Maximizing Joy™

In Your Life, Work, Relationships
— and World


An 8-session recorded course with
Saniel Bonder & Linda Groves-Bonder



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Welcome to our 8-session recorded course, “Maximizing Joy — In Your Life, Work, Relationships — and World.” We're grateful and delighted that you've chosen to be part of this exciting new exploration with us and our special guest speakers.

Thank you for being part of this pioneering expression of the work of our Human Sun Institute. It's our hope and goal that Maximizing Joy will remain a part of the total Human Sun Heart Work for a long time to come. We're just thrilled that you are taking this journey!

Love and Heart-blessings,d


Session Titles and Bonus Interviews


Session 1: Why Non-Joy Seems to Win so Much of the Time, and What We Can Do about It
   ▶ Bonus Interview with Rick Hanson, Ph.D., renowned neuroscientist and author of Buddha's Brain, Hardwiring Happiness, and Resilient

Session 2: Serving and Being Served — Secrets of Unstinting Generosity and Delighted Receptivity
   ▶ Bonus Interview with Mirabai Starr, spiritual teacher and author of the newly released WildMercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics and other titles

Session 3: The Endless Dance of Being True to Yourself While Helping Others Do the Same
   ▶ Bonus Interview with Ken Wilber, philosopher, founder of the international Integral movement, author of The Religion of Tomorrow and other seminal works

Session 4: Acting Local, Being Global, and the Grace of Contribution
   ▶ Bonus Interview with Stephen Dinan and Devaa Haley-Mitchell, Co-founders of The Shift Network; Stephen is also author of Sacred America, Sacred World

Session 5: Drinking From the Fountain of Blissful Nectar in Your Own Heart
   ▶ Bonus Interview with Miranda Macpherson, spiritual teacher and author of The Way of Grace: The Transforming Power of Ego Relaxation

Session 6: Why Trust Is the Ground of Joy — and How to Strengthen It
   ▶ Bonus Interview with Anodea Judith, founding director of Sacred Centers, therapist and global teacher, author of Wheels of Life, Eastern Body—Western Mind, The Global Heart Awakens, and more

Session 7: The Serene Joy of "Foundation Friendship," the Radical Unity That Liberates Us into Our Uniqueness
   ▶ Bonus Interview with Ejna(formerly Jean) Fleury., Lakota Grandmother, Visionary, Peace Ambassador for the Crow Creek Sioux tribe

Session 8: What the One Great Heart We All Share Won't Settle for Less Than
   ▶ Bonus Interview with Terry Patten, Integral leader, (r)evolutionary, and author of The New Republic of the Heart


Recordings

Introduction and overview

"The Two Kinds of Joy, and
Why It's Totally OK for You to Maximize Both"

Session 1:
“Why Non-Joy Seems to Win so Much of the Time,
and What We Can Do about It ”

Key Points:

  • Corresponding to the two general kinds of joy - experiential and existential - experiential non-joy and existential non-joy seem to win so much of the time, each in different ways and for its own reasons.

  • To overcome experiences of non-joy and so maximize experiential forms of joy, we mainly need to cultivate empowering mindsets and practice actions oriented to joy.

  • To outgrow existential forms of non-joy and so maximize the innate, unshakable joy of being who we are, we mainly need to cultivate joy-sustaining, whole-being recognitions and develop new worldviews.

Presentation Play video Play/Download audio

Conversation Play video Play/Download audio

Rick Hanson interview Play video Play/Download audio



Session 2:
“Serving and Being Served — Secrets of
Unstinting Generosity and Delighted Receptivity”

Key Points:

  • Because we exist in - and even as - a field of "interbeing" that includes everyone and everything, a most potent way to foster both experiential and existential joy is by serving and being served, giving and receiving.

  • A crucial foundation of our serving and being served, giving and receiving, is wise self-care: physical/practical, emotional/relational, energetic, mental, and spiritual.

  • When we devote ourselves to unstinting generosity - a life of service - our delighted receptivity takes many forms, the most meaningful of which aren't always pleasant but are always profoundly joyful.

Presentation Play video Play/Download audio

Conversation Play video Play/Download audio


Mirabai Starr interview Play video Play/Download audio



Session 3:
“The Endless Dance of Being True to Yourself
While Helping Others Do the Same”

Key Points:

  • This endless dance of being true to ourselves while helping others do the same is a tantric tension, hardwired into reality, that never gets perfectly or completely resolved.

