InterSpiritual Meditation
A 7-Step Mindfulness Practice
InterSpiritual Meditation is an open-hearted and truly universal practice. If ever there was a practice to help us get spiritually unstuck, this is it.
~ Cynthia Bourgeault
On Demand - This course can be taken as live participation in the scheduled 8-week live sessions. For more information including dates offered, and to register visit Spiritual Paths.
A 7-Step Mindfulness Practice
In this 8-week course, you will refine your personal practice through a universal process that is shared by many of the world's great traditions. You will experience how it complements and amplifies other practices like Mindfulness. You will join with a diverse community that honors the wisdom of a variety of practices.
Honor, Harness and Harmonize Your Own Spiritual Styles
InterSpiritual Meditation (ISM) is a seven-step process drawn from the world's spiritual traditions. It is both an individual and communal practice that can be shared among people of diverse spiritual and secular beliefs. This comprehensive course will help you harness your natural spiritual learning styles to create a contemplative practice leading to happiness, gratitude, transformation, compassion, mindfulness, wisdom and service to others. It will help us to unite our diverse human family in compassionate service for the Earth and all beings.
We flourish in the Love, Peace, Compassion, Gratitude, and Strength of Our Shared Wisdom
ISM was developed by Spiritual Paths’ founder Dr. Ed Bastian in close contemplative collaboration with colleagues from Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Taoist, and Native American traditions. It can be practiced alone and in community with others. It pulls together key elements of contemplation and meditation shared by many traditions. In this process we gather in the language of silence and experience inter-connectedness. Joining in stillness, we don’t impose on others our own personal beliefs, rituals, or the names for our absolute truths, deities, or God. We honor and celebrate the wise and compassionate practices of all traditions. We discover a profound unity within our diversity. We flourish in the love, peace, compassion, gratitude, and the strength of our shared wisdom. We are of one heart.
The Seven Steps of InterSpiritual Meditation
- May We be Healthy and Happy
- May We be Grateful
- May We be Transformed
- May We be Loving and Compassionate
- May We become Mindful through our Breathing
- May We become Wise through our Meditation
- May We be in Service to All Beings
Outcomes
- Deepen your own personal meditation practice
- Integrate wisdom from one or more secular and spiritual traditions
- Harnesses your own personal spiritual and contemplative learning styles
- Join with a mutually supportive cohort
- Apply meditative calm and compassionate wisdom to public service
- Learn to lead a non-sectarian meditation for people with diverse beliefs and Practices
Features
- Daily individual and guided meditations
- Weekly live webinars also recorded for later listening
- Selected readings and videos by Ed Bastian
- Supplementary writings and videos from great teachers
- Worksheets for journaling
- Private mentoring opportunities with certified InterSpiritual Mentor
About the Instructor
Ed Bastian, PhD, Founder
Email
InterSpiritual Meditation courses are led by Dr. Ed Bastian, who holds a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies and is the founder and president of Spiritual Paths Foundation. Ed does not consider himself, or expect others to regard him to be a “spiritual teacher” or “guru.” Rather, he helps students and mentees to engage in a holistic, integrated, and systematic InterSpiritual Process to find their path, their practices and their answers to their deepest questions.
He developed this process through his forty years of research, study, and teaching, especially during the past decade, with over fifty esteemed teachers from Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, and Native American traditions. He is the award-winning co-author of Living Fully Dying Well, author of InterSpiritual Meditation, author of Mandala – Creating An Authentic Spiritual Path, contributor to Meditations for InterSpiritual Practice, and producer of documentaries on religion for the BBC and PBS.
He is the former co-director of the Forum on BioDiversity for the Smithsonian and National Academy of Sciences, teacher of Buddhism and world religions at the Smithsonian, an internet entrepreneur, and translator of Buddhism scriptures from Tibetan into English. He is also a faculty member of Antioch University in Santa Barbara where he teaches courses on Buddhism, Mindfulness Meditation and religion. He has led dozens of retreats and programs at such organizations as the Parliament of World’s Religions, the Chaplaincy Institute, One Spirit Interfaith, CIIS, Omega, Esalen, Hollyhock, La Casa de Maria, Garrison Institute, the Aspen Chapel and the Aspen Institute.
