Agapé group meditation in a Denver church

A church in Denver contacted me, because of my book on Agapé Prayer, and asked me to lead a 5-part series of group meditation sessions. The weekly agapé prayer meetings continued on Wednesday evenings over the 5 weeks in the middle of Lent. So I had to find a way to squeeze the 7 steps outlined in my book into only 5. This and the following 5 postings describe what we did during those sessions.

The whole series turned out to be a very good training for applying my book’s ideas into a practical setting. At first I felt very strange doing agapé meditation with a group. I prepared for the beginning session during the 2 weeks prior, including meditating twice that first day, seeking guidance. One inspiration originally seemed very strange because, even though I’d led group meditations years before, I’d never even attended or heard of trying to hold hands while meditating. But that was the vision I received, so I decided I should go with the guidance.

After introductions and a brief description of what the 5 weeks would cover, I tried to summarize my years of research about agapé into a few sentences. That attempt proved more difficult to communicate than I thought. I explained that you need to sense agapé flowing within yourself before you can do the additional steps of projecting your awareness of agapé flowing beyond yourself. But we need to keep in mind throughout all these steps that the purpose of this meditation practice is to become aware of a process that has already been going on, so we just need to develop a way to sense it. When I tried describing agapé as a spiritual power, a man interrupted and asked, “What do you mean by spiritual power?” I had used those 2 words because I thought they would be most easily understood. Finally, I ended up talking about the way Martin Luther King used agapé to organize demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement.

Finally, I shifted the discussion to meditation preparation. When I asked about participant’s experiences with meditating, I was relieved to discover they all were meditators. That way when I began the meditation process with a little stress-relieving focus on breath, each person was familiar with that method of preparation. I had us hold hands in a circle, then invited them to feel the flowing of air down deep into their lungs and then out again.

As our awareness moved deeper and deeper we became aware of resting in our heart-center, where we found a power -- a special presence. We relaxed completely into a profound realization of agapé spreading from deep within the heart-center, flowing throughout and permeating our being, bringing a sense of well-being and a deep sense of joy.

As the deep spiritual sensation of agapé continued flowing throughout our being, we let agapé open us up spiritually. I invited them to experience agapé as a spiritual gift to awaken them to divine Presence. After allowing several minutes for them to experience the power of agapé for themselves, we slowly ended the meditation.