After finishing a rough draft of the book, I continue commenting on each chapter by now turning to chapter 6.
This chapter, of course, is about the 6th Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice. It is an expansion of what I said for individuals. Now I turned to groups.
Here are a few excerpts from this chapter:
Choices of groups might be a church, school, family, study class, neighborhood or housing complex. Pray to experience how agape is manifested among them. When I say pray for the well-being of that group, I mean in the same way that you prayed for a person in Steps 2-5. Prayerfully hold with your attention a group you choose, and visualize participating with this group in the spiritual flowing of agape. Then let agape flow into that moment of prayer. As you hold the group in prayer, you may pray the words, “Let agape flow among …”
And remember, being in ‘agape contact’ isn’t effected in any way by distance or time. Practice this exercise until you are able to experience the power of agape flowing into the center of this group’s life and work.
You might want to expand to other groups by using similar categories to the ones in those previous steps; for example, expand from the spiritually meaningful group to consider a group of friends, then expand to a group of strangers, and finally expand to a group of people from a culture or nation considered to be enemies of your own culture or nation.
As the Agape Prayer Practice develops for you, it helps to constantly keep realizing that these steps are only possible because agape does not originate with you, but is actually the way the divine Presence is made manifest to all that God creates. So you are merely following God’s agape into the interactions of a group.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Agape for an enemy
I’ve been spending so much time on my book that I haven’t taken the time for this blog. But finally I finished a rough draft of the book, so now I can return to the blog. For chapter 5, I enjoyed quoting from M. L. King and Karen Armstrong.
This chapter, of course, is about the 5th Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice. It is the most difficult step to learn, but it is also the most important step for the future of the human race. It is about holding in prayer an enemy -- and not just a personal enemy, but there is an extension of this step that involves holding in prayer an enemy of the nation. So the purpose of this step is to practice letting the flow of agape help you want the well-being of this enemy equally as strongly as you did for the persons you chose for the other steps. In order to accomplish this, you need to visualize participating with this person in the spiritual flowing of agape until finding the spiritual concern that this chosen person will find personal well-being and deep sense of peace.
Here are a few excerpts from this chapter:
As you did in Step 4, spend a few minutes thinking about why there is that difference in attitude between how you feel toward a friend, a family member, a stranger, and a hostile person. Of course, here we have to deal even more strongly with the realization that our attitude toward the other person makes no difference in this prayer practice. That’s why it’s important to constantly remember that agape does not originate with you.
The point of realizing the spiritual basis of agape is that not only are humans created with agape in their heart-center, but as agape works in people’s lives, they find that the deepening of relationships is a divinely-inspired action (is that why John’s section on the Last Supper showed Jesus giving his special teaching that agape is the basis of his “new COMMANDMENT”?). So the power of agape has the full spiritual weight of being given to human beings by God. Therefore, God’s gift of agape has the purpose of helping people become divinely inspired to treat all people equally. So that’s how it becomes possible for you to find the divine power of human relations pouring into your heart.
Even though the existence of spiritual agape in everyone’s heart is the basic reality of human existence, that is not readily understood by a lot of people today. Unfortunately in the modern world a lot of people expend too much psychological energy trying to deny that basic reality of human existence.
A main outcome of these steps is for us to think of people equally and then let agape so transform our approach to relationships that we are able to treat people equally. Isn’t that what Jesus meant when he talked about God treating all people equally? (“For God makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. If you show agape only for those who show agape to you, what reward do you have?” … Treat people in the same way that you want them to treat you. If you share agape with those who share agape with you, why should you be commended?” (Mt. 5:45-48; Lk. 6:35 CEB))
And of course, we have this teaching from Jesus: “But I say to you, share agape with your enemies and pray for those who harass you because of your faith so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. … Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing agape to everyone, so also you must be complete. … Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. … Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” (Mt. 5: 7-39; 44-48 CEB)
This chapter, of course, is about the 5th Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice. It is the most difficult step to learn, but it is also the most important step for the future of the human race. It is about holding in prayer an enemy -- and not just a personal enemy, but there is an extension of this step that involves holding in prayer an enemy of the nation. So the purpose of this step is to practice letting the flow of agape help you want the well-being of this enemy equally as strongly as you did for the persons you chose for the other steps. In order to accomplish this, you need to visualize participating with this person in the spiritual flowing of agape until finding the spiritual concern that this chosen person will find personal well-being and deep sense of peace.
