October 9, 2018 Group Meditation Part 1 of 2
This 31-minute appreciative joy meditation was given by Freeman at the Boundless Love Project’s Group Meditation. After doing this meditation, we suggest you listen to the talk that followed it, Defining Love: Our Natural State of Being. This talk is the second talk in the series for activists, Being Medicine: How to Heal Yourself and Your World.
Appreciative Joy Meditation - 31 min
This meditation helps cultivate appreciative joy and sympathetic joy, while counteracting the aversion, judgment, and negativity bias of the egoic mind.
The conditioned, egoic mind has what psychologists call a “negativity bias.” This means the ego primarily concerns itself with perceived “threats,” “dangers,” and “problems,” resulting in aversion towards various feelings, people, and situations. The ego generates a judgmental story of how all of these things are “bad” and then lives in fear of them.
To counter the ego’s negativity bias and aversive delusional judgment, our true self must consciously decide to see what is good in everything. By inclining our mind towards appreciation, we experience joy, and we see how things misperceived as “dangers” and “problems” actually aid our spiritual growth and serve us in other ways too.
After listening, be sure to listen to the talk, Defining Love: Our Natural State of Being, which is part 2 of this group meditation.