Small Group Facilitation Outline: Day 5

1) How might assessment be helpful?

• Know where to focus our practice

• Give us confidence in the path 

• Be clear what the objectives are

• Remind ourselves of the nature of the obstacles we will be facing 

2) How might it hinder us?

• If we use it to reinforce a sense of inadequacy 

• If we hold it too rigidly 

3) As we’re assessing, be mindful of:

• Understand that we straddle a few stages. Both in our development of Calm/Staying and in any particular practice.

• Calm/Staying is influenced by life circumstances. Even if you have amazing practice if you live a chaotic life it's going to be hard. Hence the gradual need for a deeper level of ethics (behavioral therapy) to reduce sources of agitation. There is a path to be walked in your life. 

Assessing Your Practice

• Degree of Calm (How calm are the events (thoughts) of your mind?)

• Agitated (Stages 1-2)

• Mixed (3)

• Forced Calm (4)

• Automatic Calm (6)

• Joyful Calm (7)

• Contented Calm (8)

• Equanimity (9) 

• Degree of Staying

• Distracted (1-2)

• Partial Staying (3)

• Complete with effort (4)

• Complete without effort (6+)

• Kind of Object

• Thought (1-2)

• Concrete object (3-4)

• Subtle Object (5-9)

Assess by understanding the core skills at each stage:

In the Five Paths model the First Path of Learning is you are really learning the basic skill of steering your mind back again and again. You are more distracted than you are present.

On the Second Path of Reflection you are still steering but beginning to master steering and you are more present on the object than distracted.

On the Third Path of Mindfulness you are learning not to forget the object. First emotionally, by having enough desire to remember (3), and then cognitively by getting interested in details (4).

On the Fourth Path of Metacognition you are teaching your awareness to run the meditation rather than your attention. To do that you need to connect them (5) and then experiment with easing up and allowing awareness to take over (6).

On the Fifth Path of Enthusiasm you are learning to enjoy and master the process by realizing that it can be a joyful (7), contented (8), and equanimous (9) experience.

On the Lower Paths of Learning,  Reflection, and Mindfulness, staying improves through the flames of effort.

On the Upper Paths of Metacognition and Enthusiasm, staying improves through easing up more and more. 

Can you see why it is helpful to know the stages?

• If you know the stages you know what’s going on each step of the way.

• If you know them by heart you will not have to think about to apply it. This allows you to bring the teaching into your life.

Closing Reflections:

In what other ways might we bring these teachings into our lives?

How can we then use these assessment tools to examine the degree to which we are staying on the path in our lives?