We’re all just walking each other home – Ram Dass
When I was young, my best friend Gavin lived 8 houses up the street from me. When it was time to part ways, we’d often find ourselves caught up mid-conversation. “I’ll walk you home”, I’d say, so we could maximize our time together. Then after some time lingering in front of his house, still not quite finished, he’d say “Ok, now I’ll walk you home”. And back and forth, up and down Colin Avenue, the conversation only paused when one of our parents called us in, to be picked up again the next day.
I’m fortunate to have a wonderful community of long-standing friends (I’d call them “old friends”, but some people get touchy about that!), and a network of these ongoing conversations that have stretched out over decades. The distances we span are wider – cities, countries, continents between us instead of a few houses, conversations picked up after months or years of pause. But the feeling of walking through life together remains.
It was one of these old friends (haha – sorry Jane!) who connected me to the CEC community. Upon hearing how a devastating breakup led me to a therapist who encouraged me to try meditation, she reminded me that her brother Jeff had started running a meditation group out of his living room, and offered to take me the following Monday. Jeff’s house in Kensington Market was just down the street from my apartment, and I was desperate for any kind of liferaft of relief. So I went with her, tentatively, trepidatiously….
Practicing meditation with other people has a distinct flavour to it. Something in the accountability to other people makes me sit a little straighter, makes the time fly faster. For such a seemingly solitary pursuit, meditating in community makes me feel less alone. Hearing others guide and talk about practices has created endless inspiration and fodder for my own practice. Even in silence, being amongst people who are also doing the hard work of trying to know themselves better and greet the world with curiosity and compassion can be incredibly poignant.
I’ve now meditated with the CEC almost every Monday for the last 12 years, following it from Jeff’s living room to Octopus Garden and Mosaic Yoga studios in Toronto to the current online home in the Zoomisphere. It hasn’t always been easy. In the early days, I would hide in Jeff’s basement at the break time, which was supposed to last 5 minutes but always seemed to stretch into at least 20, too self-conscious and squirrelly to make small (or big) talk with other meditators. Say what you want about Zoom, but I would have loved a “camera off” option some of those nights!
Being a part of a community necessitates navigating other people’s idiosyncrasies, managing your own social weirdness, and getting used to compromise. This is all great grist for meditation practice, noticing where you end and others begin, discerning when you step forward to share and step back to listen, attuning to your own personal boundaries. When you can bring your mindful awareness to the interpersonal realm, it becomes so much less triggering and more fulfilling.
We need community more than ever in difficult times. When our despair grows too deep and overwhelms us, we can learn to lean on each other. We can intentionally create and share opportunities for joy, so we can more sustainably keep on doing the work that needs to be done in the world. When we need reminding, we can walk each other back home to the practices that are nourishing. In that spirit, this December CEC will explore and celebrate community through practicing together each Monday, partying together at our year-end Meditation Dance Party, and gathering together around a solstice fire at our Winter Fireside Meditation, greeting the longest night with equanimity and welcoming the light to slowly seep back into our lives.
My meditation practice has deepened my community relationships, and not just within my mindfulness communities like the CEC. With that chosen family of old friends, I’ve been able to be more vulnerable, honest and even earnest (earnestness was the number one enemy in our younger days, and would have previously resulted in merciless teasing, especially by me!). With my actual family, I’m able to show up and meet them with less historical baggage, more presence and grace. In my beloved Kensington Market, where I’ve lived for more than 20 years, walking around with my eyes and heart more open has resulted in new beautiful friendships and unexpected connections with residents, shopkeepers, street-involved folks, and, especially delightfully, the neighbourhood dogs!
The other night some Kensington neighbour-friends caught me as I was returning from a trip, my car laden with bags and enticed me out for dinner before I had a chance to unload to my third floor walkup. After a lovely spontaneous meal together, I tried to slip away and get back to unpacking. Knowing that I hate asking for help and despite my apologies and protestations, the friends banded together to walk all my heavy bags up the steep flights of stairs to my apartment. How’s that for community coming together to literally share the weight of one’s baggage and make an arduous task quick and relatively (I mean, those stairs are REALLY steep) painless?
Afterwards, of course, I walked them all back home.