SPIRIT IN PRACTICE
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 5: MIND PRACTICES
BY ERIK WALKER WIKSTROM
© Copyright 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 8:51:05 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
I call that mind free, which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds in the radiant signatures which everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlightenment....
I call that mind free, which is not passively framed by outward circumstance, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused.
—William Ellery Channing, "Spiritual Freedom" (1830)
We can sometimes get the impression that "spiritual" and "intellectual" are mutually exclusive characteristics, or that we need to "get out of our heads" to experience spiritual growth. This perception may come, in part, because the modern emphasis on spirituality often calls for types of experience other than the purely intellectual. It may stem, also, from expressions like this one, from Taoism's Tao Te Ching (chapter 48)—"In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped"—or Zen patriarch Bodhidharma's famous dictum, "no reliance on words or letters." Christian monks such as St. Francis of Assisi again and again emphasized their own simple nature as opposed to the learned people with whom they were often in conflict. And so, in the popular imagination, people often equate "spirituality" with contemplative practices such as silent meditation rather than, say, reading a good book on astrophysics or engaging in a lively debate on the psychology of politics.
Yet throughout time and across cultures, it has long been recognized that reason and rationality are among many paths to the discovery of deep truth. In Hinduism there are said to be five primary paths, or margas, leading to the same goal: realization. These are Hatha Yoga (body), Karma Yoga (willing), Bhakti Yoga (feeling), Raja Yoga (mind), and J n ana Yoga (knowing). According to Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Judaism embraces six different spiritual paths: transcendence, study, prayer, meditation, ritual, and good deeds. The Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York has a schema with eight "gates," among which is the discipline of academic study of scripture. (These eight gates provide the framework for the Eight Spheres of Spiritual Growth that undergird this program.) Evelyn Underhill , a well-known British expert in mysticism, said in her book The Essentials of Mysticism that "reason has a well-marked and necessary place in the soul's approach to God."
While it may indeed be true that many people can get "stuck in their heads" and miss out on what Margot Adler calls "the juice and the mystery," it is by no means a direct correlation that the use of the intellect requires one to be blinded to the miraculous. Consider Albert Einstein, who said that he knew his special theory of relativity was correct not because all of the equations added up but because it was so "beautiful," and who opined that "the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious." Many of the world's most rational thinkers find that the more they learn, the more their appreciation for the majesty and magnificent mystery of life grows as well. And isn't this at least a workable definition of "spirituality"—that which deepens your appreciation of the magnitude of life?
So along with personal spiritual practices, communal worship, spiritual partnerships, body practices, soul practices, life practices, and justice practices, the schema that informs these workshops—the Eight Spheres of Spiritual Growth—includes also the importance of actively involving our minds. This, too, is essential if we are to have a whole and well-rounded spiritual life.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: Sharing Names | 5 |
Activity 2: The Story of the Mystic and the Scientist | 10 |
Activity 3: What Fascinates You? | 20 |
Activity 4: The Mind and the Religious Journey | 15 |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Where Are We Now? | 30 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Leaders are encouraged to prepare for the workshop not only by gathering supplies and reviewing the workshop's activities, but also by completing the reflection and sharing from Activity 3, and possibly also from Activity 4, with one another or with a friend or colleague. You may wish to journal about the experience afterwards.
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
As participants enter, invite them to sign in, create name tags, and pick up a schedule for the workshop series if they have not already done so. Direct their attention to the agenda for this workshop.
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Welcome participants to Spirit in Practice.
Ask the group to turn to "The Free Mind" by William Ellery Channing, 592 in Singing the Living Tradition. Invite a participant to light the chalice as the group reads responsively.
After the reading, ask the group to turn to "With Heart and Mind," 300 in Singing the Living Tradition. Invite the group to join in singing. If the group is largely unfamiliar with the song, you may need to teach them the tune.
Including All Participants
If your congregation has large-print and/or Braille versions of Singing the Living Tradition, make those copies available for participants who might need them. Using a microphone for this activity helps more people hear you.
ACTIVITY 1: SHARING NAMES (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce yourself and your co-leader(s), and invite participants to take turns sharing their names. As participants introduce themselves, invite them to stand (if they are willing and able) and to speak loudly or use the microphone so they can be better seen and heard.
Including All Participants
Using a microphone for this activity helps more people hear one another.
ACTIVITY 2: THE STORY OF THE MYSTIC AND THE SCIENTIST (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read the story "The Mystic and the Scientist" aloud. Provide copies of the story to people who prefer to read along.
After sharing the story, invite participants to take a moment to quietly center themselves, to let go of any tension or emotions that are not needed for the next hour, and to breathe deeply. You may ring a bell at the beginning and end of this silent time, or simply invite people into the silence and then gently bring them out.
After the silence, invite participants to discuss their responses to the story. Keep the discussion brief and focused, allowing time for your own concluding remarks. Ask:
Conclude by emphasizing that the path of the mind is deeply connected with the paths of the heart and the spirit. Sometimes spirituality is associated with purely emotional, nonrational ways of being; however, rational thought has an important role in spiritual practice, especially in Unitarian Universalism.
