It has been a great privilege, while I have been holding the role of Meditatio Country Coordinator for the UK, to attend the meetings of the Meditatio Council and hear the ideas, insights and details of the initiatives that the International Coordinators are working on. The list of Meditatio areas shows how varied and wide the exploration of the potential that a meditation practice can be across a huge range of human activities and challenging problems. The key areas covered at the moment are: Addiction and Recovery, Health and Medicine, Mental Health, Business and Leadership, Meditation with Children (including those with Special Needs), Interfaith, Social Justice, Science and Earth, Climate and Ecology.
I really do urge you to visit the main WCCM website if you have not already done so, and search for Meditatio Outreach (//wccm.org/meditatio/outreach). You will be richly rewarded. It is full of fascinating, insightful and encouraging materials. It will extend and enhance how you relate to your own personal journey of meditation. If your main experience to date has been with your own local group, it will be a glimpse into the range of ways that people in many different parts of the world are exploring the value and amazing gifts of meditation, and the way that these can be shared with people who might otherwise never have the chance of benefitting from them.
I do encourage you to make these visits to the Outreach pages a regular part of your journey as a meditator. You may not wish to be directly involved yourself in outreach, but it will be a mind and heart opening experience, and keep you connected to what is taking place in a very exciting field of exploration.
Here in the UK we are very blessed to have two of the people involved in taking on an international role as well as being a Special Interest Coordinator in the UK. Terry Doyle, who works with ‘People on the Margins’ and those with problems of ‘Addiction’. Terry for example, recently held a project which brought together meditation, music and performing arts to celebrate in his area the lives of asylum seekers in the past, who incidentally did so much to help bring prosperity to their new home. Working in combination with the arts is proving to be a very exciting new way of reaching out to people. Mary Devane is opening ways to bring meditation to prisoners and ex-offenders who can benefit so much from a contemplative practice. Mary is working on tailor made online ways of doing this, which she hopes will enable many more people to be reached.
My role has involved me in trying to understand more of what is taking place in the Outreach areas of the WCCM, and for me personally, it has been very exhilarating just to begin to grasp the sheer scale and potential of what is beginning to evolve from the research and work of Meditatio.
But this brings me back to asking meditators in the UK to remember the key task of “planting small seeds”. In order for this to keep taking place, could I ask you to check the page in the UK Newsletter, where our Special Interest Coordinators are listed and their contact details provided. All that you need is to bear in mind that without changing anything in your current day to day life, you can make a decision to “plant small seeds”. Just keep alert to the possibility that you may already know, or come across, teachers, volunteers doing nature preservation, people helping asylum seekers coming to your area, people assisting at foodbanks etc. These are the very people that we need to reach and inspire. These are people already involved and committed in trying to bring about positive change, but who may never have considered the role of meditation in their field of interest. An open, sensitively timed inquiry as to whether they ever meditate with the people they are working with, can open up all kinds of conversations. To take any spark of response further, it can be very helpful to carry some of the WCCM UK simple pocket sized introductory cards with you, plus if you are talking about a possible Meditatio concern, the contacts for our various SICs. The cards can be provided by your group leaders, or you can get a pack from the London Office. If you have looked ahead at the Outreach pages on the web you may well be able to say something that could deepen their interest further, but suggesting the contact details of the relevant person in the UK can immediately give them access to anything that they might be interested to know.
Doing a great job of Outreach doesn’t have to involve lots of pressure and commitment that you may not be in a position to give. But it does take being alert to opportunities ‘on the wing’, to spread the gift. Being just that bit prepared can make all the difference to helping the person you are talking to take the next step. It would be such a blessing if we could take up this simple practice, and we will never know how many people we may have helped by doing so.
Finally, don’t forget to keep a lookout for forthcoming ‘Forums’ that the Earth Crisis Group will be announcing shortly. Any of the previous ones can be accessed on the Meditatio pages of the website.
Diana Ohlson
dohlson24@gmail.com