The CEC Needs Help + 10-Minute Meditation

An appeal from the cutting edge of meditative jackassery I mean contemplative pedagogy

Click above for this week's guided meditation

Hey friends –

Some of you may already have seen this note, sent out by The Consciousness Explorers Club (the CEC) on Tuesday. The CEC is a non-profit meditation group that I began with my good friend James Maskalyk (aka Doctor: Heal Thyself) nearly 15 years ago. We’re at a pivotal moment and have started a fundraising campaign that has already got us 1/3 of the way towards our 15k goal - yay! We could use more support.

Here’s a bit of our story - with a guided meditation too, of course. I like telling our story in case it inspires people to start their own perfectly imperfect local meditation groups.

Poster designed by Kevin Lacroix

If you don’t know the CEC, here’s a short animation about our origin story. Since 2011, the CEC has been at the cutting edge of meditative jackassery contemplative pedagogy. Our idea from the start had been to create a different kind of practice community, more peer-to-peer, more adventurous, more ecumenical, with more jokes.

In those early years, each week we would design a different guided meditation, and then figure out a part two, where some therapist/scientist/mystic/ artist/weirdo from the larger community would come in and show our whole group how to, say, investigate a new psychotherapy technique, or swing dance with our psychological Shadows, or explore harmonic devotional singing. Or I would just make something up. I have a folder somewhere of dozens of fun invented practices; it was like ancient wisdom meets clown school. That was always our rhythm: first we’d meditate, then we’d creatively activate, always with celebration thrown in, from dance parties to social events to various other forms of community ridiculousness.

We had a good time. So did many others. We helped people, too. At this point, many thousands have attended our meditation events, in person and virtually. This was actually our secret recipe: give people such a good time they don’t realize they’re also learning profound tools of healing and insight and self-regulation. Disarm people with a mix of clarity and irreverence, so that even the most hard-nosed materialist is able to receive the benefits of meditation. We thought of practice as its own creative medium, one anyone can build in and customize for themselves, and ultimately share with others, should they choose. All of this is still our MO, by the way, and mine too.

To continue our story, the CEC added more guides, many of them mentored within our growing community. And more people kept coming into our Toronto orbit. They would explore, get what they needed, leave, come back, run away screaming, start their own cults, and come back again.

In the pandemic, we went online, and everything got more international. People from all over the world would join us. We kept our main Monday night offering going, we kept our annual in-person retreats (except at peak Covid), we kept sharing our Community Practice Activation Kit, which has allowed people to form their own quirky groups (over the years I’ve heard of dozens of CEC-inspired spinoffs, opening and closing, reforming, changing - meeting local communities where they’re at). We kept rolling out different guest teacher programs, from Sharon Salzberg to Lama Rod Owens, Shinzen Young to Sebene Selassie. And we kept expanding our large online library of free articles and free meditation audio (I think my most recent meditation is called “Absurd Fake QiGong,” a deeply serious practice that will transform you at every level, except the ones that matter).

The thing is, throughout this continuing evolution, the CEC has always been neurotic about money. We’ve always had a scarcity mindset. In those early days, I would do a lot and pay myself nothing. I remember feeling embarrassed the first time I asked attendees for a five-dollar donation. We had a dynamic of not valuing what we offered, and not asking for what we needed.

Things are changing. As part of a movement towards genuine sustainability, we are applying for our first grant. We have some great new consultants helping us. We’ve found a place to return to hosting in-person community meditations in Toronto. And we’re doing this fundraising campaign. Our goal is to raise 15K to help pay our fabulous Executive Director Erin Oke a part-time wage. Erin has kept the CEC afloat since 2018, and all through the pandemic. The money will also go towards covering the hard costs of renting spaces and paying for software and web fees.

Consider donating below to support the CEC, so we can keep doing what we do for the next 15 years. Or come to next Monday’s meditation and maybe leave a small donation then, so you can see what we’re all about!

Shifting gears … this week’s Homebase meditation is simple and soothing and has nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. I recorded it sitting by the ocean. There’s a long and a short version.

Last thing. You may notice there’s a slightly different format to this week’s post. One, from now on we’re going to always include the length of the meditation in every post, so you can go right to that if you want. And two, Substack changed their mobile interface, so it now defaults to playing audio first. As a result, people are not seeing the text. The audio meditations are obviously essential to what we do, and the Friday mini-essays are important too. So we’re going to try embedding audio in Friday’s post from now on, and see how that goes. Let us know if that works for you or not, we really have no idea. All these notes about Substack! Always a work in progress working with any social media app, even one as ostensibly non-creepy as Substack.

Thank you for your attention, and your support.

Jeff

Founder and former President (yes, I was once presidential) of the Consciousness Explorers Club

A few quick notes—

• The next Do Nothing Project happens this Sunday, November 16 – at 8pm EDT, on Youtube. Link here. Soon it will move to Substack Live, so be ready for that!

• New to Home Base? We have over 50 guided meditations in our library. Check out the most popular ones here.

THIS WEEK ON THE MIND BOD ADVENTURE POD

This week we’re hanging with our friend Chela Davison — facilitator, sacred mischief maker, former master coach, and writer of the Substack, Wisdotainment. This conversation is so good! It’s all about how to find your calling - ie, a purposeful life that actually feeds you instead of sucking you dry. What might that look like in today’s confusing world? That’s what we practice. If you know someone rethinking their entire existence - or just being a human being somewhere - consider passing this episode along! 💫