Spiritual Experience - Introduction
Activity/Lesson Plan 001
As with all the F4HS activity and lesson plans, this plan is for guidance only. Teachers and facilitators are invited to feel free to adapt and use it in a way that is appropriate and authentic for their own individual circumstances. Please feedback to us.
You can read all the text of the Lesson Plan below or you can download a pdf of this plan by clicking here
THE FULL LESSON PLAN
6pp – Lesson Plan, Further Reading, 3 Handouts, Suggestions and Credits
DESCRIPTION
Practical and experiential, this session aims to give participants an overview of spiritual experience — what it is and the various ways it can happen. And to give participants an awareness of how they themselves can deepen their own connection with the wonder and energy of life.
OBJECTIVES
By the end of this session participants will be able to:
• Describe the various types of spiritual experience and what they have in common.
• Recognise their own relationship with spiritual experience.
• Describe how stilling and mindfulness can help deepen spiritual experience.
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LESSON PLAN
1. Welcome. Brief introduction and overview.
2. Exercise Two minutes of still time.
“Close your eyes and, as best you can, just relax. <<Pause>> In the quiet, please remember when you have felt connected to the wonder and energy of life — <<slowly, calmly and clearly>> perhaps on holiday, in landscape, with someone you love, when work is flowing, looking after someone, being creative, I don’t know when this sense of being connected happened for you. Remember one of these situations. <<Pause>> Can you also remember what the experience felt like for you? How did it feel? What were you thinking? <<If the atmosphere in the room feels calm then stay quiet with the group for a little longer.>> Over the next minute we will come out of the silence and feel free to stretch if you want to.
Now, I invite you to make a few notes. What was the situation in which you felt connected? And what was that experience like for you – how did it feel, what were your thoughts? Please make some notes.”
3. Notes. Then pairs. Give people a couple of minutes to make notes. Then ask people to pair up and discuss with each other what they have written down. 3 minutes each way.
Then class discussion. See what arises.
4. Using a flip chart/white board – ask people to name the situations in which they felt connected. List them on the board. Have people appreciate the diversity. ---- Then ask people to name what the experience felt like. On a new sheet, list their adjectives. ---- Point out the paradox. There are many different gateways to the experience, BUT the experience is always similar. It is a shared human experience.
5. Give out Handout 1. The various ‘gateways’ and styles of connecting. Discuss. Give out Handout 2. Discuss.
Time for a break or stretch?
6. Exercise Repeat the guided meditation above. Take it more slowly. Allow people to enjoy the memory, asking people to remember such an experience, to recall the feelings and then to imagine themselves repeating and deepening it. Even a small homeopathic taste is useful and enriching.
7. Share in pairs. Then class discussion. Close
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FURTHER READING
Gill Edwards, Living Magically
William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
Sharon Janis, Spirituality for Dummies
William Bloom, Soulution – The Holistic Manifesto
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Handout 1
CONNECTION GATEWAYS AND STYLES
Connection Gateways
Dance Meditation Entertaining Hobbies Geometry
Movement Contemplation Crafts Building Study
Flow Cooking Healing Ceremony Sacred space
Gardening Celebrating Being with a beloved
Touch Music Psychism Chant
Drumming Posture Prayer Ritual
Sport Completion Sharing Helping
Caring Theatre Art Song
Landscape Gardening Parenting Poetry
Spirit world Sound Aroma Taste
Walking Pilgrimage Teaching Architecture
Lovemaking Angels Work Food
Connection Styles
Ecstatic Practical Meditative Earnest
Devotional Happy-Clappy Extrovert Introvert
Puritanical Sensuous Ascetic Innocent
Renunciate Introvert Communal Careful
Loner Poetic Scientific Adventurous
Psychic Emotional Mental Chaotic
Recluse Group Feeling Analytic
Waltz Salsa Swing Rock
Enthusiastic Meek Considered Wild
(This handout originated in William Bloom’s The Heart and Power of Spiritual Practice workshop.)
