In Love With All Creation

In love with all creation

A respected contributor to a Druid forum I participate on wrote of becoming a “soul-in-love-with-all-creation” through a devotional meditation practice and was kind enough to share some of this practice, the Dercad Duthracht. The concept put me in mind of an exercise I have worked with from the field of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming). NLP has fascinated me for many years as an art and science of working with subjective experience, and has informed my spiritual study by virtue of giving me a framework with which I can seek commonalities in spiritual practices from many sources and from them derive experimental transpersonal processes.

This particular exercise was devised by an NLP trainer, Richard Bolstad, and published in the April 2002 edition of Anchorpoint (an NLP magazine). Richard has kindly given me permission to reproduce the exercise for discussion, experimentation and development.

To give some context, I include Richard’s summary of the main points in his article :-

• People interested in their sense of connection to spirituality can benefit from having the flexibility to shift between the immanent (a sense of the power Within) and the transcendent (a sense of the power outside of them).
• Devotion is the emotional or affective expression of the oneness which is central to spiritual life.
• Devotion is closely related to the urge to align one’s life with the highest truth, and this alignment is the true meaning of “surrender.” As in the metaphor of a sailboat aligning with the wind, such alignment may involve a great deal of activity by the sailor. Far from being passive, such “surrender” adds greater power to our activity.

Not everyone who studies NLP is interested in a “spiritual” dimension to life. Furthermore, not everyone who studies NLP and spirituality will be drawn to devotional or Bhakti yoga practices. For, those who are, the above three frames may enable us to live a life of devotion which remains consistent with the presuppositions of NLP

Mandala

To explore the significance of this for yourself, you may enjoy guiding yourself through the following process, which is based on the Tibetan practice called mandala (Trungpa, 1976, pp. 152-156; Evans-Wentz, 1972, pp. 324-325). A mandala is a representation of the integrated nature of the universe, which is ultimately “mentally absorbed” into the artist who creates it. The process of working with a mandala is an act of devotion and adoration. But it also reminds the Tibetan Buddhist practitioner that the universe we imagine (the map of the universe in our minds), including all the imagined external power of God, is one system, and emerges and merges into our own being.

The meditation/process itself is as follows (comments within * * are mine)

1 . Elicit the submodalities (*for non-NLP practitioners, submodalities are the qualities, as opposed to the content, of our internal representations of experience… check out this link for more information*) of your internal representation of someone else, at a time that is powerfully enjoyable to remember, when you had the feeling of being “in love” with them.

*A submodality is the how of your internal representation, rather than the what… so when looking to the submodalities we are interested in things like: is the internal representation visual? if so, where in the visual field is it? is it near or far away? is it bright or dark? colour or black and white? still or moving? Flat or 3D? Bordered or panoramic? is there sound? if so is it noisy or quiet? rhythmic? where does the sound come from? Are there kinesthetic/feeling aspects to the representation? if so, are they soft/hard? warm/cool? and so on*

2. Check ecology. Would it be okay for you to feel this way (“in love”) about life in general (or about God, or however else you conceptualise the ultimate oneness) If not, consider other examples of times you were in love, or other qualities of love (such as the love you feel for your family, or the love you feel for your homeland).

3. Ask your unconscious mind to choose a symbol (at least visually; ideally with auditory and kinesthetic attributes) for, the ultimate oneness and create that internal representation in the submodalities of “in love”. Check that it has at least the same emotional feeling as the original. Experimentally adjust the submodalities to see if it is appropriate to intensify the feeling (check the ecology carefully -is it okay for you to live life with this intensity of feeling?)

4. Create an external representation of that image (an art form). Experience this art form and ask your unconscious mind to learn from it whatever it is appropriate to learn.

5. Ask yourself if there is any part of you that would object to you experiencing your unity with the oneness you have represented. If there is, check its higher positive intention and notice that anything less than fully living with oneness is not totally enabling you to reach that intention.

6. Draw the internal representation into your heart and feel that you are one with it; it has always been within you and you have always been within it.

7. See yourself in the future, interacting in several different situations where this representation within your heart inspires a new quality of response. Understand that this is the true art form that you are creating. The previous, external art form may no longer have significance.