ZCAP description

Let’s begin with an objective of loving God - unconditional love of God, and for zandtao this love also means accepting the grace of God. So far zandtao’s understanding of grace is the 5 graces leading to vision – awareness, love, wisdom, concentration and embodiment. With the best vessel being in a state for grace then the seeker can accept grace – these 5 graces. For unconditional love of God both the seeker and God have no conditions that restrict love; God has no such conditions and with the best vessel the seeker can have unconditional love for God.

Having considered an objective for the meditation we need to consider method. For zandtao it is indicated that within the Agape tradition generally there needs to be a focus on the ethos of preparing the best vessel – a state of well-being, and with this well-being the seeker can love God and accept God's grace; zandtao will try to help with this. But first he wants to briefly mention prayer, and where he sees it fitting in. For zandtao the indications are that prayer is to help the seeker love God, the seeker uses prayer to focus on loving God – communion with the Divine. Zandtao draws a distinction with this use of prayer and meditation. The primary aspect of that distinction is that praying is a mental action of focus whereas meditation works towards stillness and emptying the mind then accepting God's grace into the empty vessel - not the same.

Zandtao will now be developing ZCAP, ZCAP is for Christians and will have no Buddhist input. The rest of this reflection will be concerned with how seekers could work with this meditation approach. It will be long. But you will see this warning whenever you look at ZCAP:-

Warning!! Meditation can release repressed trauma. Work with a meditation adviser. Warning!!

In his work as zandtaomed the few seekers he has worked with have lived with trauma – we all live with some sort of trauma - Sacred Wounds. If a seeker approaches meditation like a bull-at-a-gate, it is possible such trauma can all come to the surface at once bringing with it new bad experience. For meditation to deal with such trauma there needs to be a gradual process with support from an adviser – remember trauma is what psychiatrists deal with; zandtao strongly recommends working with an adviser if you are starting meditation. Interspersed with this explanation will be the way zandtao approaches meditation training.

As discussed above briefly the purpose of ZCAP is to prepare the best vessel into a state of well-being to develop the autonomy to love God and live a good life – a life with no spiritual bypassing. The infrastructure for preparing the best vessel is familiar to zandtaomed – physical well-being (body), emotional well-being and mental well-being leading to communion of loving God and accepting God’s grace.

Zandtao takes his lead from Anita but goes much further in terms of the vessel and the seeker’s responsibility for preparing that vessel. Anita uses somatic scanning, but zandtao asks the seeker to use that scanning within a broader meditation framework. Whilst this is meditation it will not contain Buddhist terms nor require any Buddhist understanding, ZCAP will be completely Christian. Remember many Christian monks meditate.

But first things first with meditation, a seeker must get used to the inner journey – looking internally; western education does not look internally. Sitting down and looking internally does not always come easily, it takes time and training to develop this ability. There are many methods for this training, and in this description zandtao will include how he does it.

His first step is concerning discipline. To begin with we meditate every morning after ablutions, it is best to do it every morning – in the long term we would do it morning and evening; this can mean getting up earlier to give time for meditation. The next step concerns posture; the best posture is lotus but people who use lotus have often been trained in sitting lotus from birth. What is essential is a straight back that is not resting, sit on a chair but don’t rest your back. The next step is time, and the objective is to increase the time. So we start with just a short time 5 minutes or less – depending on how you feel. Commit yourself to the time, set an alarm, and don’t stop meditating until the alarm goes.

If as a seeker you already have an early morning routine, integrate it with the meditation. Such a routine might be:-

Wake up and give thanks to God for life
Ablutions
Meditation
Prayer.

As your meditation develops, hopefully you will connect your prayer with the communion with God, the 4th tetrad of ZCAP.

Back to the meditation we will focus on the breath. For the zandtao method there are 4 stages of breathing – breathe in, pause, breathe out, pause; and then again breathe throughout the allotted time. Because our mental processes are not trained, when you start this breathing you will find that your mind will wander. GENTLY bring your attention back to the breath. It is natural at the beginning for the mind to wander, don’t worry about that – just bring your attention gently back to the breath.

For much of the early stages of meditation this is what we focus on but as we do more meditation this will change leading eventually to ZCAP. When advising zandtao helps the seeker deal with trauma that can arise. In the 1st three stages of ZCAP, a very similar approach is as zandtaomed has advised for ZPAP - an approach similar to Anita’s emotional balance. So zandtao feels comfortable in helping with ZCAP although if he had his time again he would choose to be trained as a transpersonal psychiatrist to have some clinical experience - the kind of training Anita had.

As part of working with zandtao and ZCAP, there would be a daily interaction in which a seeker would send zandtao a daily report of what happened in meditation and zandtao would follow up with new instructions. In this way ZCAP would be built into similar to the online version.

In ZCAP zandtao uses techniques that he has found beneficial but they require no Buddhist beliefs. Let’s look first at body-scanning. When you start, this will not be detailed. Briefly look inside your body, do you feel a blockage. Don’t worry about what zandtao means by blockage, just let your attention wander briefly inside your body looking for what your attention sees as blockages. If you find something just keep your attention still on it for a short while, and then let the attention go and move on. Don’t worry if nothing happens at this early stage.

