Opinion by Peter Demling

On World Meditation Day this Sunday December 21st, people from across the globe will unite online in a 20-minute guided meditation for world peace (register here, join the livestream here). 

There are many well-established personal benefits of meditation, including stress reduction, improved sleep quality, cardiovascular health, mental clarity, and emotional balance.

But meditating can also help others, and when many people meditate together from the heart with positive intention for change, it can have a profound impact.

The promise that introspective group action can change the world is an elusive topic for modern science to evaluate. What we feel inside can’t easily be quantified objectively, and we can’t directly track how individual thoughts and feelings affect the complex world outside.

So we’re left with our own experience to guide us. We aspire to make the world a better place, but we also see how tiny a drop we are in the vast ocean of humanity so deeply troubled by conflict, pain, and suffering. What can one person do?

Meditating together offers an opportunity to pause for a few minutes, turn inward, and connect with our feelings of kindness and compassion. Sitting quietly and holding a sincere intent for peace and harmony, we participate in something far greater than ourselves.

This is not passive hoping – it is active participation in the evolution of human consciousness. It is a recognition that we are not isolated individuals, but interconnected beings whose wellbeing is intimately tied to one another.

With so much in our lives that divides us, meditating together provides a much needed counterbalance. It is not bound by any one religion, nation, culture, or belief. It is a universal act of remembering the feelings of love and connection that reside within each of us.

This Sunday December 21st – and every World Meditation Day to come – is an open invitation to gather in a place where all hearts can meet and share this unifying experience. Let’s see what we can create together.

Peter Demling lives in Amherst and practices at the Heartfulness Meditation Center on Rte 116 in Sunderland.