Here are a few excerpts from this chapter:
As you did in Step 4, spend a few minutes thinking about why there is that difference in attitude between how you feel toward a friend, a family member, a stranger, and a hostile person. Of course, here we have to deal even more strongly with the realization that our attitude toward the other person makes no difference in this prayer practice. That’s why it’s important to constantly remember that agape does not originate with you.
The point of realizing the spiritual basis of agape is that not only are humans created with agape in their heart-center, but as agape works in people’s lives, they find that the deepening of relationships is a divinely-inspired action (is that why John’s section on the Last Supper showed Jesus giving his special teaching that agape is the basis of his “new COMMANDMENT”?). So the power of agape has the full spiritual weight of being given to human beings by God. Therefore, God’s gift of agape has the purpose of helping people become divinely inspired to treat all people equally. So that’s how it becomes possible for you to find the divine power of human relations pouring into your heart.
Even though the existence of spiritual agape in everyone’s heart is the basic reality of human existence, that is not readily understood by a lot of people today. Unfortunately in the modern world a lot of people expend too much psychological energy trying to deny that basic reality of human existence.
A main outcome of these steps is for us to think of people equally and then let agape so transform our approach to relationships that we are able to treat people equally. Isn’t that what Jesus meant when he talked about God treating all people equally? (“For God makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. If you show agape only for those who show agape to you, what reward do you have?” … Treat people in the same way that you want them to treat you. If you share agape with those who share agape with you, why should you be commended?” (Mt. 5:45-48; Lk. 6:35 CEB))
And of course, we have this teaching from Jesus: “But I say to you, share agape with your enemies and pray for those who harass you because of your faith so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. … Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing agape to everyone, so also you must be complete. … Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. … Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.” (Mt. 5: 7-39; 44-48 CEB)
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Agape for a stranger
I finished a rough draft of Chapter 4 of my book. For this chapter I bought River Jordan’s “Praying for Strangers” and enjoyed quoting from it.
This 4th Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice is about holding in prayer a neutral person who is either merely an acquaintance or even a stranger. The purpose of this step is to practice letting the flow of agape help you want the well-being of this stranger equally as strongly as you did for the persons you chose for the other steps. In order to accomplish this, a person needs to visualize participating with this person in the spiritual flowing of agape until finding the spiritual concern that this chosen person will find personal well-being and deep sense of peace.
For this chapter, I did a verse-by-verse careful and detailed study of 1 Cor. 13 (especially verses 4-8). Here is a quote from that study: “agape was implanted in each of our hearts for the purpose of making it possible for us to wake up to the trust that God is gently and persistently accepting us and helping us find spiritual power to help us in life. And it’s a good thing that patience is at the heart of agape, because most of us usually make it harder for ourselves to let agape flow in our lives. That’s also why nobody should get discouraged when there are a lot of missteps, start-overs, and stops, and restarts that come with the agape prayer practice. That just seems to be the way it happens when trying to do this in our confusing, overly pressurized modern world.”
When I searched for what caused the negative emotions mentioned in those verses, I said, “So first, agape overcomes any neediness that a person may let build up from the many fears we let grab ahold of us. It provides us with a sense of fulfillment that cuts through any tendency to desire to try building up ourselves by putting down someone else. Of course, Paul never heard of the concept of self-esteem, but when we read those verses after having heard about the modern emotional need to be strengthened in our sense of self-esteem, we can see how connecting with the power of agape can give us a basis more eternally sound than we could ever find by inventing ego-identities constructed from the experiences we have in early childhood and the fears that keep plaguing us from infancy. There is also an underlying meaning running through those verses that agape opens a person’s heart-sense to supply the basis for working to achieve what is best for the human community. That sense of common humanity is meant in the Greek expression ‘to me ta heats’ of verse 5, so that when we translate it as applying to agape, we see it means: ‘agape works against seeking selfish advantage over the common good.’”
