https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=j_dUgJCja48
Welcome to Meditating with John Breveke. I’m a cognitive psychologist and a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto, where I teach academically and study scientifically mindfulness and related topics like insight, flow, mystical experience, transformative experience, higher states of consciousness, and the cultivation of wisdom and the aspiration to enlightenment. I’ve also been practicing the Pasana meditation, Meta-Contemplation, Tai Chi Chuan, and Chi Kung for over 29 years and teaching them professionally for close to 20 years. Welcome. This is a progressive course. The introductory aspect of this course is actually complete. We’ve now moved into advanced techniques. You’re welcome to stay, but if this is your first time, I recommend you go to the links in the notes for this video where you’ll find all the previous lessons to the introductory course and then you can catch up. We will be doing a Dharma day, a day in which I teach a new practice or principle every alternative Monday. The rest of the time we meet Tuesday through Friday. We set every day, Monday through Friday. There’s Q&A at the end. Please keep your questions limited to the practice I’m teaching within the course. For more broad reaching questions, please come to my monthly YouTube live streamed Q&A. It’s every third Friday of the month at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Please like this video stream to increase its visibility in the YouTube algorithm. You’re helping me to help as many people as I possibly can. I’m deeply appreciative of that. So, as I said, today we are going to do a Dharma day, but we’re going to do something a little bit different. Because of what I’m going to be teaching you with this Lexio Divina, it’s appropriate that we sit first. We’re going to have a shorter sit, so I have a little bit more time to go over the practice with you. So, let’s get ready, please. Let’s set your phones on do not disturb. Get ready for your posture. We’re going to do a shorter sit today, so we have more time for the Lexio. So, we’re going to do a 10 minute sit right now, please. So we will begin when I say begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Begin. Slowly come out of your practice, trying as best you can to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness and cognition, perhaps by reciting the five promises to yourself. Begin. Begin. All right. Let’s begin. So, Lexio Divina is a practice, it is a spiritual practice that you should incorporate into your ecology of practices to complement the meditation and contemplation and later we’ll of course have the flow exercises as I bring in some moving practices for you. This is the way in which you should approach Dharma. So I’m just going to hold up some books first. Here’s a book by the first book, the first books are from the Christian tradition. It’s hard to get books outside of it. I’ll show you at least one. This is this book on Lexio Divina, Renewing the Ancient Practice of Praying the Scriptures. It’s by Basil Bennington. This one is particularly good. Sacred reading. Okay. So it’s The Ancient Art of Lexio Divina by Michael Casey. So really, really, really good. Here’s the original classic for this by Guido E., Ladder of Monks and Twelve Meditations. I don’t recommend reading this first. I don’t recommend reading this first. I recommend reading the other two books and then reading this book because this will be a little bit obscure, removed. If you want a book that talks about Lexio from a non-Christian tradition, from the Neoplatonic tradition, there’s a lot of discussion in here in this book by Kupperman. This is a book called Living Theurgia. Theurgia is a practice with a set of practices within Neoplatonism. In connection with that, for those of you who are interested for when we are going to do the Wisdom Sangha, a book that will incorporate all of these things together so that we can recover the wisdom tradition of the West as I continue to teach you the wisdom traditions from the East, Buddhism, Daoism, we’re going to take a look at this important book. This very important book written by another cognitive scientist, Bruce McLennan. This is called The Wisdom of Hapacia and this is Discovering the Spiritual Secrets of Ancient Philosophy. In connection with that, if you can, these are for down the road, but I thought I’d mention it now, get two books by Arthur versus Lewis who I highly recommend. One is The Perennial Philosophy by Arthur versus Lewis and the other is Platonic Mysticism by Arthur versus Lewis. So Lexia Divina, as you’re no doubt seeing, comes out of the Neoplatonic tradition. It gets taken up, of course, within the Neoplatonic strand of Christianity. Neoplatonism, as Arthur versus Lewis argues, is basically the spiritual grammar of the Western wisdom traditions. One more book now for specifically that you need to get in conjunction with the Lexia Divina because this is the virtue that we are cultivating in Lexia Divina. This is the excellent book by Paul Woodruff, Reverence. It’s called Reverence Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. Reverence Renewing a Forgotten Virtue. So that’s some background. All right, so I recommended you get a poetry book and a prose book. I’m going to first now always make sure you’ve done meditation and or contemplation, prajna, before you do the Lexia. You have to get into the proper state of receptivity. So remember, read these texts whenever you wish, of course, outside, but now we’re not reading for information. We’re reading for transformation. Okay, so I’m going to take you through the four stages. I’m teaching you sort of a secularized version of Lexia Divina that will resonate with both the neoplatonic traditions and with the Christian traditions. And if you want to take this up as a specifically Christian