Session 1: What is Prayer?

This session introduces the framework of the 3 Faces of Prayer and explores how our personal and cultural memory tracks support/inhibit deepening the practice.

We consider how meditative prayer is a way of being in a discipleship relationship with Reality.

Session 2: Prayers of Communication

This session explores the mystical dimensions of dialogic prayers or prayers of communication.

We look at the question of who is talking and who or what is listening?

We reflect on the concepts of the God-image and the Ishta Devata as vehicles for facilitating the Sacred Conversation between the soul/self and Spirit/Self.

Bummer to Bonus: So, the bummer is - I forgot to turn on the recorder after the small group breakouts. The bonus is - I recorded 20 minutes to recap what I recalled (adding some new material). 

Super Bonus Surprise: Allynne noticed that the record button wasn't on and recorded the second half on her phone. The sound is quite good. So, you have the very meaningful sharings from the small group conversations and my original response.

Super Bonus Suprise:

Session 2 - Small Group Debrief 

Here's the debrief - thank you, Allynne - from the small groups that explored the questions:

• To whom or to what are we communicating when we pray?
• What are the possibilities? 
• Which of the possibilities appeal to you at this time? 
• Which are problematic?

Session 3: Making Contact with your Ishta Devata

This session explores the concept of the Ishta Devata and how to move from concept to embodied, sacred connection.

We look at the dilemma of the seeker who says: 

• I can’t go back the God of my childhood
• I can’t go forward to a God that rubs my soul the wrong way.

Being with this longing-based dilemma is a key component to finding your Ishta. 

Because your Ishta - as the God image - may not conform to the culturally approved images.

Your Ishta - with an emphasis on “your” - will be radically unique and fitted to your soul’s needs. 

• You can’t figure it out.
• And you don’t have to figure it out. 

As Kabir says, “The longing does all the work.”

Session 4: The Ishta & the Holy Breath

This session explores the experience of the Ishta as breath; the breath that pervades all Life and is the very essence of our individual aliveness.

We explore: 

• The connection between our vocabulary and the nuances of our meditative attunement
• Can the Ishta be with-no-form?

As Kabir says, “God is the breath within the breath.”

Session 5: The Sacred Paradox, Inside & Beyond,, Symbols, Chakras, Prayer

This session focuses on the ways that prayer and symbolism allow us to engage with the sacred paradox that the Ishta, Life, and Self is both deep within and way beyond. 

We begin the exploration of how symbolism is both a diagnostic and prescriptive tool for co-creative prayer.

Session 6: Turtles All the Way Down

This session focuses on the design of Life as a holoarchy; the way that every permutation of the Radiance is both a whole unto-itself and a part-of-a-greater whole.

We also continue our inquiry into the nature of the Ishta relationship as the 2nd Person Face of God.

Session 7: Who Ya Gonna Call?

This session continues the inquiry into how we can both become an emissary and a disciple of the Radiance.

Session 8: Who Are You to Pray for Us?

This session focuses on an in-depth case study of one participant's prayer experience and explores the astral/psychological dynamics that arise when we encounter "resistance".

Session 9: What's the Drama?

This session focuses on a psychological framework called The Drama Triangle and its application to our prayer practice. Important. Practical. 

Session 10: Prayer of Unfolding Merit

This session focuses on The Kriya Prayer of Unfolding Merit and how it offers a way of transforming the Drama Triangle into a source of Blessing. 

Session 11: Transforming Violence

This session focuses on prayer in times of war and collective turmoil. Simone Weil wrote that “the false god turns suffering into violence; the true god turns violence into suffering".

There is a sacred, impersonal form of suffering that purifies the emotional dramas that fuel violence. This searing revelation takes into the sacred fire of meditative prayer.

Session 12: The Life of Prayer

This session integrates and deepens our understanding of the 3 Faces of Prayer and opens the gateless gate to an endless life of prayerful awakening.