Bigger Meditation classes are better!!

Some people may think that a smaller meditation class may be better, perhaps thinking that you would get more individual attention, This might be true at school but in learning and practicing meditation, the opposite is true. Here's something I wrote about this for my monthly meditation class. (After you have done a 7 week meditation class to learn the 'energy running' techniques you can join this monthly practice group on the 4th Wednesday of each month)
The last 2 months I have broken my rule about having at least 8 attendees to put on the class. I have this rule partly because I need to make the class financially viable. I don't want to pay for the room and then receive nothing for teaching. But the 4 people who have wanted to come are all obviously enthusiastic so I decided to have the class and use this as an opportunity to do a 'test' of my other reason for having this 'rule'. The other reason is that when you have a small number of people doing the energy running meditation they get affected by all the people around them, which can, but does not always, limit how much their energy can change. When you expand your sensitivity and awareness by meditating in this way, you naturally tune into everything happening all around you. And you start to become aware of. or 'read' and respond to the energy of others around you. So if the person across from you is starting to bring some painful experience to the surface as their energy running loosens it up, perhaps without even being aware they are doing that, then you may sense this and it may create a response in you, especially if you have a matching 'picture'. This may not be something you are ready to work on and it may cause you to send some of your energy over to the person across from you to try and stop them from doing whatever they are doing. In other words you resist and compete with them, which then limits what can happen to you. You are being controlled by someone else.

There is nothing mysterious about this, in fact it happens most of the time in our daily lives. We are reactive rather than aware and responsive. The positive side of this is that it when this matching picture situation arises, you have the chance to notice if you are resisting or competing and step out of it and let whatever has 'reacted' or been stimulated in you go in a rose. So really the people who upset you the most are the ones who are giving you the greatest opportunity to work on the things in you that are most challenging! Easy to write but difficult to realise in life.

When you do notice a matching picture it is often amusing- 'oh no, I am actually like that', and you have moved on. So that is the potential difficulty in a small class. In a larger class there is too much going on and this encourages you to get on with it and stay in your own space and work on your stuff. The resistance/competition dynamic is always an issue in classes whatever their size but seems to be more so with small classes. Luckily the attendees from the last 2 months were keen to stay in their own spaces so it was not an issue. I know a number of you are still enthusiastic about coming (you have told me so in your emails) and for various reasons you have not been able to make it over this summer period. I hope more of you can come over the next few months as it is always a positive and fun experience and the more people the more amusement. We will work more on some of these issues of 'reading' other people (which we all do all the time) and the equally important issue of matching pictures and how to get rid of them. Working on this can produce real change in your relationships.