Nurturing Positivity -- Friday Unified Mindfulness Class

We could say that there are two main strategies in mindfulness practice which are deeply inter-related --

1)  Transformation through purposefully cultivating acceptance

and

2)  Transformation through purposefully cultivating happiness

Acceptance offers the receptivity to meet life clearly as it is, and let ourselves become the sacred student of the teachings available in all things, events and circumstances.

Proactively attending to the good builds the stability of attention with which it is possible to receive the work of step one.

How are these two strategies linked?   What do they do for each other?   Is your mind a safe environment to visit?  How can we use a sense-based approach to mindfulness to create positive content in the mind?   How can we use a special concentration focus on nurturing content to improve our emotions, reframe our thinking, condition more functional behavior, and embody our deepest values?

I have become more and more convinced over 30+ years of meditation that there is very little progress on transformation step 1 without step 2.  We need clever ways to sidestep our ingrained evolutionary negativity bias.   Acceptance itself is not possible without a habitat of the mind where there are enough wholesome conditions to feed our equanimity and self-love.  And our most subtle resistance to and constriction around the flow of life will not even come into our awareness for detection unless there is a measure of feeling safe, secure, knowing that we have a modicum of functional ability to meet our needs, and knowing that we belong.

As our transformation work broadens and becomes truly inclusive it does so because our happiness has become more thoroughly independent of conditions.

In this series we will look at what tools the Unified Mindfulness system has to offer for doing such positivity practices.   We will find the Nurture Postive techniques in many traditions and modern expressions.   You'll learn a few basic mindfulness principles and put them into effect for any positivity practice you want to use.

Monday class will study Nurture Positive Mon Feb 1 through March 1

Friday class runs on the same subject from Fri Feb 5 through March 5

Mindfulness is fundamentally receptive, not about managing or fixing or perfecting ourselves.  It's about receiving the gift that has already been given.   However, there are many times when in order to receive that gift we benefit from spending practice time stabilizing our attention and emotions by getting proactive about focusing on good, positive, loving content in our inner system.   This is one of the most important tools for keeping our mind and heart open during times of personal challenge, new growth, social upheaval and global challenge.

Nurture Positive describes a broad category of techniques including:

Lovingkindness / Metta Meditation

Compassion Meditations

Grattitude Practices

Cognitive Reframing

optimizing learning situations

building resilence

gentle Behavioral Conditioning

soothing and calming practices to reduce worry and fear

rejoicing, praising, appreciating, delighting

Other forms where we find Nurture Positive are -- establishing an excercise routine, improving your athletic performance, raising productivity at work, releasing additive tendencies or removing resistance to starting good new habits, bringing more ease and love to your relationships, enjoying music and song, joining in worship services, hymns, visualizations, focus methods such as Tibetan mala beads or the Rosary, volunteer service, and walking through the world as a free person in love with the world yet not so disturbed by the world.

Let's play with Nurture Positive together and support ourselves in Hear Good, See Good, Feel Good and Be Good, and all their many benefits.

Our topics will be

Week 1     Mindfulness to foster positivity in inner hearing (Hear Good)

Week 2     Mindfulness which builds the positive in inner images (See Good)

Week 3     Mindfulness which celebrates the pleasant emotions of the body (Feel Good)

Week 4     The ABCD's of designing your personal Nurture Positive practices

   Reasons to do Nurture Positive and goals for the practice

Week 5     Be Good -- combining all the senses into fostering positivity and manifesting your self in the world

Register here by clicking the RSVP button and making a gift deposit of any size to support the work of Sunlight of the Heart Contemplative & Mindfulness Services.   The virtual gift box can be found at Paypal.me/CPSunlightHeart.

You will receive a response with further details about the class, zoom link, and an opportunity to discuss by email or phone.

Sincerely with love,

Chris Phillips