Reframing Happiness as a Constant in Our Life by Calling Upon Love: The Guiding Force Larger than Ourselves

A Positive Psychology Approach

Stephen G. Post, PhD, and Joanna Kaczorowska, PhD

“What if the love that changes lives isn’t just a feeling, but a force — a force that 80% of adult Americans report having directly experienced, yet rarely have language for?” 

Discovering how to tap into how the spiritual and transformative power of pure unlimited love can positively impact your well-being, especially in times of chaos, greed, hostility and violence. Drawing on over 40 years of scientific and spiritual research and his new book, Pure Unlimited Love: Science, Spirit and the Seven Paths to Inner Peace, Dr. Stephen G. Post in this workshop explores practical pathways to cultivate inner peace, strengthen human connection, and foster ethical, compassionate care in daily life not just through human love, but with the influence of a Higher Love.

In this workshop, you’ll learn to:

• Give and Glow — Experience the unexpected benefits of kind giving on your well-being.
• Heal with Kindness — Harness the power of compassionate interactions to reduce stress and enhance healing for yourself and others.
• Follow Your Calling — Identify and pursue your unique talents to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.
• Raise Kind Children — Apply science-backed strategies to nurture empathy, resilience, and flourishing in young people.
• Know the One Mind — Connect inwardly to cultivate awareness, oneness, and lasting inner peace through knowing the “one mind” (all individuals are interconnected) as the ultimate reality.
• Cherish Nature — Reconnect with the natural world to restore awe, wonder, and balance.
• Honor the Spirit of Freedom — Recognize that the Golden Rule is the basis of all successful individual and societal freedom, as it is founded in Pure Unlimited Love and gives rise to inner peace and cultural renewal.

The focus of the workshop will be as follows:

• The Wheel of Love — A practical framework mapping love’s expressions across family, schools, and workplaces, including psychiatrist M. Scott Peck’s concept of care-frontation — and why it may succeed where confrontation fails.
• A leadership philosophy in action — How these principles have shaped compassionate care initiatives at Stony Brook’s Renaissance School of Medicine since 2008.
• Human love vs. Pure Unlimited Love — Distinguishing everyday love (real, but often unstable and myopic) from something researchers describe as ineffable, transformative, and startlingly common.
• Eight doorways to the ineffable — synchronicity, premonition, unbidden creativity, meditation, vision, flow, déjà vu, and deep prayer — illustrated through striking historical accounts, including a mathematical genius’ visions at the feet of a goddess and an artist’s dream of a descending angel.
• Community dialogue — Participants are invited to share their own encounters with this kind of love.
• Daily practice — Morning meditation as a way to set intention, and an evening practice for becoming soul conscious before sleep.
• Guided meditation — The workshop closes with a 30-minute meditation along the seven paths to Inner Peace, with space for participants to propose an eighth path.

Should we establish inner peace instead of fleeting happiness? The reframing of these terms sits at the heart of the workshop — an invitation to consider love not as an emotion to chase, but as a state of being to return to, again and again.

Seven Paths to Inner Peace

The workshop will open as participants are invited to share brief personal narratives about where these paths to love have brought benefit to them or their loved ones — grounding the session in lived experiences from the very start. Setting the tone, the internationally acclaimed violinist Joanna Kaczorowska, a Stony Brook colleague and veteran of the renowned Emerson String Quartet, performs live — offering a moment of musical meditation before the group turns to deeper reflection. This live performance will bring in an atmosphere of a presence into the room before a word of theory is spoken. From there, the workshop explores a question inspired by Sir John Templeton’s final challenge to Dr. Post: Is Pure Unlimited Love the ultimate reality underlying human experience?

Dr. Post will lead participants through a meditation on the difference between human love — with its natural fluctuation, myopia, and instability — and Pure Unlimited Love, a more perfect, ineffable form. Drawing on Dr. Post’s Wheel of Love, he will explore how love expresses itself practically in daily life: in families, schools, and workplaces, and as the foundation of the core virtues of positive psychology. Along the way, participants will examine the idea of “carefrontation” — a term coined by psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, and consider why a psychiatrist might feel we need a gentler alternative to confrontation.

The conversation will turn to definitions about human love, most simply, when another person’s security and well-being feels as real to you as your own. Pure Unlimited Love is harder to define — ineffable, yet remarkably common. A national survey research, featured in The Heart of Religion, suggests a striking majority of American adults have experienced “love” at least once, with a smaller but significant portion experiencing it regularly or even daily — often through synchronicity, premonition, unexpected creativity, meditation, visions, flow states, déjà vu, or deep prayer. Participants will be invited into open dialogue to share their own brushes with their experiences with love , or those of people they know.

The workshop will also explore contemplative practice: the special value of early-morning meditations a way to set intention and connect with the Supreme Being, and the practice of envisioning the people you’ll meet each day and asking what expression of love they might most need. Evening practice will also be explored — how to become soul conscious; even after a long, materially demanding day, using simple grounding phrases and deep breath to find inner peace.

The workshop closes with a guided half-hour meditation along the seven paths to inner peace, with an open invitation for participants to reflect on whether an eighth path belongs on the wheel.

Whether you’re a leader, healer, parent, or seeker of personal growth, this session will equip you with actionable practices to transform your life and your community. 

Stephen G. Post, PhD has spent four decades researching what love actually does to us — physically, psychologically, and socially. He is Founding Director of the Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University School of Medicine, and President of the Institute for Research on Pure Unlimited Love. A bestselling author on the science of love, altruism, and human flourishing, his books include Why Good Things Happen to Good People (translated into several languages) and Pure Unlimited Love, with a foreword by the Dalai Lama. stephengpost.com

Joanna Kaczorowska, PhD is a Polish-born, internationally acclaimed violinist and Director of Undergraduate Performance at Stony Brook University Department of Music. She has performed with Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, and the New World Symphony at venues including Carnegie Hall and Suntory Hall, and is founder and Artistic Director of New York Chamber Musicians. A prizewinner at the 2009 Liszt-Garrison International Piano Competition, she was also awarded the Grand Prize to perform at the 2010 Richard Wagner Festspiele in Bayreuth. joannakaczorowska.com