“We are the universe experiencing itself.” – Unknown

Since I’ve been a part of men’s groups, we’ve always taken 5 or 10 minutes at the beginning of the meeting to slow down and sink into our present moment. This has been done largely as a meditation.

 

A couple weeks ago, I noticed a poster about meditation in the UVIC library. It told of a workshop in meditation happening on Monday and Tuesday, October 21 & 22. I thought, since we always did meditation in our group, that this might be a worthy direction for our group to collectively grow. I proposed we all join the workshop and people said they were interested. Long story short, they didn’t really show up. But I did.

The instructor Ahirvad is very experienced in meditation, and had been the pupil of a very accomplished zen master who had moved to New York City and, among other things, created a spiritual community there. He held events  that drew thousands of people from distant placed to experience group meditation and other spiritual work.  Ashirvad had a calming and passionate nature. He reminded me of other people I have known that have been inspiring to me.

At the workshop, we learned strategies to meditate more effectively, and a pretty modest amount about the philosophies behind meditation and eastern spirituality. Part of the reason that this course was two nights in a row was so that we could practice meditation at home, directly before and directly after sleeping, and return to report our experiences.

Personally, I felt the benefits of the meditation in my day on Tuesday. Not only did it enliven my sleep the Monday night, but it allowed a calmness to drone with me throughout me day.  I was sold. I went to the Tuesday night workshop enthused and ready to learn more about meditation. I left with a book, and a new life strategy.

 

I am looking forward to bringing additional aspects of spirituality and meditation wisdom into our next circles. We have not met in a number of weeks due to logistics and other occurences, but I’m confident that the group will begin to gain more traction in the proceeding months and into the new year.