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Handout 2
CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH
Various pieces of research (eg the Alister Hardy Religious Experience Research Foundation at Lampeter University) have discovered that around 70% of people say, when questioned, that have had a spiritual experience. The following long, but very useful quote comes from the Alister Hardy website
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
“It’s about an aspect of natural human experience. It can come in on us, or arise in us, suddenly, at any time, in any place, and can affect and even change our lives. It can happen to anyone, whether religiously inclined or atheist, spiritually inclined or materialist, and regardless of age, sex, nationality or culture.
It is called 'spiritual' and 'religious' because it is seen as either or both. It can include mystical, transcendental, out-of-body or near-death experiences, or a deep sense of meaning in a place or event. Psychical experiences such as déjà vu, clairaudience, clairvision, telepathy and precognition can be included. It can also include such features as meaningful co-incidences, or synchronicities, guidance and answers to prayer or contact with deceased loved ones.
It can be triggered by music, dance, church or religious architecture, beauty in nature…… also by pain, intense suffering and distress. It can sometimes happen through meditation, prayer or other means. It can be immensely beneficial and life-enhancing though some experiences can be negative and distressing.
It can raise, in itself, the question "what's it about?", and others, "why me?", even, "am I odd, or going barmy?". These questions need answering - for the experiencer and for society - for these experiences are important and can have far-reaching consequences. Investigating these experiences is what our work is about.
Evidence suggests that ‘love’, ‘relationship’, ‘unity’, might be, ultimately, what it is about - ‘light’, ‘love’, oneness’, ‘bliss’ are key words; ‘insight’, ‘lifting of a veil’, ‘altered state of consciousness’, ‘reality’, ‘the Real’, ‘Ultimate Reality’, ‘God’ are other words used.”
http://www.lamp.ac.uk/aht/What_it_s_About/what_it_s_about.html
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Handout 3
DEEPENING SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE
In all spiritual traditions there have been people who, once they have had a spiritual experience, want to explore it more deeply.
Culture by culture, practices have been developed so that people can repeat their experience and, in the repetition, explore it more deeply.
Trance, dance, sound, fasting, meditation, prayer and so on.
All these different strategies do have one thing in common. At a certain point in the experience, the individual needs to notice what is happening — to become mindful of it. At the same time, the individual relaxes and allows the sensations of the experience to be felt more fully.
MENTAL PAUSE AND NOTICE — MINDFULNESS
Whilst you are in an experience of feeling connected to the wonder of life – no matter how small the experience – notice that it is happening. Be mindful of it.
NOTICE THE FEELING
Pause and notice the feeling within you.
ACKNOWLEDGE AND APPRECIATE
In the pause and in the experience, acknowledge and appreciate that something good is happening within you. Appreciate the experience. Perhaps give thanks for it.
ALLOW THE FEELING TO DEEPEN
As best you can, relax any tension within you and allow the feelings to sink and move more deeply into and through you. ‘Surrender’ to the experience.
BE WISE, REALISTIC AND PROPORTIONATE
Sometimes you may be able to let the feelings move very deeply through you. At other times, the sense of relaxation and deepening may be very small. But even the tiniest experience here is good and of benefit to you.
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SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER GROUP WORK
1.
Students work with images, objects and collages that relate to their times of connection. They share with the group the story of their photo or object.
2.
Facilitator brings in a set of photos of different environments – mountains, ocean, dance, etc – and asks participants to chose their favourite images. ‘What do they evoke in you? How do they connect you with the wonder of life.’
3.
Identify the activities in the different spiritual traditions which enable connection with the wonder (aka God, Spirit, Tao, Goddess) of existence.
4.
You could play very different videos one after the other. For example, the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh followed by the New York urban shaman dancer Gabrielle Roth. Followed perhaps by Padre Pio celebrating the Eucharist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRgnsLv21X8 (Thich)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O6otMFeQmI (Gabrielle)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqLxUExgZVQ (Pio)
5.
Use the F4HS definition of spirituality as the starting point for a discussion: Spirituality: The natural human connection with the wonder and energy of nature, cosmos and all existence; and the instinct to explore and understand its meaning.
Credits
This lesson plan was prepared by William Bloom — www.williambloom.com
Download a pdf of this Plan by clicking here