Connecting to Unconditional Love in Meditation

Thank you for joining our practices during the month of May to support Mental Health Awareness month. Meditation is one of many important modalities for supporting mental health, and can particularly bring awareness to our thoughts and emotions.

In today's practice, we explore a quote from C.S. Lewis, who is of course famous for his Chronicles of Narnia, but who also was a prolific lay theologian. He writes, "How to avoid God: avoid silence, solitude, any train of thought that leads off the beaten track. Concentrate on money, sex, status, health and above all on your own grievances. Keep the radio on. Live in a crowd. Use plenty of sedation." He was writing around the time of WW2, so we can easily translate the "radio" to television / smart phone addiction, hee hee.

All spiritual traditions have a way to honor our connection to the power of love / divine / God that connects us all together.

For me as a Christian, I talk about this as my connection to God; my intention is that when aligned with God, who is Unconditional Love, I am then able to work on being the highest and best that I can for myself and other. Nurturing this relationship with the Creator is the most important thing I can do, and all other relationships and my genuine "control" over any situation stems from my ability to be aligned with Unconditional Love. In practical terms, this means, among other things, that I must forgive and not get stuck in judgement, anger and resentment.

Other traditions have different spiritual and secular ways to phrase this and work out the details, and when we get tangled up in the little things like wording and cultural differences, we get off track from the big picture, and most importantly our connection to one another. Humans love to get stuck in the pretense and argue, so during our practice today, let's focus on the essence - however this connection is meaningful to you!

We'll be sitting with this theme for a couple weeks at least. In today's practice, we explored being mindful of our thoughts and emotions that are not aligned with love, and "changing the channel" if we notice anger, resentment, worry, victimization and so forth.

How to change the channel? Gratitude: noticing things that we can be grateful and the opportunities presented by a difficult situation. Depending upon the level of difficulty, especially if there is deep grief present, sometimes the best we can align with is acceptance of the situation and of the need to keep going.

To join our practice real time or to sign up for in-person practices over the YYC summer months, please write CalgaryMindfulness@Gmail.com or visit www.CalgaryMindfulness.ca.