practice because you’re Christian and you want to renew Christianity, I hope you’ll find this helpful nevertheless. So there’s four stages that we’re going to go through. So first of all, and I’ll say what each stage is, and then we’ll go through them. And I’m going to review this a lot this week. Okay? Now, when I’m doing it, I’m going to be doing it as if I’m doing it for myself. So you have to understand that I’m not doing it with you in the sense that I’m expecting you to have the same reactions that I’m having. I’m modeling it to you so that as soon as we’re done today, do another quick set, maybe five minutes, and then with the two texts that you have chosen, take the practice up for yourself. Okay? All right. So what are the four stages? So the first one is enacted engagement. What that means is enacted engagement, you’re going to read the text, and you’re going to read the text with an attitude of reverence, and you’re going to read the text with the intention of resonating with the text. You may actually say to yourself, may I resonate with this text? And what you’re doing is you’re reading for transformation. You’re going to read aloud. You’re going to read as if almost as if somebody else was reading it to you, and you were trying to open it up from it, that there is something in here to be disclosed to you that you haven’t seen before. You’re reading for transformation, so you’re really engaging it. What does that mean? When you read, you look for what is salient to you. Don’t try and explain why. Don’t theorize. Something will jump out at you. Something will be catchy for you, even if it’s moderately. Sometimes it will be strong. Sometimes it will be moderate. Right? So try to know what catches you, what’s salient to you. Okay? So you’re reading in this reverential, and then you’re doing this enacted engagement, and then you do embodied emotion. Okay? So pick up the phrase that caught you, right? That’s salient. Start repeating it to yourself, almost like a mantra, and let multiple associations come up. And at the same time as you’re doing that, try to find whatever imagery was in what you read, and especially perhaps in what’s standing up for you, and do practice it imaginally, not imagining it in your head. Imagining as if you were literally acting out the metaphor. So literalize it at first. Act it out, and let your emotions associate. Right? So I’ll show you how to do this, but what you’re doing is in your imagination, you’re acting it out, and you’re mostly associating with it. You’re really reaching into how much of your ability to make sense of things comes up from your body and how you’re interacting with the world, and we’ve talked about this a lot in the course. Okay, so you’ve done enacted engagement, you’ve done embodied emotion. Okay? Next, you’re going to do the existential ethical move. So what’s the existential ethical move, the third stage? The existential ethical is when you get a sense of what it’s like, what’s your perspective is like, how is your world being shaped? What would it be like to live in this perspective that you’ve engendered in the first two stages, as if it became sort of your default mode of consciousness? What would it be like to live this way? How would you move around the world? Really try to get a sense of what it would be like as if this became a second nature perspective for you, not just one that you were realizing. So really let it soak in. This is the existential ethical. You’re really trying to see what would this feel like as a way of life, a way of being, a way of seeing the world. And then that moves you very immediately to the fourth stage, which is the ecstatic, which literally means to stand beyond yourself. That’s what ecstasy originally means, ecstatic, eternal. From that perspective, try to get an inkling, maybe even an insight. What is being disclosed to you about being? What is being disclosed to you about the world? And correspondingly, what is being demanded from you so that you can conform to that realization? Notice the word I’m using, to that realization. How would you need to be transformed in order to conform to that deeper reality that is being disclosed to you? OK, so let’s review. And then I’m going to do it. And I’ll talk you through what it’s like for me. Again, you’re not supposed to be having my experience. I’m modeling what it’s like for me so that you can then do it immediately when we’re done today’s session for yourself. So enacted engagement. Set the intention to resonate with the text, to be transformed in the reading. Read aloud. Let something catch you. Let something grab you. Embody emotion. Emotionally resonate with that. Let emotions and associations come up with that. Also, whatever metaphors are in them, literalize them, actually as if you were to enact them. Really pick that up. You’re really enacting and embodying the emotion. Then the existential ethical. What would it be like if this way of seeing became a comprehensive way of being for you? If this was your comprehensive, perceptible knowing, your default mode of consciousness? What would that be like? How to imagine that. Get some sense of it. And then when you’re within that, the ecstatic eternal. What’s being disclosed to you? Maybe it’s only an inkling. It might be a vague feeling. It might be an inkling. It might be a full blown insight. Anywhere on the continuum is good. What’s being disclosed to you about the world, about being and correspondingly? What’s being demanded from you? What’s calling to you? What transformation, in order to come into a greater conformity with that deeper reality, are you seeing, is coming to you, is calling you? Okay? So let’s do it. Now what you’re going to do is you’re going to have two texts. And what you do is you do the four stages with your poetry. Because poetry is easier because it has imagery in it. It starts. And then you’ll move to something