Expanding the Flame of Prayer – Andrew Harvey

Andrew believes we are on a precipice as a planet, choosing between a dark descent into ever-more destructive cycles of greed, or into a more luminous future in which we create a wholly new level of divine embodiment. As we do this, we can become catalysts for the creation of a generous, just and caring world. To make this leap, we need to release our addiction to transcendence, and open to the kind of radical, divine embodiment that will suffuse the heart, mind and being with greater intelligence. This is what many think of as the “Christed Self.” In this first module you’ll:

• Receive a vision that is both transcendent and immanent – unifying passion and peace
• Clearly understand what becoming transfigured or Christed really means in terms of the irradiation of our cells with a higher sacred force
• Begin to unify your mind and heart into one vessel for sacred practice, so a new level of conscious embodiment and power can be born
• Learn from the profound mystical openings and insights of philosophers like Aurobindo, Ken Wilber, Father Bede Griffiths and Jean Gebser

In this module, you will learn the advanced 7-part “Body Prayer,” which has been derived taken from major mystical traditions and yoga. It offers you simple positions that enact the whole path of embodiment – reaching up first to transcendence, then being consciously resurrected in the light, and finally, going out into the world as an emissary of that new evolutionary truth. Repetition of this body prayer forges you as a being who is able to stand in your center and peacefully transform of the world. You’ll learn to:

• Bring higher octaves of consciousness into your body
• Understand how to integrate the evolutionary journey with embodiment
• Open to a deeper experience of your body and its power
• Incarnate a deeper level of presence in your everyday life
• Link your embodiment to your passion and your service in the world
• Find out what mystics like Rumi, Hafiz and Meister Eckhart discovered about the stages of waking up the Divine Body

In this module, we will focus on the esoteric science of activating Shakti in your cells – the “Mother Force” – in a way that leads to the growing of what mystics call your “golden” body. This body represents a higher expression of your normal physical body, and advanced prayer practices will literally baptize you into this body. You will learn:

• How to specifically call forth and incarnate more of the Mother Force in a way that grows your subtle body
• Invoke a cocoon of protection and support to allow this inner alchemy to unfold
• Begin with your crown chakra, and call in light that suffuses and irradiates your body in a sequential way
• Understand more of the Eastern and Western mystical lore around the development of this golden body and its connection to depictions of halos around saints
• Learn the prayer practices that baptize your cells with this feminine light force
• Use Hindu practices of visualization to open a devotional relationship with the Divine Mother
• Taste what it will be like to live in a unified force field of embodied transcendence
• Integrate the understandings of Sri Aurobindo, the Gnostic Jesus and Teilhard de Chardin around this golden embodiment process

This module will focus on the centrality of the heart in your journey into divine embodiment. The real sacred alchemy can only truly be accomplished through an open, ecstatic and illumined heart. It is where transcendence and immanence meet – the place where the dance of opposites becomes harmonious. You’ll learn:

• Prayer practices that concentrate the force of love in your heart to become an intense and focused beam – like a laser
• How to use the heart’s integrative capacities to speed up your evolution
• An advanced teaching on how light makes love to matter, transcendence makes love to matter
• The pathway to opening the Sacred Heart as compassionate love, making possible the marriage of heaven on Earth
• How to reconcile opposites and dualities in your heart
• An esoteric practice to open your heart to the Beloved

This module will take you deeper into the mysteries of the heart’s spiritual capacities – specifically opening a higher “Golden Sun” that is connected to ecstatic union with God, as well as the Golden Body of Module 3. You will undertake practices derived from Hindu Tantric practice that aim to awaken your heart as an immense sun with boundless capacity to shoot out rays of power in all directions. You’ll learn:

• Breathing exercises and mystical syllables that lead to the awakening of the heart
• How to invoke divine shakti power as you imagine the Golden Sun becoming wilder and wilder
• The process of directing the rays of the light of the Golden Sun toward the parts of your own body that need healing and transformation
• A practice to visually irrigate the whole of your being with the fire of the heart – and then extend it to help and heal others
• The keys to conscious irradiation: training the fire of that Golden Sun on different aspects of your physical being, enabling you to experience the secret ecstasy of all of the cells
• A vision of how the whole of your body can become a supernova of sun cells
• Understand the advanced insights of mystics such as Sri Aurobindo, Father Bede Griffiths and Robert Powell in this process

This module prepares you to focus, funnel and embody your loving-compassion as a sacred activist – particularly focusing on the Tibetan practice of Tonglen, in which you use your heart to compassionately transmute negative, dark and destructive energies. The force of unbound compassion is, according to Andrew, the strongest force in the universe. As you integrate this force in a deeper way, you will become wiser, calmer, steadier – and very much more awake to the powers that are given to the divine human to work directly in partnership with God in addressing very dangerous realities. You’ll learn:

• How Tonglen works with the force of unbounded compassion, so that you don’t have to confront the horror directly, but work on the alchemical forces that make up the situation through the prayers and imagery
• Mystical practices that enable you to shift the forces that are blocking progress from within, rather than through direct confrontation
• Navigate encounters with the forces of the dark in a clear and grounded way
• Develop greater heart strength to engage a suffering world
• Receive the wisdom of the mystic Shanti Deva and study the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
• To practice the complete Tonglen cycle (from self to being an agent of worldly transformation), which allows you to become a more luminous sacred activist

The final module will ground you in the core practices necessary for you to become a resilient sacred activist – able to transform the inevitable heartbreaks that occur on the path of compassionate action. You’ll learn:

• How to responsibly engage the education of your heart through being shattered by the suffering
• Skills for navigating suffering that allows you to keep your heart alive, vibrant and buoyant throughout the witnessing of suffering
• How to prevent heartbreak from overwhelming and paralyzing you, and instead allow it to guide you to where you’ll be most powerful in your chosen cause
• Learn why it is essential to follow your heartbreak – instead of following your bliss – to illicit your mission and the power to do something about it
• The practice of unconditional love and compassion in groups
• Be initiated into the greatest bliss of your life by opening to your mission, embodying it and experiencing the joy of enacting it