Meditation

 

Next Heart of Stillness session:  Friday, March 29 is cancelled!

On Zoom, at 5pm UK/10am PST/11am MST/12pm CST/1pm EST/18.00 Berlin/20.00 Moscow

This is a group for Sufi practice – breathed, spoken, chanted, guided meditations, and deeper meditation.

You are welcome to take part in any meeting. Please enquire HERE

Meeting duration: 45-60 min

There are many “uses” of meditation. As about everybody knows nowadays, it is a good way to relax the mind, and to unwind after a busy day. People also do it to “gather themselves together” before work, and to help with processing difficult emotions. In particular, it seems to help with anxiety – about oneself, and about the world too. 

What arises in your mind when you receive a call to meditate? Is it joyous anticipation, curiosity, boredom, dread? Do you immediately know how you will be doing it?

Or do you hate it completely, finding all this sitting in the silence unsettling and totally unnecessary, a waste of time even, especially when there are so many other ways that you can go to “raise the energy,” including other spiritual means of the likes of chanting, or singing, or even dancing?

Many of us do have some experience of meditation. If you, once having remembered yours – right now – don’t immediately get at least a hint of becoming more still and even serene inside, then it is likely that whatever you did didn’t work for you.

For meditation, while all the above mentioned uses of it are true, is what brings us in direct contact with Eternity, with the Source. With Oneness. 

It takes time to learn to be quiet, really quiet – with no thoughts, no ripples of emotion. It can be a bit tricky too, as we tend to fight our mind, even though that is a battle we can only lose.

So be kind to yourself and don’t be discouraged if it seems that you are not succeeding. Keep going, keep searching. The reward is, and that is not at all an exaggeration, the whole world. A different world to the one you got used to seeing, and smelling, and touching.

Try different ways, until it “clicks” for you. Here, we mostly do Sufi meditations, with the breath, and visualisations, and sometimes sacred phrases. We do not try to leave our bodies when we meditate. If anything, we go deeper in. If this sounds unusual or paradoxical for you, then definitely try it – it might bring a new opening.

These meetings are open to all Sufi mureeds, as well as to all those curious about spirituality in general. The phrases we use are very often in Arabic, however there is no requirement in regard to the participants’ faith or beliefs. Everyone is welcome, as long as you are being respectful of others who might be different from you in any, or even in most ways.

*Image: A Gathering of Holy Men of Different Faiths. Learn about images used on site here