Welcome to the first Daily Kos Monday Group Meditation, a warm, heartfelt thank you to everyone joining in, and also to everyone who helped make this happen. Before we get started there are some “housekeeping” issues to deal with. Since this is so new we will need to be open minded about finding a time or times that will work for everyone. Last week we had one time request for an 8 to 9 PM EST time. In past experience at Street Prophets that time was problematic for people in the Pacific Time Zone, since there were no other specific requests and suspecting later will be better, I moved the requested time back a half hour and tonight we will be meditating between 8:30 and 9:30 PM EST. You can join in anytime during that time and it is not necessary to meditate for the entire hour.
In last weeks diary here there were 22 people who answered the poll, 9 people in the Eastern Time Zone, 6 in the Pacific, 3 each in the Central and Mountain Time zones and one mysterious other. So while the Eastern Zone has the most people, over half of the respondents are west of the Eastern Zone. There will be another poll question tonight regarding what your preferred start time is and hopefully from those results we will be able to come up with one or two times that will work for everyone. To eliminate confusion all times listed in the poll will be in Eastern Standard Time.
Everyone is welcome to join us, believers and non-believers of all stripes. For those new to meditation who would like to try but don’t have any idea how to start, Mindful Nature gave a nice, concise description of one way to meditate in last weeks diary here copied and pasted below:
It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat.
In past experience we would post a diary with some food for thought, or something to generate a soft heart for people to take to their cushions. It is not necessary to sit in front of the computer to join the meditation, but it is certainly alright to do so if that is your choice. At Street Prophets we left a tip in the tip jar if we intended to participate; I’m not sure if that will work here, but we might as well start that way tonight and see if a better idea arises. I think it is good to have a central place to tag in, so to speak. Perhaps it establishes some kind of energetic connection, but I really don’t know that for a fact. I hope I haven’t forgotten anything important, I’ll be around to answer any questions between posting and start time. And now, since this has gone on for so long I leave you with this short quote to get us started:
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.--Rumi