Andrew Harvey – Igniting the Flame of Prayer

You will:

• Understand the nature of prayer and how it can help to heal our individual and collective crises.
• Discover the different kinds of prayer necessary to birth the divine human.
• Cultivate the spirit of humility and adoration in which prayer needs to be grounded.
• Learn how to focus the aim of your prayer into a prayer for the divine birth.
• Experience the rapture of living in sacred love for all things as a prayer to the Beloved.
• Discover a new, more comprehensive vision of how prayer can work in an evolutionary context.
• Learn how you can develop a direct relationship with your hidden divine Self.
• Deepen your prayer practice to experience higher guidance and accelerate your evolution.

You will:

• Learn the most immediately effective form of prayer to align your whole being with the divine presence.
• Discover why all the mystical and shamanic traditions use variations of mantric prayer to facilitate transformation.
• Experience sacred mantric prayers from all traditions – Jai Ma (invoking full glory of the mother in Hinduism), Jesus prayer (Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on us), La ilaha illallah (Sufi mantra), plus many more.
• Align with full divine presence – immanent and transcendent – and embody love consciousness.
• Focus your prayer through syllables of divine power and build love intensely in your heart.
• Discover the sacred technology of mantric prayer, which involves emitting a divine light from the heart and being answered by the light of the Godhead.
• Experience those 2 lights coming together in your heart, which over time gives you a profound sense of love and divinity.

You will:

• Discover how, by using just one word, you can focus the full force of your heart on the aspect of the divine presence that this word evokes.
• Learn the sacred 3 words – God, Reality and Love – and how to use them in centering prayer.
• Experience the sacred reason for creation and the love force at the heart of evolution.
• Center your attention on the essential aspects of your divine nature.
• Discover a very simple and effective way of re-aligning yourself when you feel stressed, exhausted or resentful.
• Open to the power of grace to elevate you to a place of lightness and generosity.

You will:

• Turn your whole being, in love, to God, so that the Divine can irrigate, irradiate and transform you.
• Experience the prayer of adoration, as it deepens and becomes more and more resplendent with awe and infinite gratitude for the majesty of the Divine.
• Understand the deep connection between the birth that is taking place and adoration of the Godhead.
• Surrender to the divine law and commit to protect the human race and world.
• Learn to deepen the prayer of adoration into absolute surrender to the Beloved.
• Experience St. Francis’ prayer, interpreted in a universal mystical context.
• Surrender to the ordeals and rigors of evolutionary transformation.
• Open your heart in adoration to the Creator of the cosmos so that your whole being can be attuned to it.

You will:

• Address the reality of darker forces in a spiritually mature, rather than escapist, way.
• Experience the power, passion and peace of divine protection.
• Understand how to protect yourself from the many inner and outer forces that do not want the divine birth to take place.
• Learn how to recognize these forces, make them conscious, and suffuse them with divine light.
• Discover the prayer for protection of the Creation, so that you become a guardian from your own greed, madness and violence.
• Experience the prayer of forgiveness for everything you’ve done, allowing yourself to feel mercy and ultimate forgiveness.
• Deepen your connection with the Earth to become more and more grounded.
• Invoke from the Divine the prayers of radical protection – the prayer of breastplate of St. Patrick, and the presence of Christ before and after putting on an “armor of love.”
• Learn the great prayers of the prophet Mohammed, who understood the role of dark forces and the real need for protection from them.
• Discover the most potent prayers of protection of yourself, your loved ones – and our world.

You will:

• Discover how what is called “dangerous prayer” has been practiced in all of the secret chambers of the great mystical traditions – which helps you go beyond fear into a more limitless and free relationship with the Divine.
• Truly know the esoteric truth behind why you must die in order to be reborn into love – so that you can be an instrument of the Divine.
• Learn to pray dangerously for yourself, and surrender to the law of that rebirth.
• Experience the thrill of this kind of prayer for creating deep excitement to live the story of your divine Self.
• Discover the power of intercessory prayer to overturn systems of exploitation and transform politicians, animals and other human beings.
• Source the full power of prayer from within to accelerate transformation on all levels.
• Learn to harness the unconditional use of prayer to bless and heal beings in crisis.
• Embrace the power of dangerous prayer to reach the next level of transformation and gain strength to make the next level of sacrifice.
• Mature your soul in the fires of mystical passion to be able to pray in this way.
• Purify yourself of your fantasies and illusions, so that the Divine can flood you with its all-transforming grace.