Then I got such enjoyment from reading River Jordan’s “Praying for Stranger” that I used several quotes from it.
This 4th Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice is about holding in prayer a neutral person who is either merely an acquaintance or even a stranger. The purpose of this step is to practice letting the flow of agape help you want the well-being of this stranger equally as strongly as you did for the persons you chose for the other steps. In order to accomplish this, a person needs to visualize participating with this person in the spiritual flowing of agape until finding the spiritual concern that this chosen person will find personal well-being and deep sense of peace.
For this chapter, I did a verse-by-verse careful and detailed study of 1 Cor. 13 (especially verses 4-8). Here is a quote from that study: “agape was implanted in each of our hearts for the purpose of making it possible for us to wake up to the trust that God is gently and persistently accepting us and helping us find spiritual power to help us in life. And it’s a good thing that patience is at the heart of agape, because most of us usually make it harder for ourselves to let agape flow in our lives. That’s also why nobody should get discouraged when there are a lot of missteps, start-overs, and stops, and restarts that come with the agape prayer practice. That just seems to be the way it happens when trying to do this in our confusing, overly pressurized modern world.”
When I searched for what caused the negative emotions mentioned in those verses, I said, “So first, agape overcomes any neediness that a person may let build up from the many fears we let grab ahold of us. It provides us with a sense of fulfillment that cuts through any tendency to desire to try building up ourselves by putting down someone else. Of course, Paul never heard of the concept of self-esteem, but when we read those verses after having heard about the modern emotional need to be strengthened in our sense of self-esteem, we can see how connecting with the power of agape can give us a basis more eternally sound than we could ever find by inventing ego-identities constructed from the experiences we have in early childhood and the fears that keep plaguing us from infancy. There is also an underlying meaning running through those verses that agape opens a person’s heart-sense to supply the basis for working to achieve what is best for the human community. That sense of common humanity is meant in the Greek expression ‘to me ta heats’ of verse 5, so that when we translate it as applying to agape, we see it means: ‘agape works against seeking selfish advantage over the common good.’”
Then I got such enjoyment from reading River Jordan’s “Praying for Stranger” that I used several quotes from it.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Agape for a friend
I finished a rough draft of Chapter 3 of my book. That helped me develop even more deeply my understanding of agape as I examined Rom. 12:9-19a and Gal. 5:13 & 22.
This 3rd Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice is about holding in prayer a friend and then a family member.
Part of the deepening of understanding was expressed this way: “As you practice this for many days, try to find a deep sense of your relationship with this person strengthening and growing. If this person is geographically near enough that you can be with them, then let this prayer practice lead to action -- to the power of agape actually flowing to this person when you are with them. Over the course of several months, you should do whatever is necessary to deepen your relationship. But if you are not geographically near this person, don’t let that be a problem, because God’s agape is not limited by space or time. The important point for you is to visualize what it would be like for this person to receive God’s agape, no matter where this person is. This works because you are praying with the attitude of spiritually following agape as it flows in the person’s life.
“Because some relationships that have developed over many years go through different periods of agreements and disagreements, and there may even be times of difficulties or even hurt feelings, you may experience, during this practice, the surfacing of memories that carry with them confused feelings toward the person. If these feelings begin to interfere with your sensing the flow of agape, then you may want to stop the practice long enough to work through any sensation of blockage. In fact, if a memory surfaces of some act that requires forgiveness, then you may actually need to contact the person and seek whatever forgiveness or reconciliation is required. This is necessary because you need to be completely honest with yourself in order to be honest with someone else. But especially, you need to be completely honest with yourself in order to be able to be open to the divine Presence. You need to be honest with yourself in order to truthfully experience the flow of agape.”
Then when I got into the part about holding a family member in prayer, I was able to look back over my family memories, and also I reflected on watching children grow and realizing how completely vulnerable human beings are in the first year of life. All humans literally could not survive without some form of nurturing. Our utter dependence on others is established at the beginning of life, and it is meant to continue on throughout our lives. All attempts to deny that we depend on one another can lead to very destructive behavior in society. If we don’t learn trust and patience very early and then don’t continue developing that into adulthood, we end up having a lot of problems relating with other people.
