By Ib’nallah S. Kazi
Often in our day-to-day lives our awareness is consumed by the task of maintaining our private and social faces. Much of the data we receive from our environment, from other humans and our own emotional and intuitive signals go ignored.
One of the precious benefits of maintaining a meditation practice is the cultivation of a more encompassing awareness.
As awareness expands, so does our ability to be present for others. This allows us to remain in touch with our own deep needs, desires, and questions, while simultaneously being open to the subtle signals we are exposed to by nature and humanity. It also allows us to respond to the world from a place of awareness as opposed to habit.
When meditation practitioners gather together in a soul group, the result is the creation of a charged space. As the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, this now sacred space is infused with the collective breath of compassion and service, peace and love.
Everyone entering this space experiences a centering — a sudden sense of both release and surrender. Surrender to the felt presence of communion, cooperation and commitment. The shared experience within this sacred space signals the presence of meditative culture.
Upon leaving the collective each person takes with them a portion of the collective charge to share with all they encounter upon their way, sowing the seeds of meditative culture in their daily travels.
Meditative culture does not spread by coercion or marketing. It’s contagious. It expands organically in response to the people’s desire for change. 