  • Maximizing joy requires us to "wake up, grow up, clean up, and show up" in all four quadrants: our inner and outer selves, and in both the inner and outer dimensions of our relationships with others.

  • Over time, as living in these ways tempers and refines us, we become more capable of "holding" the paradoxes of sameness and otherness, including all experiential joys and even extreme non-joys, and our existential joy shines ever more brightly.

Presentation Play video Play/Download audio

Conversation Play video Play/Download audio

Ken Wilber interview Play video Play/Download audio

Linda's I'm Here Play/Download audio



Session 4:
“Acting Local, Being Global, and the Grace of Contribution”

Key Points:

  • "Acting local" begins with and is always grounded in our stewardship of our own "local" bodies, minds, and souls, and all of our personal relationships.

  • It's not enough to "think" global-fully cultivating, radiating, and sharing joy requires us to BE global, continually attuning to the interbeing of every body, even every sentient being, everywhere.

  • The grace of contribution is one of the ultimate gifts we can access to maximize both kinds of joy.

Presentation Play video Play/Download audio

Conversation Play video Play/Download audio

Stephen Dinan
& Devaa Haley-Mitchell interview Play video Play/Download audio



Session 5:
“Drinking From the Fountain of Blissful Nectar in Your Own Heart”

Key Points:

  • In these times of unprecedented global turmoil, the Heart and its Unshakable Joy — its "Blissful Nectar" — are becoming accessible to everyday people in unprecedented ways.

  • Though each of us naturally points to our heart as the core of who we are, and though nearly all cultures have championed the heart as the wellspring of personal integrity and courage and of both human and divine love, the Heart, capital "H," is only now widely revealing itself as the ultimate nature and in many ways the unprecedented worldview of our shared reality, the "Totality Identity."

  • As the one and only "Sun" in the one and only, shared Heart of all our hearts "rises" — as it becomes increasingly obvious and radiant — we naturally "wake down" into deeper embodiment and integrity, drinking from that fountain of "blissful nectar" or "unshakable joy" at all times, in ourselves and "in mutuality" with one another.

Presentation Play video Play/Download audio

Conversation Play video Play/Download audio

Miranda Macpherson interview Play video Play/Download audio



Session 6:
“Why Trust Is the Ground of Joy — and How to Strengthen It ”

Key Points:

  • There are four kinds of trust that we need to be able to move with to be able to maximize joy in our lives, work, relationships, and world: trust in self, trust in other or others, trust in Being, and trust in Becoming.

  • Profound trust of all the kinds we're exploring here is crucial for humanity's healing of its Spirit/Matter split and all of the historical and developmental divisions, dissociations, and violence we perpetrate on ourselves, on one another, and on all Life.

  • Gratitude has a key role in how we can strengthen trust and, by doing that, maximize joy.

Presentation Play video Play/Download audio

Conversation Play video Play/Download audio

Anodea Judith interview Play video Play/Download audio



Session 7:
“The Serene Joy of "Foundation Friendship,"
the Radical Unity That Liberates Us into Our Uniqueness ”

Key Points:

  • "Foundation friendships" are recognition-based relationships grounded in each person's deeper connection with the ultimate Mystery of existence.

  • Foundation friendships arise among participants in many paths to oneness and joy-in our approach, those friendships come alive and thrive in our communion with the Heart.

  • However any foundation friends connect with and embody the great Mystery, their shared foundation liberates each one into her or his unique, always evolving expression.

Presentation Play video Play/Download audio

Conversation Play video Play/Download audio

Ejna(formerly Jean) Fleury interview Play video Play/Download audio



Session 8:
“What the One Great Heart We All Share Won't Settle for Less Than”

Key Points:

  • The "One Great Heart we all share" is the singular reality that includes all consciousness, mind, energy, and form-the root of every body's fundamental sense of identity and the evolutionary driver of all growth and transformation, including of course our own.

  • One simple way to express what that Heart won't settle for less than is this: It simply won't allow us or even the whole cosmos to stop short of the ultimate maximizing of joy, in, as, and through all beings and things, everywhere and forever.

  • What all this could possibly imply for humanity and all life on Earth over the next several hundred years, never mind the next several million years, is unimaginable-and inconceivably joyful.

Presentation Play video Play/Download audio

Conversation Play video Play/Download audio

Terry Patten interview Play video Play/Download audio



Linda's Joy of Being Play/Download audio


This is the essay, The Unspeakable Glory Equation,
that Saniel read the final sections of in this session.

We hope you appreciate the full piece!

Presentation transcript





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