It's not silly to penetrate your favorites. Every detail of your life deserves to be understood by you.  The good, the bad, the mundane, the sacred and the favorites. Study it all, because it is all you.

 

I hope you'll join one of the three sessions of The Inner Life program to learn more about your life.  It's a great path to inner freedom.  There are only 12 participants in each session, sign up soon to be sure of a spot.

 

Enjoy the favorite story exercise, it's below my thoughts on feelings of sentimentality and cynicism about our stories.

 

Warmly,

Lynn

 
  

 

When you explore your biography as a source of self-knowledge and inner freedom the awareness of sentiment and cynicism is critical to the process.  Both a sentimental nostalgia for or the cynical dismissal of any biographical experience ask us to penetrate deeper with the questions "Why does this biographical event, environment or relationship evoke nostalgia or dismissal?" "How to I seek or avoid similar experiences in the present and future?"

Wisdom does not arise out of either sentiment or cynicism. Wisdom arises out of knowing the reason for the sentiment or cynicism.

Biography work is attractive to those of us who tend toward the sentimental. We want more stories, our own and others, to evoke a rich drama of feelings in us and find a program of biographical reflections very appealing. Those who dismiss the meaning of biographical stories will not seek the freedom offered in the study of them. Yet,we must be aware that even the most sentimental of us has a choosy cynical shadow lurking to the side of our nostalgic attention.  

As The Inner Life program unfolds each participant will discover their sentimentality and their cynicism.  With that discovery, the process of overcoming or moving beyond both begins. As long as we are sentimental or cynical about our life stories we cannot learn their lessons or find inner freedom.  Nostalgia and dismissal indicate attachment and prejudice. Spiritual development requires freedom - freedom from attachment and freedom from points of view.  Our lives are meant to be paths of spiritual and moral development. With biography work we practice embracing our life stories with wonder and reverence from an objective distance and with a fierce attention to detail.  We then begin developing a right relationship to our lives and awaken to subtle meanings, sense the hidden purpose behind events, environments and relationships, and see the true significance in the large landscapes and brief moments.  

Yes, imagine having a right relationship to your life path.  Who among us does not want that feeling of "Now I get IT!" Our lives become a finely drawn work of art as we see into the shadows, bathe in the warm light, feel the directing force at our back and the attracting force pulling us into our future. We come to understand the turns, the valleys and the steep hills, laugh at the comedy and weep at the tragedy and through wondering at the complexity of it all, our lives fall into wisdom.

 

The Inner Life program unfolds in a social context. You share your biographical vignettes and you listen to those of the other participants. In listening we also experience sentiment and cynicism in our response to the life stories of others.  Here, too, we find freedom only when we dig below the superficial response and assessments regarding the meaning of the other's story.  What has the story triggered in our psyche? What prejudices, identities, and other "stuff" colors our listening?

The social context provides real encouragement as we are not doing this work alone.  We are being inspired by the others.  They are being inspired by us.  This is tender, warming work. Biography work blesses all participants. An intimacy grows between everyone that has a clean sweetness.

The Inner Life program provides a thoughtfully designed and compassionately guided process for biography work.  Participants are serious about following the process. Learn more.