Deep Connections Across Canada: A Virtual Meditation Group Works

22 Nov Deep Connections Across Canada: A Virtual Meditation Group Works

At the Encountering Our Humanity conference in Ottawa in 2016, a small group of members gathered with the intention to share research and experiences from our meditation. Beginning in early 2017, this group of 9 members from across Canada met regularly until August 2021, when we brought this impulse to a close. We would like to briefly share something from this experience.

Although we met on Zoom, we found that we were able to create a virtual circle and an environment and mood of trust and openness. A more active listening space was formed with our cameras turned off. At the beginning of our meeting, we all envisioned the group seated at a circle by successively naming ourselves in a clockwise “direction” around the circle. In this way, we had the opportunity to feel the presence of our colleagues to the right and left of ourselves despite being thousands of kilometers apart. At the centre of this circle, we envisioned an altar space where we placed a verse for each session.

 We experienced a deeply social way of working together, such that when we met, we could very quickly enter into this connection with each other.  We then learned to work together in a meditative fashion, where silences were also part of our conversation.

We worked at the beginning with parts of the book Meditation by Heinz Zimmermann and Robin Schmidt. Sometimes people would contribute an exercise we could all engage in, then share our experience. At other times, we would arrive at our meeting without an agenda prepared, and find our way in the activity of meeting together. This felt very creative.

We wanted to share with you that this took place. It feels like this way of working together is happening more and more in our engagements with each other. Can this lead us towards strengthening the Anthroposophical Society, as we approach our 100^th anniversary?

John Glanzer, Patrice Keats, Judy King, Dorothy LeBaron, Arie van Ameringen, Heidi Vucovich, Ute Weinmann, Christoph Wuerscher, Douglas Wylie