Come Together

A spiritual community dissolves the sense of separateness that causes so much of our suffering. With a few friends, create one of your own.

By Sally Kempton

Many of us know this from having done group meditation or yoga practice. If even a few people in the room can meditate deeply, their presence lends strength to the others. Practicing asana with someone who can do deep backbends always improves my own arch—even if the other person isn't giving instructions.

The same principle also holds true in a group that forms to discuss teachings. I'm presently leading a group of about 30 people in a nine-month course that involves several retreats and ongoing study and practice. Between retreats, members of the group meet in subgroups of three or four, either in person or by teleconference. They discuss the text we're studying; they talk about their practice and how it's affecting their lives. In several of these groups, the members have become such clear mirrors to one another's processes that just being with the group helps the members see where they're stuck in old assumptions or mental fabrications.

One woman shared that on the night her group discussed a Tantric teaching about the mind, the group created such an accurate mirror of her that she was able to see her tendencies to make negative assumptions about her son's behavior or to create her own anxieties by projecting worst-case outcomes on various situations facing her family. Since then, she says, she's been able to notice the tendency when it crops up, and she uses the wisdom of the teaching to shift out of it. She hadn't asked for advice or discussed her problem. The insight simply arose through the clarity of the group process itself.

Truth in Numbers

As is the case with meditation and asana, the more you practice satsang, the more likely you are to experience its power, and you don't have to join an existing community in order to do this. Some of the most powerful satsangs are the ones we create informally.

An informal satsang group should be small—five to seven is a good number, and you can easily form one with two, three, or even just one other person. All it takes is (1) a decision to have a spiritual dialogue, (2) some sublime and true words to spark your insight, and (3) a shared agreement on the ground rules.

Basic ground rules might be to allow no gossip, no discussion of news or sports, no replay of arguments with lovers, no blow-by-blow dissections of personal problems. This doesn't mean that members shouldn't discuss personal issues with the group, only that they do so in the context of applying spiritual insight to a life situation. However, satsang is different from therapy. In satsang, the commitment is to awaken, uplift, and enlighten yourselves and to unmask illusions. In short, the commitment is to know truth.

Start by creating a shared intention to be together in the service of spirit, for the sake of experiencing the deepest possible level of truth for a given period of time. The time commitment is important if you want your group to evolve. It's helpful, at your first meeting, to take time to discuss your shared intention, write it out, and periodically revisit it.

Page 1 2 3 4

See All Philosophy Articles »