This 3rd Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice is about holding in prayer a friend and then a family member.
Part of the deepening of understanding was expressed this way: “As you practice this for many days, try to find a deep sense of your relationship with this person strengthening and growing. If this person is geographically near enough that you can be with them, then let this prayer practice lead to action -- to the power of agape actually flowing to this person when you are with them. Over the course of several months, you should do whatever is necessary to deepen your relationship. But if you are not geographically near this person, don’t let that be a problem, because God’s agape is not limited by space or time. The important point for you is to visualize what it would be like for this person to receive God’s agape, no matter where this person is. This works because you are praying with the attitude of spiritually following agape as it flows in the person’s life.
“Because some relationships that have developed over many years go through different periods of agreements and disagreements, and there may even be times of difficulties or even hurt feelings, you may experience, during this practice, the surfacing of memories that carry with them confused feelings toward the person. If these feelings begin to interfere with your sensing the flow of agape, then you may want to stop the practice long enough to work through any sensation of blockage. In fact, if a memory surfaces of some act that requires forgiveness, then you may actually need to contact the person and seek whatever forgiveness or reconciliation is required. This is necessary because you need to be completely honest with yourself in order to be honest with someone else. But especially, you need to be completely honest with yourself in order to be able to be open to the divine Presence. You need to be honest with yourself in order to truthfully experience the flow of agape.”
Then when I got into the part about holding a family member in prayer, I was able to look back over my family memories, and also I reflected on watching children grow and realizing how completely vulnerable human beings are in the first year of life. All humans literally could not survive without some form of nurturing. Our utter dependence on others is established at the beginning of life, and it is meant to continue on throughout our lives. All attempts to deny that we depend on one another can lead to very destructive behavior in society. If we don’t learn trust and patience very early and then don’t continue developing that into adulthood, we end up having a lot of problems relating with other people.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Let Agape flow in the heart of a special person
After finishing a very rough draft of Chapter 2 of my book, I realized that the very act of writing the book is helping me understand how to communicate agape. This 2nd Step in the 7-step agape prayer practice is about holding in prayer a person who has a special part in your spiritual development. Of course, as I've mentioned in previous postings, calling this a 'prayer' is a little misleading, because it is not what people normally mean by 'prayer.'
In order to get a feeling for what kind of praying could be involve with this approach, I advised the reader to practice this step rather than merely reading about it. I explained that the first time this phase of the agape prayer practice is begun, you can come at it from an attitude of honestly and truly visualizing the well-being of one person you choose for the focus. So from this unusual perspective on prayer, imagine specific ways for well-being to develop in the life of that person.
But also I mentioned that the person ‘praying’ is not asking for ‘something’ to happen, but is holding that special person in prayer. In a sense, when Step 2 is practiced, there should be a visualizing of spiritually sharing with that person in a way that a picture is created in the mind's eye of what it would be for that person to connect with agape deep within them and let agape flow in that person’s life.
An insight I came to when writing that chapter has to do with agape coming through another person relating to you. I put it this way: “You may sense God giving you agape through that person. That is one of the beautiful aspects to the spiritual power of agape, that God can bring it into your life through other people, and especially during a deeply moving worship service or a time of intense discussion about spiritual concerns. The more you work with agape, the easier it will be to feel like agape is ‘flowing’ from the person you choose for this step, especially when you are studying with that person or with a group in which that person is a member.”
As I was trying to find a way to describe the kind of prayer attitude I was meaning, I wrote: “St. Paul wrote some 2,000 years ago that the gift of agape is already there in your heart. So this type of prayer comes as a method for waking up to what is deep within you. And one way for a lot of people to know that they need to wake up happens when they see that they are denying that this special spiritual energy is pouring into their heart.”
The very process of writing this book has opened me to see so much more to the deeper dimension of agape.
