With Mutual Awakening, rather than “leaving the world” for an abbey or monastery as the mystics of old did, we enter the “church” of the space between us from within our daily lives. This allows us to enact awakening mutually as we come together in our practice. No longer are contemplation and action separate, but they are intimately woven together in the very flow of our practice, and ultimately of our lives, together.
Beyond Contemplation
After his transformative experience at the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville (now Muhammad Ali Boulevard), Thomas Merton wrote “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness. . . .”
This experience of universal love, of recognizing one’s self in the other, is directly facilitated in the Mutual Awakening Practice. Like Merton, we discover our interconnectedness with one another, and something larger, but we do it together.