Home | Community Meditation

What We're Up To

All online sessions include a 20-minute silent meditation. New to meditation? Instruction is available.
🧘

Monday, Apr 22 – Living Our Love

Please join Brenda, Gordon, Jim, and Sharon for 20 minutes of silent meditation followed by our continuing discussion of Sharon Salzberg's book Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. This week, we'll continue our discussion of karma as we wrap up the final chapter, "Living Our Love". All are welcome, no need to have the book.

Having some intuitive sense of karma–an understanding that our happiness and unhappiness depend on our actions, and that therefore we are ultimately responsible for our fate–shifts our life to a place of empowerment.
— Sharon Salzberg

Tuesday, Apr 23 – The Colorings of Consciousness

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

Join Debbie after meditation to delve further into Jack Kornfield's book, The Wise Heart. This week, we'll read and discuss "The Colorings of Consciousness". How can getting a better handle on our states of mind lead us to more peace? Everyone is welcome and there's no need to be familiar with the book.

More than anything else, the way we experience life is created by the particular states of mind with which we meet it.
― Jack Kornfield

Wednesday, Apr 24 – Honeycombs and Thinking Strings

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

Join Adam, Lauren, Sandi, and Jessica after meditation to read and discuss "Honeycombs and Thinking Strings", a section from Mark Nepo's book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen. This week's reading explores themes of interdependence and receptivity. Where does "life-force" vitality come from? Where do ideas come from? There's no need to be familiar with the book, and everyone is welcome.

Within this story, the immediate remedy for a waning life-force resides in the trust that each part of life affects all the others and that each part has a role to play in keeping the other parts well and functioning.
― Mark Nepo

Thursday, Apr 25 – Taking in the Good

Click here to visit our Meetup
IN-PERSON – OWEN SOUND

Join Ken on Thursday for sitting and walking meditation, and then to read and discuss a chapter from Rick Hansen's book, Just One Thing. Every day, something good happens to us but we miss out on it because of a natural negativity bias. How might we deepen our appreciation for the tiny wins of an average day?

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
— Marcus Aurelius

Friday, Apr 26 – Practicing Truthfulness: Exercises in Mindful Living

Click here to join on Zoom @ 7 PM ET

Join Debbie to meditate, and then read and discuss an article by Lynn Rossy. What's going on when we exaggerate, tell a partial truth, or even lie? What is skillful and what is dishonest?

Truthfulness has the obvious 'don't lie' interpretation, but there are many layers of nuance to consider.
― Lynn Rossy

Sunday, Apr 28 – 7 Steps to Clearing and Grounding

Click here to join on Zoom @ 10:15 AM ET

This week, after meditation, Debbie invites us to explore Jon Bernie's seven-step protocol for "Clearing, Grounding, Integrating, and Expanding". Tune in on Sunday to explore these steps for moving into being present with what is.

...what I've observed over time is that although many people have spiritual openings or expansions, they often fail to integrate and then fully embody those experiences. [These are] a series of exercises I've found to be useful in helping people stabilize as they deepen in presence and insight.
— Jon Bernie

Taking in the Good

I was setting up a new Web page for a client last week when a reviewer pointed out an issue with one of the images. My mind immediately tightened. How did I not notice that? Fixing the image was trivial, but the thought of not noticing it kept cropping up. Was I working too quickly? Do I need a new prescription for my glasses? How did I not notice that?!

I'm not alone in getting hung up on a relatively minor incident. I say this with confidence because we humans evolved to have a negativity bias, meaning we react more strongly to what's bad (or potentially bad) than to what is good. Psychologist and author Dr. Rick Hanson puts it this way:

We're good at taking in the bad, and bad at taking in the good.

There are solid evolutionary reasons for this. Flash back a million years or so, and our central task was to a) find food, and b) not be food! Simply surviving was a challenge. Once bitten, twice shy. Better safe than sorry. Today, few of us live in a world where a tiger might be hiding behind every shrub, but that bias toward the negative has been grooved into our brains over millennia.

Thanks to neuroplasticity 🧠 we can do something about this, however. Hanson has a practice called "taking in the good", and it involves three simple steps:

Be alert to positive occurrences, no matter how trivial.
When you notice something positive, instead of immediately moving on, stay with it for 10 seconds or more.
As you stay with the experience, check in with your body. What sensations do you notice?

Applying this practice will, over time, train your brain to appreciate when good things happen, balancing out the negativity bias and putting you on a more even keel.

And yes, I will be booking an appointment with my optometrist 🤓

Photo by Tim Mossholder.

🙏

Ken & the Community Meditation Team

Welcome to Community Meditation