IAM: Institute for Applied Meditation

Mentor Certification

An IAM mentor is able to customize the IAM curriculum to the needs of an individual. The mentor is a teacher who is also able to assess the level of heart development of another along (A) the dimensions of the heart, (B) the steps of realization and (C) the stages of character development, and who then can recommend specific practices to further that development. We call this process Heart Rhythm Therapy.

Consequently, the requirements for certification as a mentor are more stringent than those for a teacher. To become an IAM Certified Mentor, the requirements are to:

  1. Be mentored by an IAM Mentor for at least one year.
  2. Complete the three courses of level 1 and the three courses of level 2.
  3. Complete the requirements for an IAM Certified Teacher except for the Teacher Certificate Course
  4. Complete the five mentoring training courses, covering
    (1) Assessment of the dimension of the heart corresponding to the pressing need,
    (2) Assessment of the step of realization,
    (3) Assessment of the level of character development.
    (4) Prescribing practices for the three assessments,
    (5) The relationship of the mentor to the mentee, the supervisor and the institute.
  5. Take a six-day individual retreat.
  6. Gain experience with one-on-one counseling of others.
  7. Attain the 8th step of realization, which is shown in one's intuitive skill in receiving and following guidance.
  8. Demonstrate maturity of character such that all the qualities of the first two levels of character development are shown in one's personality. For example, it is necessary to show that (a) one's relationship to one's parents is healed to the point of gratitude, (b) one's archetype is known and clearly demonstrated, and (c) one has an open and sincere relationship with one's own mentor.
  9. Receive Puran and Susanna's approval.

Mentoring, also called life-coaching, may be applied in any organization or social structure. If it is your wish to mentor IAM students, then additional requirements apply:

  1. In your first year as a mentor, you will be limited to three mentees.
  2. Every IAM mentor will receive monthly supervision from an IAM mentoring supervisor.
  3. You must attend the yearly Retreat for Mentors at least every other year.
  4. You must take an individual retreat at least every three years with an IAM Retreat Guide.

Mentor Training Course #1

The IAM program in Mentoring is something we are very proud of, as an answer-in-progress to the concern of providing individual guidance on the path of the heart.

The mentors, who provide this service, are trained in both diagnosis and prescription: diagnosis of the state of the heart, the level of realization and the archetype of the person's character, and prescription of a range of meditation practices taken from the Egyptian, Hindu, Buddhist, Zorastrian, Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions and current research.

We need more mentors! So we are offering the Mentor's Training again, to train 10 to 20 new mentors who will work with the IAM members and others outside IAM in business, education and health care. This training has five courses:

  1. The Pressing Need and the State of the Heart

  2. The Steps on the Path of Spiritual Realization

  3. The Archetypes of the Soul and the Stages of Character Development

  4. Giving Spiritual Practices: Breaths, Sayings, Exercises, Sounds, Dialogues and Invocations

  5. Building the Mentoring Relationship with the Mentee.

The first course is being offered starting March 31, 2007. The topics in this course are as follows:

  • The four dimensions of the heart: the strengths, weaknesses and distortions of each dimension

  • The six powers available in meditation and their purposeful use

  • The "Pressing Need" that focuses the heart's development

  • The mental/emotional/spiritual issues which underlie specific physical health problems

  • The ways that relationships develop the heart

  • How to choose an external goal that fosters internal heart development

  • How to use the subtle element energies to accomplish the goal one sets

  • The practice of contemplation for long-distance, direct contact with the mentee

The format of the course is as follows:

  • Starting Saturday, March 31, at 9:00 am, through April 3 at 1 pm, four days in Tucson.
  • Immediately afterwards, a webcourse of 14 weeks
  • A final four days in Tucson, September 7-10, 2007.

The total fee for this course, including both 4-day sessions in Tucson and the webcourse, is $2200.

The course will be taught at a graduate-school level, involving approximately 50 pages of careful reading each of the 14 weeks. Short written assignments will be due approximately every two weeks, generally submitted by computer transmission. They are essential warm-ups for being able to submit the final assessment project at the end of the term: the assessment of and recommendations for a set of six case studies.

IAM will be seeking accreditation as a graduate school. When that is attained, this course will be accredited retroactively toward a Master of Arts degree.

At this time, we are planning to offer the other four courses in the Mentor Training as three-day seminars, not graduate-level courses. (Eventually, we will have a graduate program that includes all five courses, as we are able to fill out the curriculum of the IAM graduate school.) These last four courses will be scheduled in the winter of 2007-08, the spring of 2008, the fall of 2008 and the winter of 2008-9. These courses will cost $600 each.

 

From Puran Bair --

When I was 27 I met my teacher, a man who would become my friend for life. The initial attraction was very personal: I thought he knew more about me than I did. What he saw in me was what I wanted to see in myself. Over the three and a half decades I knew him, he not only showed me what I had missed in myself, he taught me how to see into the hearts of others.

I valued so much the opportunities I had to speak privately with him. We would talk about the holistic path and how it works, and we would discuss the challenges and difficulties of my life and how they related to the path. From the insight and strength I received from these talks, I gained immeasurably. He became my greatest supporter, the one who knew me best, the one I could count on to help me figure out my mysteries, and the one I trusted most.

Looking back on many, many conversations, I have come to understand there were three categories of lessons and guidance he gave:

The first was help in accomplishing whatever I was engaged in. He was genuinely concerned about my worldly problems, and he also knew they were the catalysts for my growth. There were problems with my business, with my relationships, and with my health. They became his own problems and he spoke to me earnestly about them, but he always left the decisions to me. By working with me on my pressing need, he was able to help me with my heart's growth in practical ways.

Secondly, my teacher always seemed to know my path, where I was on that path, and what was next. This gave him more hope than I had for myself, for he could see long-term beyond my crises to the progress I was making as a mystic. He happily celebrated the steps I went through in "realization", the ability to understand myself and the world and the interaction between the two. But he was not a passive observer -- he urged me on by prescribing exercises I could do on my own. Some of these were very difficult, but his support allowed me to do what I couldn't have done alone.

Thirdly, he modeled a character that was more important to me in the end than anything he ever told me. He was a great man, not small or petty, a noble man, capable of putting the welfare of others ahead of his own. He treated his personality as an art form and that inspired me to try to do the same. He showed me the difference between the politeness that masks one's feelings to pretend at greatness, and the character that expresses one's heart to demonstrate its greatness. What came out of our relationship, for me, was a more whole and grand version of myself than I had known before.

When he asked Susanna and I to start a new school, I hoped we would be able to offer the valuable mentoring relationship I had known and even make mentoring the main thrust of our school, the central activity that would pull all the teaching together in a way that best suits each person. With the help of Susanna's background in counseling psychology, it's clear that's what has happened in the last eight years.

In this beautiful path of the heart we don't work alone. We have the advantage of looking for and finding all that we seek in a human form. You develop the ability to see the unlimited potential in a human heart, and then you become what you see. Your mentor is your mirror in this process, showing you all that you can recognize and inspiring you to be all that you can see.

 

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