NEW FREE RESOURCE: Building Inner Strength Discussion Guide

FDCW have released a new resource to share within the community. Many thanks to Rasmus Hougaard, Keith Halford, Wendy Ridley, Angela Sanchez and Michaela Kirchem for their skills and care in creating this.

The Guide is an easy-to-follow weekly outline for anyone interested in exploring universal values such as humility, kindness, compassion, aspiration, service, courage, in discussion with others.

The Guide is based on our 16 Guidelines for Life program and draws inspiration from the 16G book.

Each weekly session lasting 90 minutes explores one universal value. Participants reflect deeply on the value, then discuss questions that help draw out their own wisdom and their individual experience of that value. The focus is on experiential learning coming not just from an intellectual perspective but from the heart. It includes suggested questions to spark discussions, guided meditations and notes for the discussion leader. 

No prior experience of the 16G program is needed.  The Guide is offered by FDCW as a free resource available to anyone with an interest in exploring these values with others and how they can be applied in daily life.  Groups can be a circle of friends, colleagues in the workplace or drawn from the local community. Or a mix.  

Our aspiration is that this Guide will help to globalise the 16G program by sharing the values much more widely and encourage the habit of applying the values to challenges in daily life.

We have already received a big response across FPMT Centres to the Guide. Here are a sample of comments:-

“Many thanks for the information you sent. I think you’ve solved a problem for me. The material ‘Building Inner Strength’ seems to be what I’ve need for a new class. In the past we had classes on The Book of Joy & A Fearless Heart, which we’re very successful, but I couldn’t find a follow on, which was wanted. So I think the material you sent could work very well.” - Ven Carolyn Lawler, New Zealand

“Thank you very much for sharing this updated and upgraded version of the discussion guide. I like everything about it. The simplicity, the visual appearance, the emphasis on personal practice, the practical applications in everyday life and the critical reflections arising from the discussions.” – Mikkel Bjelke Kristiansen, SEEL Learning Co-ordinator, Europe

“Seeing the structure of the meditations in such a series, I would immediately think of proposing to make a seventh retreat for beginners!” - Elisa, SPC, ITLK, Italy 

“The guide is great. I used it yesterday to guide a meditation on Patience at Kalachakra Centre. I'm going to run a one day workshop on the 4 guidelines on the Relationship dimension at the end of the week and I'll see how I can use it.” - Virginie Cornet Butcher, France

“Wow! This looks amazing! What a great concept, structure, content and visual impact - so relevant and needed. I'll look forward to looking at it in more detail, and then hopefully implementing it myself.” - Alison Murdoch, UE educator

“Thanks so much to you and all involved for this wonderful resource. I was just looking for something like this to take our fortnightly meditation group forward, by opening up the leading of the group to others. This looks to be perfect – and perfect timing! And thanks for making it so freely available. I’ll let you know how we get on with it at Jamyang Bath.” – Lynne Knight, England

To access your copy of the guide please contact admin@compassionandwisdom.org.

Please feel free to share this with anyone you feel would be interested. And please share any feedback from discussion leaders and participants with us so that we can improve the Guide

May thousands and thousands of beings benefit from this free resource!