In order to get a feeling for what kind of praying could be involve with this approach, I advised the reader to practice this step rather than merely reading about it. I explained that the first time this phase of the agape prayer practice is begun, you can come at it from an attitude of honestly and truly visualizing the well-being of one person you choose for the focus. So from this unusual perspective on prayer, imagine specific ways for well-being to develop in the life of that person.
But also I mentioned that the person ‘praying’ is not asking for ‘something’ to happen, but is holding that special person in prayer. In a sense, when Step 2 is practiced, there should be a visualizing of spiritually sharing with that person in a way that a picture is created in the mind's eye of what it would be for that person to connect with agape deep within them and let agape flow in that person’s life.
An insight I came to when writing that chapter has to do with agape coming through another person relating to you. I put it this way: “You may sense God giving you agape through that person. That is one of the beautiful aspects to the spiritual power of agape, that God can bring it into your life through other people, and especially during a deeply moving worship service or a time of intense discussion about spiritual concerns. The more you work with agape, the easier it will be to feel like agape is ‘flowing’ from the person you choose for this step, especially when you are studying with that person or with a group in which that person is a member.”
As I was trying to find a way to describe the kind of prayer attitude I was meaning, I wrote: “St. Paul wrote some 2,000 years ago that the gift of agape is already there in your heart. So this type of prayer comes as a method for waking up to what is deep within you. And one way for a lot of people to know that they need to wake up happens when they see that they are denying that this special spiritual energy is pouring into their heart.”
The very process of writing this book has opened me to see so much more to the deeper dimension of agape.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Agape from the human perspective
Each day the way I prepare to write more of my book is by going into a tree area at the far end of a park near my home and meditate on Rom. 5:5. As I’ve mentioned in previous postings, this morning prayer time includes a ritual to open myself to receive agape. This meditation practice has helped me deepen my awareness of agape. But I started this practice almost 3 years before the thought entered my mind to write my book.
That’s how I came to realize agape as a spiritual power that opens up my awareness of divine Presence manifesting to me. But what should have seemed obvious to me, and yet has only become obvious recently, is the point that this is an explanation from the human perspective.
Oh you might say, “Well, duh. What other perspective could we possibly have?” And yet, it’s important not to think it’s anything other than that. My attitude was that something was starting to happen in the morning, and yet there was something wrong with that perception.
So I went back to the Bible to look up the verse. The first mistake I’d made was glaringly obvious. It had to do with the human sense of time. I'd forgotten that the verse was not in the present tense; in fact, what usually gets called past, present, and future are there in that 1 verse: “and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s agape has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Rm. 5:5 New Revised Standard Version) What I’d forgotten is this -- Paul said, “has been poured....”
The second mistake came to me when I realized: God’s agape is not limited by time. Agape is ‘there’ in human hearts, agape has always been ‘there,’ agape will always be ‘there.’ The change that has come to me has to do with the eternal essence of agape.
So what should be obvious to me is the flow of agape from the center of my being has always been happening. Just because I started to become aware of it does not mean that it just started. That’s my own perception problem.
That’s merely another example of how people tend to see identity. What I needed to realize is I could not find my identity with God’s Presence as long as I expected an event that I thought was somehow God 'coming to my ego-identity.' But instead, what agape was doing for me was opening me up spiritually -- I merely had not been open to that awareness. So I needed to be made aware.
I’d tried to explain that this way in a Nov. 22, 2011 posting: “I came to realize that through that action of God's agape, (which came to me as a spiritual sensation that I was being ‘caringly’ and ‘lovingly’ drawn into a close, intimate relationship of divine Presence) I was experiencing an opening up in a deeply devotional way to becoming increasingly aware of a Presence that is always ‘with me’ because there is no way that the eternal Presence is ever ‘not there.’ Any sensation of ‘not there’ is strictly my own lack of awareness, and nothing more.
That’s how I came to realize agape as a spiritual power that opens up my awareness of divine Presence manifesting to me. But what should have seemed obvious to me, and yet has only become obvious recently, is the point that this is an explanation from the human perspective.
