School of Divinity & Sacred Literature
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School of Divinity
Sign up and get instant access to three free audio files you can play or download immediately.
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Soothe & Calm - a guided meditation to get support to come back to Centre whenever you're stressed or confused. Take some time for Yourself.
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Two-Part MiniCourse: ReConnect with Your Heart -
Enjoy a Heart-opening meditation to deepen the most important relationship you'll ever have - your relationship with Yourself.
Includes The Heart Chamber meditation - an opportunity to speak with your Heart and see how Life is going.
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Start to Look into Your Darkness - an introduction to the School's practice of Compassionate Self-Witnessing for Healing and Transformation.
Soothe & Calm
About the School by founder and teacher, Joshua Lesk
Testimonial from a Student of the School
~ COURSE ~
Release Your Suffering Now: Leave the Pain Body for Good
The Course is for anyone who wishes to stop suffering NOW.
Even though you may be used to it, even though people may consider it normal, it is completely unnecessary to live a life ruled by anxiety, worry, guilt, shame, frustration and so on.
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The Purgation of Suffering is one of the three stages of Ascension in Neoplatonic Mysticism and many traditions.
The model they present for personal Evolution is:
Kenosis = Purging and Emptying of Suffering - Fear, Anger, Hatred
Theoria = Communion with the Good in the example of
Nature and virtuous people, and in choosing to enact
Love, Compassion, Truth, Integrity, Justice, Strength
Theosis = There is a dual activity of Purging of Suffering and of growing familiarity with Clear Awareness. Eventually, the Self sees clearly that its Nature and Substance is the same as that of all Being.
The Self rests in the One and so finds Centre, which is everywhere. From this Centre, the Self lives and creates in Joy and Bliss.
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About My Journey
My life since childhood was a melange of numbness, overwhelm, constant shame, frustrated desire and feeling very very bad about myself. I understand completely why that was so. I went to umpteen psychiatrists and psychologists, enough for two baseball teams.
Through this, I learned to identify and catalogue all my problems, but not to change them.
I felt powerless to do anything I really cared about.
I felt like my life was supposed to be a tragedy.
Like I was a loser and it was my duty to be a loser, for some reason.
What started to change me was releasing my suffering.
By “releasing my suffering” I mean I went into, over and over, into my body and memories and sat with my suffering - the fear, the loneliness, the shame, the horror.
I went into myself with therapy modalities that addressed trauma by going into the body.
Until I went into my body nothing happened, for that is where not only personal trauma is stored but also the accumulated trauma of all the generations of ancestors.
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This Course is the culmination of 45 years of study of religions, spiritual practice and sacred literature that has supported my personal journey from intense suffering and confusion to a life of joy, pleasure, communion, purpose, service, adventure, play, Eros, compassion, wholeness and peace.
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​Through the school's global online community, in-person events, and individual coaching, I pledge to support every Student in their Spiritual Evolution with compassion, devotion, honesty and integrity.
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Course Modules
Release Your Suffering Now is a self-study audio file course is comprised of seven modules which can be easily downloaded upon registration and listened to at your own pace.
Module 1
Leave the Pain Body Practice
These are simple meditations to help put aside the Monkey Mind and return to Clear Awareness. Here You practice cultivating a relationship with Your Centre - Your Heart.
Module 2
Vedanta
Learn from the sacred tradition of Advaita Vedanta of India, and see how it guides the Soul’s union with the Absolute.
This path is mirrored in the thought of Plato, the single greatest thinker of Western civilization.
We look at his map of the Soul’s Ascent to God in modules 5 and 6 on the subject of Eros.
Module 3
The Societal Background
Consider modern society and how this life relates to Suffering and Personal Awakening.
Module 4
Darkness
Learn how the approach towards God and Wholeness requires the purging of one’s Suffering - Your inner experience of Fear, Death, Pain, Cold, Emptiness and Meaninglessness.
Learn how to meet these experiences, witness them, redeem them and let them go.
Module 5
Eros Part 1
Eros is one of the ancient Greek words for Love, denoting the desire for union with the Beautiful Beloved.
Here we consider the role of Eros in life, and how sexuality has been feared and repressed in the West.
In the world’s most famous work on Love - Plato’s Symposium - we learn how the experience of Eros inside us draws us upward into union with God.
Module 6
Eros, Part II
Plotinus was the greatest exponent of Plato’s doctrine of Evolution. He maps the evolution of the Soul into its true Self according to the inner power of Eros and its necessary balance with Agape - the compassionate Love for every being as itself.
Learn how this relates to Your own Awakening.
Module 7
Personal Awakening and Societal Awakening
See how Your Life and Happiness are related to everyone else’s Life and Happiness. This module draws from the great sociologist C Wright Mills’ notion of the Sociological Imagination:
“Mills defined the sociological imagination as ‘the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society.’” (Wikipedia)
"The thing about meditation is: You become more and more you."
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SCHOOL LAUNCH
IN-PERSON EVENT
MAY 30, 2024
7 PM
WILDHEARTS CAFE
509 BLOOR ST WEST, TORONTO
TEACHING
MEDITATION
MUSIC
COMMUNITY