What is a Love Curriculum?

Have you ever found yourself in a meeting where you were listening to the conversation around the meeting agenda, but then you found yourself drifting off in that sort of out-of-body dream-like state, where you were thinking about what really matters to you and you began to wonder to yourself… what the heck are we doing here?  Who the heck cares about what we are discussing?  This stuff doesn’t even matter in the real scheme of life, so why are we on our second hour of discussing this meaningless stuff anyway?  And as you think these thoughts, a cold sweat runs down the back of your neck, and you get that awkward kind of feeling because…. you realize that you just spoke those words aloud to everyone around your meeting table.

Yeah, that never happens to me, you say?  Hmmm, I respond.  Are you serious? It has never happened to you?  Well, it did happen to me.  And in that moment, the Love Curriculum was born.  I am getting ahead of myself, aren’t I?  OK, let me back up a moment and reframe this conversation.

I am a college professor – at least in this moment, I am.  And I work with a lot of folks who desire to reform higher education.  Yet, we seem to keep failing in our reform efforts.  We are simply asking questions that are irrelevant and we keep attempting to implement things that are just not…well, effective; many for reasons that reside well outside our locus of control.  So, what can I do about it?  I can change the conversation one question at a time and teach others to do the same through the development and implementation of the Love Curriculum.

The Dalai Lama has said, on several occasions, that if we really want reform in our society, then we need educational reform; we need to put love back into the curriculum.  Thus, the purpose of the Love Curriculum is to guide participants in their journey toward love of self, not love of Ego self, but love of the essence that makes up the inner self.  In learning to practice self-love, graduates of the curriculum have more capacity to love others without placing expectations for certain behaviors on others, while taking full responsibility for their own thoughts, words, and actions and thus, their ability to create peaceful collaborations increases.  With increased self-love and increased non-judgmental love toward others, comes increased ability to focus and deeply inquire.  This all leads to the creation of innovative solutions for the problems our society faces today as well as increased well-being and a significant reduction in stress in their individual lives.  How fun is that?

So, do you want to join me in implementing and practicing the Love Curriculum?  If so, visit us weekly here at MeaningfulWomen.com for one lesson at a time.

Namaste!

Please click here to read more articles by Marilee Bresciani.

Marilee J. Bresciani, Ph.D., is a professor of higher education and the Founder of Rushing to Yoga Foundation. Her now more than 24 years of professional work has been committed to changing the way that America talks about quality of higher education. In order to keep from going crazy about trying to get the American public to care about what students are actually learning and how they are developing, rather than other indicators that have nothing to do with that, she has engaged in yoga, meditation, and self-referral. Marilee’s mantra is “I teach what I need to learn.”

Photo of Marilee Bresciani courtesy of Jamie Gallant