more challenging, your prose, right? And so, and then you do the four. And then you’ll notice that your mind naturally and spontaneously makes associations and connections, insights between the poetry and the prose. Let them talk to each other as a way of talking to you. Let them talk to each other as a way of talking to you. Let them talk to each other as a way of talking to you. Okay, so let’s go through this. So what I know, how I would do this is I set myself. And what I do is I have these two objects. You’ve seen them before. This is a rock. This is important to me. This represents to me the whole Zen tradition, Buddhism and Taoism. This is the frog. This is the neoplatonic tradition. I carry them around in my pockets. And I do that so that throughout the day they remind me. They remind me of my aspiration. They remind me of my commitment. And then I enact them here. So I place them in front of me. You know, may I resonate with this text? And I put myself into that state of reverence and that state of reading for transformation. Not just reading for information. Now, I typically don’t read very much. Some people read a lot. I find that when you read too much, it starts to get too many things are getting called up at once. So this is what I was reading today. This is Gerard Manley Hopkins. Okay. As Kingfisher’s catch fire, dragonflies draw flame. As tumbled over rim in roundy wells, stones ring. Like each tucked string tells each hung bells. Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name. Each mortal thing does one thing in the same. Deals out that being indoors each one dwells. Selves goes itself. Myself it speaks and spells. Crying, what I do is me. For that I came. So what called out for me here is that, you know, finds tongue to fling out broad its name. So finds tongue to fling out broad its name. And so now that’s really catching for me. Like finds tongue to fling out broad its name. And then I start to get emotional associations. I had an experience, a profoundly lucid altered state of consciousness in which as I moved about the world, it was like everything was singing its name. I am a tree. I’m a flower. I’m a blade of grass. And so this is coming to my mind right now, how everything is singing its name. And now I actually imaginal as if I was moving around this room and that emotion is in me again and that memory. Everything is singing out its name. Everything is singing. And so I’m coming into the being mode with everything. Everything is singing its name and calling to me. And then I move into what would it be like if that was my constant perspective on knowing my way of being and seeing in the world. If I moved around the world and living my life, everything seeing its name. Put aside practical thoughts. I can’t live that way. Just what would it be like? What would it be like if I saw and related to everything singing its name like Hopkins was talking there? Everything is singing its name. What would that be like? What’s this being disclosed to me? I’m getting an inkling of how I would move into the being mode of how everything would be so present and that different kind of meaning that that would be. And what’s that calling from me that’s calling from me? I need to remember this. I’m so forgetful. I treat things at such a superficial way and everything, even the inanimate things, are singing their name. What would it be like to live this, get a sense of this? What’s it demanding from me? What’s it calling from me? And then I pick up the prose text. I think it’s appropriate for this one. This is from Plato. And this is Socrates, somebody I aspire to. And what he’s doing here is exemplifying the state of reverence that we’re talking about. This is a dialogue between Phaedrus and Socrates. This is why Phaedrus is one of the characters in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by the way. Phaedrus, this is at the end of the dialogue. But let us go now that it has become less oppressively hot. Socrates, shouldn’t we first offer a prayer? Phaedrus, of course. Socrates, dear Pan and all you other gods who live here, grant that I may become beautiful within and that whatever outward things I may be in harmony with the spirit inside me, sorry, and whatever outward things I have may be in harmony with the spirit inside me. May I understand that it is only the wise who are rich and may I have only as much money as a temperate person needs. Is there anything else that we can ask for, Phaedrus? For me, that prayer is enough. Phaedrus, make it a prayer for me too, since friends have all things in common. Socrates, let’s be going. So what the whole passage sings to me, but what comes out of this is may I become beautiful within. So may I become beautiful within. Does that mean? What do I associate with that? How can I let go of older conceptions of just physical beauty? May I be beautiful within. What does that mean? There’s difficulty and challenge with this reading, but there’s also a longing here. May I be beautiful within. There’s something there. There’s something in what Socrates is talking about. I’m starting to touch it a little bit, even a little bit, even an inklingism. May I be beautiful within. What would it be like? What would it be like to see and be this way, a second nature, always in touch with that, being beautiful within. May I become more beautiful within. How does that soften me, makes me more sensitive? It’s opening me up, but it’s not, it’s not, you know, it’s not like the beauty that we see in our culture. It’s not the self-aggrandizing, it’s a humbling. It’s connected with the kind of humility that you see in Socrates, the temperance that he meets, the beauty within. Walking around the world, living this way. What’s disclosed about the world? There’s a deeper sense of beauty of things. And now I’m picking up again on how things are singing their name. That beauty, that inner beauty