The when-which-how practice operates at the individual level and at the group level. The focus of this guide is at the individual level. Unfortunately, almost all of us love to work and play in a group environment, but we often fall short when it comes to working by ourselves. Getting together for a group meditation or workshop is stimulating and exciting, but by Monday morning the glow soon recedes and our desire to work on ourselves loses its luster.
Therefore, before we enter into the details of this practice, I want to address the group level of work because this is where individuals tend to place the greatest value. This is only natural because we humans are social animals. We enjoy getting together to support each other, as well as those in need. This is not only a good thing; it is a necessary thing, especially in today’s world.
Yet, what if we were a group of amateur musicians who had the chance to perform a great symphony to raise money for victims of some catastrophe? If we simply looked forward to the thrill and honor of the performance, to be the center of attention, but were unwilling to spend the necessary hours of individual practice to perfect our skills, what kind of symphony do you think we would produce? The answer is obvious. The individual, day-to-day practice is not glamorous compared to the group performance, and yet a beautiful and inspiring performance cannot succeed in the absence of daily practice.
Worldwide events such as meditations for peace, world prayer days, Harmonic Convergence-like activities, etc., generate lots of energy and enthusiasm in individuals who want to gather in groups to alleviate suffering and injustice. However, almost all the enthusiasm and most of the energy evaporates when these events come to a close and individuals return to their everyday lives. But, it is precisely here, in the routine of daily living that we must do the work of mastering the emotional disorder in our lives. Without developing our skills in emotional self-mastery at the individual level, the vast majority of group gatherings for meditations and visualization activities might send some good vibes into the emotional atmosphere; might make us feel good in the moment; might provide us with some entertainment; but will be largely ineffective in reducing the dense emotional toxicity hanging over our planet.
Despite this, a great majority of these group meditation endeavors are a good thing. Their overall effectiveness, however, is severely diminished if, at the end of these group service meditations, the participants return to personal lives filled with emotional chaos. In other words, group work must go hand-in-hand with individual work. The work we do to help others in all such worldwide meditation efforts will be increasingly more potent and effective if we are able to put energy and persistent effort into the when-which-how practice at the personal level.
Getting back to the group level activities of the Event Temples, we might ask, “Who participates in this activity?” They are people from different races, nations, religions, and cultural backgrounds. They may appear different on the outside, but they are identical on the inside because they share at least one thing in common—they desire to help their fellow human beings. And although there are thousands of humanitarian organizations around the world working day and night to relieve human suffering, the quantum community gathered at Event Temples represents the extension and expansion of humanitarian effort into the subjective realm of the emotions.
This work is not like the psychological counseling offered to victims of tragedies such as accidents, violent crimes, or natural disasters. The work of Event Temples consists in training individuals to subjectively transmit specific aspects of love. This work employs techniques that utilize terms more familiar to physicists than theologians or psychologists—terms like fields, entanglement, resonance, coherence, and non-locality. These terms imply a fundamental, underlying field of unity that energetically connects all humans worldwide—connecting not only humans, but all life-forms throughout our planet.
Event Temple participants (practitioners) are also not praying to God for intercession. Practitioners, as a coherent quantum community, are learning to focus, direct, and transmit positive emotions. These positive emotions are the sub-energies of universal love. It is in this word “love” where the practice of the Event Temples brushes up against the field of religion. This is mainly due to the religious teachings of our past, in which humans have been taught that God is Love. God IS Love, but God is not just a loving, religious Being. God is also a loving scientist, a loving artist, a loving educator, a loving administrator, a loving economist, and a loving architect.
The point is that religion need not have a monopoly on the definition and uses of love. The same holds true for the word “spiritual.” This notion is rooted in the culture of the past and became even more pronounced when, in the Age of Reason, religion claimed the heart and emotions, while science claimed the mind and thought. Religion claimed the spiritual domain and science claimed the physical domain. Thus, religion and science imposed their own interpretations of reality on Western civilization and much of our present global civilization.
The concept behind Event Temples shatters this unnatural separation between the heart and the mind. It is not the purpose of this guide to explore the detailed complexities of the heart and mind, but as we explore the when-which-how practice, the heart and mind will be viewed more and more as partners—designed to work as a unified and integral team.
In this new psychology, the word “spiritual” is liberated from the confines of the religious domain. Thus spiritual can be thought of as that transcendental and transformational power that relieves undue suffering and restores wholeness. Consequently, the individuals participating in the intentional transmission of universal love are performing a spiritual service by re-integrating the heart and the mind. This work is spiritual because it aims to restore wholeness, calm, and coherence where there has been separation, fear, and chaos.