Including All Participants
Be sure that all participants can hear the story, or have the story interpreted for them. Using a microphone for this activity helps more people hear the story. You may wish to print out a copy of the story in advance for participants who are hard of hearing or who prefer to read along.
ACTIVITY 3: WHAT FASCINATES YOU? (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Share these or similar words to introduce the activity:
Many of the world's most rational thinkers find that the more they learn, the more their appreciation for the majesty and magnificent mystery of life grows as well. And isn't this at least a workable definition of "spirituality"—that which deepens your appreciation of the magnitude of life?
Point out that the mind can play a large role in our understanding of our own spirituality and our practices. Share this quote by Albert Einstein, modified for gender inclusiveness:
One cannot help but be in awe when [one] contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
Invite participants to explore their own "holy curiosities" with a worksheet that will help them identify what fascinates them. Distribute Handout 1: Identifying a Mind Practice. Explain that participants will have five minutes to fill out the worksheet on their own, followed by discussion. If participants need some prompting to complete the worksheet, explain that they can write about anything that fascinates them: machines, the Milky Way, birds, bread dough, electromagnetic radiation—anything!
Allow participants to write for five minutes. Then invite volunteers to share one thing they are fascinated by that they will explore as part of a spiritual practice.
Including All Participants
Due to learning differences or personal preference, some participants may not enjoy writing. You can encourage these participants to draw pictures representing things that fascinate them or to silently reflect on what fascinates them.
You may wish to pass a cordless microphone during the sharing time so that participants can hear one another better.
ACTIVITY 4: THE MIND AND THE RELIGIOUS JOURNEY (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce the activity with these or similar words:
In this activity we'll be using our minds to explore together, and the focus of our exploration will be the idea that the spiritual journey has something of a predictable course. We'll look at a road map, a model that describes the spiritual evolution of a person.
Distribute Handout 2: Stages of Spiritual Growth (included in this document) . Ask participants to consider the stages described in Handout 2 and think about which of those stages they may have experienced. They can also consider the role that their minds played in moving from stage to stage. For example, perhaps learning the truth about Santa Claus helped move some participants from the Magic stage to the Reality stage, or learning about world religions moved them from Dependence to Independence . Allow a few minutes for reflection on the handout.
Facilitate discussion with the whole group, considering these questions:
Including All Participants
You may wish to pass a cordless microphone during the discussion so that participants can hear one another better.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Gather participants around the altar or centering table. Affirm the good work that participants have done in this workshop.
Offer an opportunity for the group to reflect back over the workshop, seeking what are sometimes called "like and wishes." Ask participants, if they wish, to briefly share something they particularly liked about their experience and one thing they wish for in the future. If the group is small or there is extra time, allow participants to speak freely. If the group is large or time is tight, limit people's sharing so that all who wish to share will have the opportunity.
Distribute your customized Taking It Home handout. Review the ideas for how to continue exploring the workshop's subject with friends and family.
If you have chosen to encourage journaling throughout the Spirit in Practice workshop series, remind participants to write in their journals. (See Workshop 1, Alternate Activity 2: Introduction to Journaling.)
Make any announcements concerning the next meeting, especially any changes to routine (such as a change in meeting time or place, a guest presenter, etc.).
Close the workshop with this ritual: The leader takes the hand of the person on his/her right while saying, "I put my hand in yours so that we might do together what we cannot do alone." That person, still holding the leader's hand, then takes the hand of the person on his/her right, saying the same thing. When this saying has gone completely around the circle and everyone is holding hands, the workshop has ended. Extinguish the chalice.
Including All Participants
Using a microphone for this activity helps more people hear you.
Be sure to be inclusive of people with a variety of living situations—living alone, with a significant other, in a family, with housemates, etc.—in the way you explain the Taking It Home activities.
You may wish to adapt the closing ritual to make it more comfortable for people who are averse to holding hands. You can change the words to "I reach out to you so that we might do together what we cannot do alone" and change the accompanying gesture to reaching rather than holding hands.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
After the workshop, co-leaders should make a time to get together to evaluate this workshop and plan future workshops. Use these questions to guide your shared reflection and planning:
TAKING IT HOME
Use your responses on Handout 1: Identifying a Mind Practice to engage with something that fascinates you. If you journal, take some time afterward to write about the experience and its relationship to your spirituality.
Talk with friends, family, housemates, and co-workers about the roles of reason and intellect in their spirituality. Do they use their reason regularly? Do they come from religious traditions that encourage reasoning and rationality? What you find might surprise you!
Read a good book on Unitarian Universalist theology to consider the ways in which intellect and reason inform our religious tradition. Such books include—but are certainly not limited to— (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=654) Reason and (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=654) R (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=654) everence (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=654) by William R. Murry, Faith Without Certainty (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=598) by Paul Rasor, Proverbs of Ashes (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=401) by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Blessing the World: What Can Save Us Now (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=547) by Rebecca Ann Parker, and A Chosen Faith (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=385) by Forrest Church and John A. Buehrens.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: WHERE ARE WE NOW? (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
This activity extends the discussion begun in Activity 4: The Mind and the Religious Journey.