You will:

• Experience the ultimate way of being refueled through bathing in the essence of the Godhead – the great silence and the great peace.
• Abide in the prayer of quiet with no words, and experience the descent of grace, in which just enough of you is left in order to be able to breathe adoration at the core of your heart.
• Learn how to breathe with the breath of mercy that permeates all things.
• Understand the difference between meditation and silent prayer, and put the distinctions into practice.
• Discover how the prayer of quiet initiates you into the fathomless depths of love in the Godhead – and allows you to drink in the great bliss and peace of that Godhead in the mind and cells your body.
• Dive into the ocean of divine love consciousness that is the prayer of quiet, where the divine human can draw enormous reservoirs of strength and compassion for the world and the birth.
• Experience the deep silence of the loving heart and allow that silence to fill you with its power, peace and strength.
• Understand how to weave together the many prayer practices that we have explored into an effective daily practice of evolutionary prayer.
• Discover key principles for discerning what practice of prayer is most helpful in what circumstance.

Andrew believes we are on a precipice as a planet, choosing between a dark descent into ever-more destructive cycles of greed, or into a more luminous future in which we create a wholly new level of divine embodiment. As we do this, we can become catalysts for the creation of a generous, just and caring world. To make this leap, we need to release our addiction to transcendence, and open to the kind of radical, divine embodiment that will suffuse the heart, mind and being with greater intelligence. This is what many think of as the “Christed Self.”

You will:

• Receive a vision that is both transcendent and immanent – unifying passion and peace.
• Clearly understand what becoming transfigured or Christed really means in terms of the irradiation of our cells with a higher sacred force.
• Begin to unify your mind and heart into one vessel for sacred practice, so a new level of conscious embodiment and power can be born.
• Learn from the profound mystical openings and insights of philosophers like Aurobindo, Ken Wilber, Father Bede Griffiths and Jean Gebser.

In this module, you will learn the advanced 7-part “Body Prayer” derived from major mystical traditions and yoga. It offers you simple positions that enact the whole path of embodiment – reaching up first to transcendence, then being consciously resurrected in the light, and finally, going out into the world as an emissary of that new evolutionary truth. Repetition of this body prayer forges you as a being who is able to stand in your center and peacefully transform the world.

You will:

• Bring higher octaves of consciousness into your body.
• Understand how to integrate the evolutionary journey with embodiment.
• Open to a deeper experience of your body and its power.
• Incarnate a deeper level of presence in your everyday life.
• Link your embodiment to your passion and your service in the world.
• Find out what mystics like Rumi, Hafiz and Meister Eckhart discovered about the stages of waking up the divine body.

In this module, we will focus on the esoteric science of activating Shakti in your cells – the “Mother Force” – in a way that leads to the growing of what mystics call your “Golden Body.” This body represents a higher expression of your normal physical body, and advanced prayer practices will literally baptize you into this body.You will:

• Learn how to specifically call forth and incarnate more of the Mother Force in a way that grows your subtle body.
• Invoke a cocoon of protection and support to allow this inner alchemy to unfold.
• Begin with your crown chakra, and call in light that suffuses and irradiates your body in a sequential way.
• Understand more of the Eastern and Western mystical lore around the development of this golden body and its connection to depictions of halos around saints.
• Learn the prayer practices that baptize your cells with this feminine light force.
• Use Hindu practices of visualization to open a devotional relationship with the Divine Mother.
• Taste what it will be like to live in a unified force field of embodied transcendence.
• Integrate the understandings of Sri Aurobindo, the Gnostic Jesus and Teilhard de Chardin around this golden embodiment process.

This module will focus on the centrality of the heart in your journey into divine embodiment. The real sacred alchemy can only truly be accomplished through an open, ecstatic and illumined heart. It is where transcendence and immanence meet – the place where the dance of opposites becomes harmonious.

You’ll learn:

• Prayer practices that concentrate the force of love in your heart to become an intense and focused beam – like a laser.
• How to use the heart’s integrative capacities to speed up your evolution.
• An advanced teaching on how light and transcendence transform love to matter.
• The pathway to opening the sacred heart as compassionate love, making possible the marriage of heaven and Earth.
• How to reconcile opposites and dualities in your heart.
• An esoteric practice to open your heart to the Beloved.

This module will take you deeper into the mysteries of the heart’s spiritual capacities – specifically opening a higher “Golden Sun” that is connected to ecstatic union with God, as well as the Golden Body of Module 3. You will undertake practices derived from Hindu Tantric practice that aim to awaken your heart as an immense sun with boundless capacity to shoot out rays of power in all directions.

