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Hello, The following event may be of interest to you: Keeping Practitioners Engaged: Dealing with Failure, Sustaining Commitment and Cultivating the Spiritual Self Thursday, March 26, 2015 Perceived failures and shortcomings abound in the process of spiritual formation: spiritual experiences are few and far between, progress is difficult to evaluate, and the lofty ideals of the aspired-to spiritual identity are unachievable for the majority of practitioners. In addition, training programs in spiritual disciplines such as yoga and meditation explicitly encourage practitioners to identify and acknowledge their failures and shortcomings both within and outside of formal practice. Given the frequency of these experiences and the well-known tendency for repeated failures to elicit exit, why do people continue to engage in these practices? Drawing from case studies of two organizations dedicated to the transmission of personal spiritual disciplines – an Integral Yoga studio and a Catholic prayer house – I examine how teachers and students interpret, account for, and respond to perceived shortcoming in the course of training. In this talk, I will argue that these communities encourage what I call a compassionate growth model in relation to experiences of perceived failure: an ideal typical discourse which normalizes, universalizes, and even valorizes failure, and which balances internal and external attributions in accounting for these experiences. In addition, I will show how practitioners struggle to not only enact but to fully internalize this perspective, and demonstrate the important role that interaction with fellow journeymen plays in the iterative process of failure, interpretation and persistence. Finally, I will argue that the official, socially-sanctioned approach to failure becomes a key element in the definition, performance, and identification of the spiritual self, serving as a marker of commitment and authenticity and distinguishing members and the community from culturally relevant others. Location: Olin 307 Sponsor: Dean of the College; Sociology Program Contact: Yuval Elmelech. E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 845-758-7547 If you would like to see more events please visit the following URL: http://inside.bard.edu/religion/events/