Display the newsprint or digital slide with the questions for reflection:
Invite participants to spend ten minutes reflecting individually on these questions.
After ten minutes, ring the bell. Invite the group to form pairs. Explain that each person will have up to five minutes to share his/her responses to the three questions while the other partner listens.
After five minutes, ring the bell to invite the pairs to switch speakers.
After an additional five minutes, ring the bell to conclude the pairs' discussions.
Invite the group back together for full-group discussion. Ask:
Including All Participants
If you notice participants struggling to hear one another in their pairs, allow some pairs to leave the room and find a quieter space. If two participants require American Sign Language interpretation and you have only one interpreter, pair up those participants. If you have more than two participants needing ASL interpretation, find a second interpreter to help.
You may wish to pass a cordless microphone during the full-group discussion so that participants can hear one another better.
SPIRIT IN PRACTICE: WORKSHOP 5:
STORY: THE MYSTIC AND THE SCIENTIST
One day a Religious Man approached a Mystic and asked, “Does God exist?” “Allow me to go within for an answer,” the Mystic replied.
After meditating for quite some time, expanding her heart-consciousness to embrace the totality of existence, she answered, “I do not know what you mean by the word ‘God,’ but I do know that this world is more mysterious and more wonderful than I could ever imagine. I know that you and I are part of something so much larger than our own lives. Perhaps this ‘something larger’ is what you seek.”
Then the Religious Man approached a Scientist. “Does God exist?” he asked. “Let me think,” the Scientist replied.
And so she thought. She thought about the vastness of the universe—156 billion light-years, or something like 936 billion trillion miles, in diameter—and the almost immeasurable smallness of a quark. She thought of how the energy of the Big Bang fuels the beating of her own heart. And then she answered, “I do not know what you mean by the word ‘God,” but I do know that this world is more mysterious and more wonderful than I could ever imagine. I know that you and I are part of something so much larger than our own lives. Perhaps this ‘something larger’ is what you seek.”
The Religious Man then thought to himself. He thought of what he knows and what he does not know. He thought about how he knows what he knows, and how he knows he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. He thought about his experience of the world and how it is but one tiny, infinitesimal fraction of all experience. He thought about his dependence on forces larger than himself, and he thought about the interdependence of all existence. He experienced wonder and pondered mystery. And then he knew—he knew in his soul the truth of what the Mystic and the Scientist said—that he is part of something so much larger than his own life.
And then, only then, did he think about what he’d call it.
SPIRIT IN PRACTICE: WORKSHOP 5:
HANDOUT: IDENTIFYING A MIND PRACTICE
This exercise is designed to help you develop and nurture spiritual practices of the mind. Respond to the following questions:
1. What fascinates me?
2. What is it about those things I named that fascinates me?
3. What else do I think might fascinate me if I heard more about it?
4. Which of these fascinating things would I like to explore as part of a spiritual practice? (List up to three.)
5. How will I explore them? Who and what can help me along the way?
SPIRIT IN PRACTICE: WORKSHOP 5:
HANDOUT: STAGES OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH
WHAT STAGE ARE YOU IN?
A Faith Stage Checklist
from Finding Your Religion by Scotty McLennan (HarperSanFrancisco, 1999)
Reprinted with permission.
Stage One (Magic)
Is your world full of spirits and demons?
Are fairy tales your favorite kind of literature?
Do you think God makes everything happen, for good and bad?
Stage Two (Reality)
Do you spend a lot of time trying to determine what's real and what's not?
Are scriptures true in a concrete and literal sense, rather than being stories and maxims that may or may not be real?
Do you feel that you can influence God's actions by being good?
Stage Three (Dependence)
Do you have a very important peer group or leader who is primarily responsible for shaping your faith?
Is it important to you to understand and follow religious doctrine and moral rules?
Is your main image of God that of a perfect parent?
Stage Four (Independence)
Is your spiritual life unique and personal?
Do you often find yourself wanting to demystify scripture?
Do you think of God or Ultimate Reality primarily as an impersonal force or spirit (or as nonexistent)?
Stage Five (Interdependence)
Do you find a spiritual community important to you at the same time that you maintain your own distinctive faith?
Do you experience spiritual power in religious symbols and myths that you can also analyze objectively?
Do you conceive of God or Ultimate Reality both as a person and as an impersonal force?
Stage Six (Unity)
Do you sense yourself in community with religiously committed people of any and all traditions?
Is your consciousness ego-free and beyond paradox and ambiguity?
Do you often feel that God or divine spirit is in everything and that everything exists in God or divine spirit?
FIND OUT MORE
McLennan, Scotty. Finding Your Religion: When the Faith You Grew Up With Has Lost Its Meaning . HarperSanFrancisco, 1999.
Murry, William. Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21 st Century (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=654) . Skinner House Books, 2006.
Rasor, Paul. (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=598) Faith (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=598) Without (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=598) Certainty: Liberal Theology in the 21 (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=598) st (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=598) Century (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=598) . Skinner House Books, 2005.