Oh you might say, “Well, duh. What other perspective could we possibly have?” And yet, it’s important not to think it’s anything other than that. My attitude was that something was starting to happen in the morning, and yet there was something wrong with that perception.
So I went back to the Bible to look up the verse. The first mistake I’d made was glaringly obvious. It had to do with the human sense of time. I'd forgotten that the verse was not in the present tense; in fact, what usually gets called past, present, and future are there in that 1 verse: “and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s agape has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Rm. 5:5 New Revised Standard Version) What I’d forgotten is this -- Paul said, “has been poured....”
The second mistake came to me when I realized: God’s agape is not limited by time. Agape is ‘there’ in human hearts, agape has always been ‘there,’ agape will always be ‘there.’ The change that has come to me has to do with the eternal essence of agape.
So what should be obvious to me is the flow of agape from the center of my being has always been happening. Just because I started to become aware of it does not mean that it just started. That’s my own perception problem.
That’s merely another example of how people tend to see identity. What I needed to realize is I could not find my identity with God’s Presence as long as I expected an event that I thought was somehow God 'coming to my ego-identity.' But instead, what agape was doing for me was opening me up spiritually -- I merely had not been open to that awareness. So I needed to be made aware.
I’d tried to explain that this way in a Nov. 22, 2011 posting: “I came to realize that through that action of God's agape, (which came to me as a spiritual sensation that I was being ‘caringly’ and ‘lovingly’ drawn into a close, intimate relationship of divine Presence) I was experiencing an opening up in a deeply devotional way to becoming increasingly aware of a Presence that is always ‘with me’ because there is no way that the eternal Presence is ever ‘not there.’ Any sensation of ‘not there’ is strictly my own lack of awareness, and nothing more.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Wondering about Agape
Writing this book has helped me deepen my awareness of agape. Also I have found myself aware of how much I don’t know about agape.
And as usual with me, what I don’t know is what bothers me. Partly, I’m bothered because I’ve been working on this blog for over 2 years and the book for 2 months, and yet I’m just starting to see that I’ve been missing a lot of the depth of spiritual meaning in agape.
What started this latest realization is my recent re-reading of the Bible quotes with ‘agape’ left untranslated. I started to see that the point being made there is this: agape is spiritual because there is the divine intent that humans must act on agape. That is a requirement -- that’s the point of calling the 2 Great Commandments and the New Commandment by that designation. We are created to live by agape. Humans are commanded!
When in my last posting I used a couple of quotes from my 1st draft of Ch. 1 I was expressing ...
To try seeing what they might mean, spiritually, I strung some of them together and came up with the following:
And as usual with me, what I don’t know is what bothers me. Partly, I’m bothered because I’ve been working on this blog for over 2 years and the book for 2 months, and yet I’m just starting to see that I’ve been missing a lot of the depth of spiritual meaning in agape.
What started this latest realization is my recent re-reading of the Bible quotes with ‘agape’ left untranslated. I started to see that the point being made there is this: agape is spiritual because there is the divine intent that humans must act on agape. That is a requirement -- that’s the point of calling the 2 Great Commandments and the New Commandment by that designation. We are created to live by agape. Humans are commanded!
When in my last posting I used a couple of quotes from my 1st draft of Ch. 1 I was expressing ...
“This type of prayer comes as a method for waking up to what is deep within you. It came to me as a deep spiritual sensation that was a way for finding, in the way that the ‘Kingdom Parables’ of Jesus are about finding what is at the true heart of Life. And in a similar way, the act of sending follows from a deep attitude of finding what is truly best for the ultimate well-being of people.”After I had posted that, I read it from the attitude of a reader finding it by exploring the internet. What struck me then was the thought that those words didn’t seem to come from me. They must have been inspired because I don’t know what they mean.
To try seeing what they might mean, spiritually, I strung some of them together and came up with the following:
Agape is meant to “wake us up to what is deep within” -- “at theThat shakes me up, because even though I do believe that agape is at the heart of what is “truly best for the ultimate well-being of people,” I don’t yet have a handle on what that means.
true heart of Life,” and for “finding what is truly best for the ultimate
well-being of people.”
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