After the mind is better trained to look internally, we do a more detailed scan, you could try this but use your own – do what you feel is best, the more detailed the better the process.

Zandtao also recommends using internal energy, in the East this is known as chi (or prana in India). You don’t have to use this internal energy but you can try it and see if it works. Basically how zandtao uses chi is similar to breath but instead of breathing air zandtao asks you to breathe in energy. He likes to energise the body’s ridgepole – from the base of the spine to the top of the head. Breathe in energy at the base of the spine and move it up a mental image of a spinal channel to the top of a head. This energy can help heal and balance the emotional energy in the body. Emotional well-being is long and complicated, and zandtao has used the Seeker Story to release trauma in the body.

But before we look at the Seeker Story the seeker begins the process of mental well-being. In our upbringings we take on views from our parents and from society inc. education. These are not our views but the views of others imposed on us. In mental well-being we let go of these imposed views, but we try not to replace them with new views. Through God’s grace we try to develop the ability to see each situation for what it is, evaluate it for what it is, process it and let it go without bringing in new views which clutter up our minds and mental well-being. Part of the process of communion is to have an empty mind that can be filled with God’s grace.

So that brings us to the 4th tetrad – communion, And in communion there are 4 stages:-

1) Create space – empty vessel, readiness for communion
2) Bring in God’s love and wisdom into the spinal channel, love from Mother Earth, wisdom from heaven above.
3) Interbeing – accept all aspects of grace in the spinal channel – feel grace in the channel, extend grace throughout the body’s space and then move it be-yond leading to ….
4) accepting God’s grace, loving God, leading to deep seeing – seeing God’s truth.

So we have our 4 tetrads of meditation to love God:-

Physical well-being
Emotional well-being
Mental well-being
Communion with God

Once we have learnt to be comfortable with meditation then we start to develop our meditation practice:-

Physical well-being

Settle in our sitting position. Practice our deep breathing and just feel stress leave our bodies. Whilst we are still deep breathing, focus on different parts of the body and release stress in those parts of the body. Develop an understanding of the power of the breath by working with short and long breaths. See how our breathing can help calm the body, and let the physical body be calm.

Emotional well-being

With the body calm emotions will become stronger. Relax the whole body and release surface emotions. In the next stage the seeker has to be wary, and it is especially at this stage working with an adviser is helpful. Now the seeker looks deeper into the body to release emotions. Here we will find emotional trauma, and releasing it can be powerful. Rather than just releasing emotions in meditation the seeker could be working with the adviser following an approach such as the Seeker Story so that emotions are not released all at once. However much work is done in the meditation is at the choice of the seeker and their inner guide. Then meditation will involve the development of inner energy – this can be done in every meditation or at the guidance of an adviser. The purpose of this energy is to help heal so the meditator brings calm to the emotional body. When there is calm the meditator focusses on feeling the love of God.

Mental Well-Being

At this stage there is a feeling of loving but the mind can still be full of blocks. If trauma has been released and there is emotional well-being, these blocks are desires that have not been released and views that we have accepted from our upbringing – from our parents and society inc. education. As part of our Seeker Story, using God’s grace we examine these current desires and views we have learnt in our upbringing, and ask if we can let go of the desires and if we now accept these views. Desires are let go and we release views that we don’t now accept. Situations can arise in our daily life where desires or views from our upbringing lead to harmful actions. In meditation we can ask of ourselves how such behaviour occurred and recognise and release the desires and views that caused the behaviour (in this clip Sharon Salzberg describes letting go). This release of desires and views is a long process of which meditation is a part.

With our mental processes we want to be guided by God’s grace and not desires and mental views. As we make mental space with the release of trauma, desires and views then through communion with God (4th tetrad) we develop God’s grace to continue the process of releasing trauma - and views that can cause harm.

Since last meditation review our daily life for any harmful behaviour. Use awareness (from God’s grace) to examine this behaviour for harmful views. Recognise and release those views. Check for any old views recurring and release them.

As we develop our ZCAP, we will see that our 4 tetrads are not rigidly separate. What will have the greatest impact will be our communion with God (4th tetrad) and our spiritual development of God's graces. Grace gives us conviction. Views that we recognise as harmful might be reinforced by daily life, grace gives us the conviction to recognise and release this harm by not adhering to these views again.

Views can come from living in the past and behaving as if we were in the past. In the same way we can have desires based on a future life and ambitions, these desires can create views that are not part of our lives now. Recognise and release those past and future views. To avoid these views, we try to live in the present moment.

Because of our meditation and God’s grace we are developing focus, this focus or concentration is very important for our continues ability to release views and have a clear mind.

This gives us 4 stages for mental well-being:-

Review our daily life for harmful behaviour.
Recognise and release desires and views.
Live in the present moment, release past and future views.
Develop focus for a clear mind.

Communion with God

Empty vessel, clear space.
Bring in love-wisdom balance
Interbeing
Love God, accept God’s grace into the empty vessel.

This is a summary of ZCAP for now, although it will develop.

But before we can develop ZCAP the mind needs training, and to develop that training zandtao offers the following method:-

Start a regular morning sitting meditation.
Set a time and stick to it.
Breathe a deep 4-step breath. GENTLY bring the mind back when it wanders.
Write a daily report for zandtao.
(The meditation description of ZCAP from this reflection can be found here.)