that I can only resonate with from my inner beauty. There’s a humbling, a reverence. I’m trying to come into a sense of what it would be like to remember the Sati, to live this way. Two texts are talking to each other, the beauty and everything singing its name. So that’s the practice. I did it a little bit quick here because we have limited time. But what we have here is, right, the inactive engagement, recite it, set your intention for transformation and reverence. Recite it, what catches, then recite it again as you do emotional associations and you try the imaginal enactment. And then, right, the existential ethical. So enacted engagement, embodied emotion, then the existential ethical. What would it be like to live this way? To see if my way of seeing and being was this way. And then the ecstatic, eternal. What’s disclosed to me? What’s demanded from me? And let the two texts talk to, do that for each text. But in the second reading, let the two texts talk to each other so that they can talk to you. Then you can commit yourself to trying to remember this throughout the day. You can set the attention, may I remember and realize this again and again throughout this day. At some point you may want to add to this by picking up a Dharma practice, an extra Dharma practice, which is study. So pick up a text that is written for spiritual transformation that also has commentary in it, or at least is extended commentary. Right now, I don’t recommend you doing this. I’m just giving you an example. This is some work by Plotinus. There’s a translation and then there’s commentary at the back. You can get books where you can read through the Gospels and there’s commentary on it. For those of you who are interested in picking up on the Vipassana tradition, there’s this wonderful trilogy, The Experience of Insight by Goldstein. Read them in this order. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom by Goldstein and Kornfield. And Insight Meditation, the Practice of Freedom by Goldstein. That trilogy is a very good trilogy you might want to pick up. You read these. You don’t do Lectio Divina on these. You read these, but this is not just reading. You study. You read it and you get the commentary and you reflect. So this is reading and reflection. Okay, my students and my wonderful sangha. That’s practice. And what I’ll do is I think it would be good right now if we move towards just a couple of questions on Lectio and then what you need to do. That’s why I had you get the books. They’re ready here. Sit again. Sit again. Don’t worry. You won’t lose the instructions. I’m going to repeat them one more time. Okay. But sit again, maybe just for five minutes. Then take your text. Do Lectio on each one and also how they talk to each other. This is called Symphimata and therefore how they can talk to you. So enacted engagement, setting your intention for reverence and transformation. What catches you? Taking it up into embodied emotion. Repeat it again. Emotional associations, memories that come up. What’s stirring in you? Enact the metaphor. Enact it. Enact it, imagine it. Not inside your head, but in the world. Okay. Existential ethical. What would it be like to live this way if this was your way of seeing and being? And then ecstatic external, ecstatic eternal. What’s being disclosed for you? What ink? You may have a feeling, an inkling or full blown insight. What’s being disclosed to you about the world and correspondingly what’s being demanded from you? What transformation to bring you into greater conformity with that disclosure? So a couple of questions. What is the poem book called again? The Enlightened Heart, an anthology of sacred poetry edited by Stephen Mitchell. The prose book is The Enlightened Mind, an anthology of sacred prose edited by Stephen Mitchell. Okay. Should we intentionally try to select contemporary poetry prose or let the associations emerge as a function of the practice? Pick something that intuitively calls to you. Yeah. Try to pick up something that intuitively calls to you and you’re going to have to play with things for a bit. But don’t be too much of a dilettante. You have to commit to, you know, once you’ve chosen a text, commit to it for an extended period of time because this is going, this is going to ebb and flow for you. It’s going to ebb and flow for you. Okay everyone. So please, as soon as we’re done today, do us, go back into you, right? At least find the core four. Do some basic Vipassana perhaps, maybe some basic Metta, maybe a little bit of Prajna, however much time you have. And then immediately, you’ve got to do this immediately. Do the Lectio Divina. Okay? Thank you for joining everyone. Thank you so much for joining. I hope, like I said, I’m going to review this again extensively and I’ll do it again. I’ll review it on Tuesday and on Thursday and I’ll do it again with you on Wednesday and Friday. I want to thank my wonderful friend and techno major, Mar, for all of his help, my beloved son Jason. Please subscribe to this channel to be notified of the next video and on the channel you’ll find a lecture series, Awakening from the Meeting Crisis, a discussion series, Voices with Reveki, that help develop all of these things that we’re talking about more deeply and more comprehensively. Please invite others who might benefit by sharing this series so I can help as many people as possible. Join the Discord server. Brett, pleasure of doubt, is here. He’s there. Go there. There’s a great community there talking about all of this stuff. The link is in the description to this video. Remember that we will be doing this every morning at 9.30 Eastern Time. Continuity of practice more important than quantity. There is no enemy worse than your own mind and body. There’s no friend, no ally greater than your own mind and body. Thank you for your time and attention, everyone. I’ll see you all tomorrow. Take care.