You’ll learn:

• Breathing exercises and mystical syllables that lead to the awakening of the heart.
• How to invoke divine Shakti power as you imagine the Golden Sun becoming wilder and wilder.
• The process of directing the rays of the Golden Sun toward the parts of your own body that need healing and transformation.
• A practice to visually irrigate the whole of your being with the fire of the heart – and then extend it to help and heal others.
• The keys to conscious irradiation: training the fire of the Golden Sun on different aspects of your physical being, enabling you to experience the secret ecstasy of all of your cells.
• A vision of how the whole of your body can become a supernova of sun cells.
• Understand the advanced insights of mystics such as Sri Aurobindo, Father Bede Griffiths and Robert Powell in this process.

This module prepares you to focus, funnel and embody your loving compassion as a sacred activist – particularly focusing on the Tibetan practice of Tonglen, in which you use your heart to compassionately transmute negative, dark and destructive energies. The force of unbound compassion is, according to Andrew, the strongest force in the universe. As you integrate this force in a deeper way, you will become wiser, calmer and steadier – more awake to the powers given to the divine human for working directly in partnership with God in addressing very dangerous realities.

You’ll learn:

• How Tonglen works with the force of unbounded compassion, so that you don’t have to confront the horror directly, but work on the alchemical forces that make up the situation through the prayers and imagery.
• Mystical practices that enable you to shift the forces that are blocking your progress from within, rather than through direct confrontation.
• How to navigate encounters with dark forces in a clear and grounded way.
• Ways to develop greater heart strength to engage a suffering world.
• To receive the wisdom of the mystic Shanti Deva and study the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
• To practice the complete Tonglen cycle (from self to being an agent of worldly transformation), which allows you to become a more luminous sacred activist.

This final module will ground you in the core practices necessary to become a resilient sacred activist – able to transform the inevitable heartbreaks that occur on the path of compassionate action.

You’ll learn:

• How to responsibly engage the education of your heart through being shattered by suffering.
• Skills for navigating suffering that allow you to keep your heart alive, vibrant and buoyant throughout the witnessing of suffering.
• How to prevent heartbreak from overwhelming and paralyzing you, and instead allow it to guide you to where you’ll be most powerful in your chosen cause.
• Why it is essential to follow your heartbreak – instead of following your bliss – to illicit your mission and the power to do something about it.
• The practice of unconditional love and compassion in groups.
• Be initiated into the greatest bliss of your life by opening to your mission, embodying it and experiencing the joy of enacting it.

Taken from Andrew’s 14 modules of teaching these powerful prayer principles and practices last year, these Q&A sessions will give you access to some of Andrew’s most spontaneous exchanges and enlightened teachings. As he engages directly with the students most important explorations, he will help to deepen your learning and embodiment and synthesize it all in a truly powerful and deeply heartfelt manner.

The act of prayer has been recognized – by sages and skeptics alike – as a powerful way to enact positive physical, spiritual and emotional change. Prayer has the power to take us beyond the rational mind, opening our hearts and engaging our souls. It brings us peace and health. Its aim is to uplift our spirits and bring us closer to the Divine.

In Light the Flame, Andrew has gathered the 365 prayers that have most influenced his life, offering us a daily reminder of the sacred. Drawing insights from around the world, across religions and an array of disciplines, Andrew provides inspiration from great spiritual minds like Rumi and Andrew Merton, activists like César Chávez and Mother Teresa, and philosophers like Nietzsche and Voltaire – plus he includes some of his own works. With themes that range from love and loss to unity and transformation, this luminous book will capture your imagination and nourish your soul.

Andrew has selected some of the especially moving prayers from his book, Light the Flame, for a private reading set to beautiful ambient music that truly enhances the experience of these beautiful passages. For fans of the book, this is a wonderful supplement and this is also a wonderful and convenient way to experience some of the most moving poetry of alltime.

In this special session, Andrew is joined by his friend and spiritual activist, Adam Bucko. Adam’s work impacts many homeless youth in New York and he is at the forefront of the growing sacred activism movement along with Andrew. These two respected leaders will discuss how the role of prayer in activism can truly change the world.

Adam Bucko is an activist, spiritual director to many of New York City’s homeless youth and co-author of Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation. He grew up in Poland during the totalitarian regime and spent his early years exploring the anarchist youth movement as a force for social and political change. At the age of 17, Adam immigrated to America where his desire to find his path towards a meaningful life led him to monasteries in the US and India. His life-defining experience took place in India, where on his way to a Himalayan hermitage, he met a homeless child who lived on the streets of Delhi. This brief encounter led him to the “Ashram of the Poor,” where he began his work with homeless youth. After returning to the US, he worked on the streets of various American cities with young people struggling against homelessness and prostitution. He eventually co-founded The Reciprocity Foundation, an award-winning nonprofit dedicated to transforming the lives of New York City’s homeless youth.