firecat

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/awordtothewitch/2015/01/26/witchcraft-and-the-monkeysphere/

Almost all of my spiritual practices that involved other people have taken place in small groups. This article suggests that small groups work better than large ones because of the way human social brains are wired.

Reading it, I suddenly realized part of the reason I'm reluctant to get more involved in my local sangha (http://insightmeditationcenter.org) is because I have no experience of doing spiritual stuff in the context of more than 4–8 people. (I went to a big church with my parents when I was growing up, but that wasn't at all spiritual for me.) I've gone to the sangha to sit but I don't take part in planning or running things. Sitting with others is different from sitting alone, which is also true for me in other spiritual activities—some kind of group energy is generated. But my limited attempts to socialize with people at the sangha haven't brought a strong feeling of connection.

I couldn't necessarily say this is all due to human brain limits on the number of people we can know well, though, because I've always built or joined as a founding member covens and other spiritual groups instead of joining an already established one, and I think that makes a difference to me, along with the number of participants.

Also my tendency to other myself (thinking "I'm too weird for these people," in the absence of any corroborating data) is active at the sangha because I don't know the people from other contexts. There was an LGBQT* retreat last weekend and I wanted to go, but I couldn't drag myself out of bed early enough (why do Buddhists always start things so effing early?).

Crossposts: http://firecat.livejournal.com/853457.html

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From:

johnpalmer

Hm. I'm curious: by "too weird for these people" do you mean "too weird to be able to get along with..." or "too weird to be *normal* alongside..."?

I have had some (emphasis on some) success in allowing myself to be "too weird to be 'one of the gang'," and that sometimes keeps me from the fallacy of thinking I'm "too weird to be able to get along with...".

That short circuits the argument of my brain. If I tried to say "I'm not too weird!" that would be flying in the face of reality, sometimes. But if I say "too weird, *but* not in a bad/harmful way" - that sometimes lets me go out among them.

From:

firecat

I mean "Too weird to be able to get along with..."

The way I stop it is to push past long enough to make a few connections, but so far I haven't devoted any energy to that, in this context.

From:

tylik

How big is the local Sangha?

As I write this, I'm sitting out formal sitting due to some degree of GI disturbance. We tend to have anywhere from four to fourteen people here on a regular basis - there are probably eight people downstairs right now.

I guess it's an open question whether I'm too weird for folks. I'm far from the only person with a pagan background, which I thought would have been one of the weirder categories. My background is pretty varied, and my outspoken hacker and social justice politics certainly stand out (I find it darkly amusing that some of my social justice politics, even delicately phrased, make a couple of people quietly uncomfortable, but, um, yeah, older white middle class people in Cleveland)... but in terms of any one thing, I'm well within the range, if rather concentrated when taken as a whole.

From:

firecat

I'm guessing several hundred people go there at least sometimes. There are usually around 50 people at the Monday night sittings, but sometimes more.

From:

thnidu

ISTR reading, or hearing from group leaders, that the ideal size for a group is somewhere around 7±. Or maybe it was 7–13, but I remember that 7 was in there. (Without refs this is totally hearsay.)

From:

firecat

7 sounds manageable, yeah

From:

silveradept

Early is apparently a very Buddhist thing. Maybe clarity of thinking or meditation comes from early mornings?

As for the other part, sitting in a group was interesting, because it's all these people doing individual things in a group, unlike the other church services that are more oriented towards group ritual (not that those rituals did much for me). Maybe I'd there was a dharma talk along with the sitting, it could provide the group context I'd be looking for. It might also be a way of easing into larger group exercises, and confirming or dispelling the idea of being too weird for the group, maybe.

A small and intimate group does sounds like a good idea for much of ritual work, though.

From:

firecat

Maybe clarity of thinking or meditation comes from early mornings?

So I've been told, and maybe if I went and lived in a buddhist monastery for a few years I would get there, but it definitely doesn't work that way for me now.

I have done group sitting / listening to dharma talks at the sangha. Usually it's 90 minutes in a large group of 50+ but I've also done it in day-long retreat format with say 20 people.

[I just figured something out, thanks! I proceed to blat about it at great length.]

Thing is, even in the day-long retreats, a lot of people come and go without talking to each other, because the retreats are done in silence. That's part of what makes it possible for me to participate in the first place, and also makes it harder for me to talk to people after the retreat is over. In other spiritual groups I've participated in, sitting in a circle and talking about ourselves is usually part of it, and that facilitates getting to know people. So the fact that that's not happening is not just me othering myself but the format and purpose of the group being very different from my other spiritual groups.

From:

silveradept

That makes sense. Buddhism seems to be very good at getting people to do individual things in groups, with all the oxymoron such a thing can muster. It's not really built for group ritual all that much.