This telecourse ran Wednesdays, May 12-June 16, 2021

A six-week course in unconditional loving, based on the Bhakti Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita.

Devotion—heart practice directed towards a divine other—is one of the secrets of inner awakening. It’s also a key to emotional healing. Why? Because love is our essence, and love is God. The devotional traditions tell us that to know God, to know your own essence, all you really need to do is open your heart. Yet for many of us, that is not so easy. Devotion is often a missing element in our practice. Often, our own hearts feel too small, too wounded, too guarded to be able to hold the kind of love we long for.

In this telecourse, we will look deeply at what it means for you, as a contemporary spiritual practitioner, to infuse your journey with devotion to God. We’ll explore the different phases of the journey, from kindling your longing to moving through heartbreak. We’ll be supported in this by the great traditional teachings of the Bhakti Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita, as well as by modern psychological insights about what it really takes to live in an open heart.

The Bhakti Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, and the devotional writings of mystical Christianity are filled with clues and practices that can show you how to turn ordinary love into divine love. We’ll explore how we apply these classical sutras to the cauldron of 21st-century life. We’ll discuss some of the fundamental questions about the path of love. Questions like, “Who is the God we are supposed to love?” “How do I open a wounded heart?” “Can I kindle bhakti towards myself?” “What is the relationship between the path of devotion, the path of knowledge, and the path of yoga?” We’ll look at the different ways we can approach loving, at the relationship of love to meditation, and at some of the great myths about Krishna and Rama, the two avatars of divine love.

The course includes six 2-hour lectures in mp3 format, guided meditation, mantra, lectures, and weekly guidance for personal practice.

In Loving Your Way to Awakening, you’ll learn:

• How divine presence can both uncover and heal emotional wounds
• Finding your own right relationship with the personal divine
• How a relationship with the divine changes all other relationships
• How to use myth, story, and mantra as doorways to the reality of the divine presence
• Unique insights from the Bhakti Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita about surrender to the divine