 0488
