Self-love: An 11 Week Class Experience

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 What if ‘self-love’ meant something deeper than loving yourself? We all know how important it is to love one’s self, but most of us also know how difficult it is. We may find it curious that we have the capacity to be kind and loving toward others, while at the same time being so hard on ourselves.

What if self-love was love that came from the Self with a capital ’S’? And what if opening to this Love from the Self was the way to receive healing power and awakening grace from the Self, the way that we come to know the true nature of the Self, and ultimately the way to come to know our self as The Self?

What I’ve discovered after more than 28,000 hours of sitting with people, as well as deeply observing and exploring my own human experience is this: 

1. We tend to turn away from and avoid our felt experience because we don’t have an effective way of resolving our pain and feelings of anxiety and inadequacy. In short, we are simply afraid of our inner life, and we’ve become addicted to whatever helps us to avoid it.

2. Because we avoid looking within, we don’t see our own Inner Light, the Presence of the Divine Self that is located in our hearts just ‘behind’ all the repressed and ignored aspects of ourselves.

3. Opening to and consistently applying Love is the surest, most effect way to both heal our wounded and disowned parts and discover our Higher Nature — Pure Awareness and Love.

We have been taught to believe that Love is outside ourselves, that we must get it from another. We spend our energies trying to earn love, to impress those we hope will love us and affirm our lovability. But how often do these attempts bring satisfying and lasting results. We run from, and avoid at all costs what feels like an inner hole or lack in our soul, not knowing that there is a deeper layer of Self within that holds all the Love we have been longing for and chasing after.  

We have unwittingly made Love out to be a feeling, a mere sentiment, a milk-toast Hallmark greeting card. Worse, we’ve created associations with the word ‘love’ that bear no reflection whatsoever with the true nature of Love. Not knowing how to look within for the Truth, we draw from our culture’s misperceptions and ego-centricity to imagine Love to be an exchange dynamic, a bartering tool to get what we think that we need. In actuality, Love is the substrate of reality. Love is the nature of the One Consciousness that is the Source of all things, the incomprehensible power that moved the One Consciousness to manifest as the many. Love is sweetness, and harmony, and intimacy, yes. But it is also the indomitable force that causes Divine Consciousness to descend into human suffering as the Truth that sets us free, and the Grace that awakens us out of our slumber of unconsciousness to the brilliance of our True Nature. Love is the power that overcomes all ignorance, all illusion. Love is the irresistible gravitational pull back home.

In this class we will explore many ways of opening the human system to Divine Love, of connecting the Higher Self to the wounded self, of moving to the experience of Wholeness and Love as a state of being, the state of our True Being. 

Each week we will explore concepts and ground them in practices: powerful mantras and meditations, visualizations and ways of breathing that quicken consciousness and open us to the inflow of Higher Love and Grace. There are practices that we will do in the silence of our morning meditations, and practices that will empower Love as we move through the activities of our day. There are practices that are designed to bring deep personal healing and awakening, and practices that will bring great benefit to those around us, and to human consciousness as a whole.

Another name for the Self that we will be using in this class is Christ Consciousness. There are today many who use the phrase Christ Consciousness both within and beyond the boundaries of Christianity. Paramahansa Yogananda, who is credited for bringing the yogic path of Self-realization to the west, in his very deep meditative states had many encounters with Jesus. And he came to define Christ Consciousness as the Divine Intelligence and Love that is at the core, and is the essence of all beings. I have come to embrace this definition, adding only that I believe that the foremost function of this Divine Consciousness to be to meet us where we are, to pursue us into the drama of forgetfulness and ignorance, connecting with us at the point of our deepest separation and suffering, and with great patience and love drawing us back along the pathway home, i.e., union with our Source and True Self.

We see this liberating function in the way in which the Divine has shown up as the world teachers to bring Light into the darkness, Truth to ignorance, and Grace to despair; where Divine  Consciousness has descended ‘down’ into the messiness of the human experience with salvific intent. That is Christ consciousness, whether it showed up as the epic warrior Rama, the Divine lover Krishna, whether it manifested in the peace and freedom of the Buddha’s teaching, or as Love hanging on a cross in the form of Jesus, these are examples of Christ Consciousness drawing all aspects of Itself back home from separation and fear to wholeness and love.

And the profound wonder of it all is that the same Divine Consciousness that expressed through these great world teachers is present in your heart, and mine. And it wants to touch down into the patterns of ignorance and attachments to illusion that create our separation and suffering and bring in the truth and grace that sets us free. All that’s needed is a little opening on our part, and love and grace pours in to save us from ourselves.

Self-Love as we will define it in this class is the Love that continually flows  from Christ Consciousness, our Highest Self, given to all aspects of ourself, including and especially all the parts of the mind still rooted in separation, fear, guilt, and shame. After 30 years of studying fear, guilt, and shame, and seeking solutions and healing strategies for these tenacious energies that so powerfully influence every aspect of our lives, I have come to see that the application of Love to our suffering in a way that heals us, and also reveals our True Nature is the most powerful and effective way to resolve and transcend these deep and pervasive mind states. I hope to share with you this practice and process over the course of this 11 week class. Please join us!

Logistics:

When: 11 Monday evening classes, starting February 25, 2019, from 6-8 PM.

Where: The Center for Spiritual Living, 14 Hillary Ln, Chico.

Cost: $45 per class  (Interested persons for whom money is an issue may make arrangements with the facilitator for a reduced rate. No one who wishes to participate will be turned away.)

Facilitator: This class experience will be facilitated by Scott Wyman, M.Div., M.A., a student and teacher of the path of liberation through meditation for over 30 years. A psychotherapist by profession, he has come to focus on the psychospiritual unfolding whereby healing gives way to awakening.

If you have questions about this class, please call: 530-514-8424. 

To Register: email Scott with your intention to attend. Registration requires a $45 deposit that will apply to your last night of class. Deposits can be mailed to:

Scott Wyman

344 Flume Street

Chico, CA 95928

Or pay your deposit using PayPal: