The Living Room was founded in October 2008 to address the spiritual crises facing Ireland today. It is a silent space offering refuge and healing to the spiritually disconnected. The collapse in turn of religious, political and financial authority has led to increasing social fragmentation and in many cases personal alienation. This has resulted in a reported marked increase in suicide, addiction, depression, trafficking, marital breakdown, and crime.The Living Room sees many of these social aliments as resulting from chronic spiritual disconnection.
The Living Room prioritises and is a return to the spiritual and social wealth that has been jettisoned during the capital wealth accumulation of the Celtic Tiger years. The healing focus on love and compassion as a spiritual response enables these upheavals to be seen as an opportunity for transformation. The LR looks at our national crisis from the inside out.
The ability to bear radical uncertainty is the discipline of all spiritual traditions. It is our relation to many spiritual teachings which allow The Living Room to offer an original, innovative and radical response to the different levels of change we are experiencing as a nation. The silent arts of meditation, contemplation, energy healing, in tandem with the healing arts of counseling, education, conversation and general consciousness-raising, allows the understanding of well-being extend from the deeper inner world of the individual to a renewed understanding of collective moral and ethical behaviour. The Living Room is an original project designed for personal empowerment leading to civic responsibility. Our project sees the renewal of the human being as the most efficient way to heal the ruptures of our social system. The ability to negotiate silence in company of the attendant supports is classically known as being in the homeland of the strong.
The Living Room Programmes link individual spirituality with civic responsibility.
Two examples of this are:
“Connect” and “Fridays @ The Living Room”
The course “Connect” addresses the disconnection and brokenness in our society. When reconnection is established in the heart of the individual, heart and truth is restored to society. The Living Room’s core values are respect, dignity and integrity of the individual. Our society has suffered fear, conformity, and abuse, which have crushed the natural creative life force of the individual. Today we witness the crumbling of these structures. It is our endeavour to be available to those individuals who seek our support on their return journey to the Self, the reward being to live freely with confidence and trust in oneself, and to hold those in authority accountable.
Friday @ The Living Room is a forum of contemplative conversation. The evening take place on a fortnightly basis and offer an initial meditation and then a conversation.
The invited speakers to date have included Prof. Ivor Browne, David Korowicz, Julie Williams, Tom Penderville, Fi Connors, Dr. Donn Brennan to name the most recent.
This forum allows silence to create a deeper level of conversation. The titles of the first series has been “Taking Ownership, exploring a radical sense of responsibility” and this seasons exploration is “What then is love?”. The forum explores the spiritual dimension of the dilemmas facing our country and relies on ‘ the wisdom of the group’ to suggest some of the solutions. This has been an exciting outreach programme which invites people from all walks of life and with a myriad of experiences. As facilitator I ensure that each contribution is heard with respect.
The Living Room is a “money-free zone.”
Everyone is invited to daily lunch-time meditations.
Anyone who wishes can receive one to one heart-cleaning meditations or join group work for personal transformation and growth.
Individual growth can then be supported by the emerging communities working around women’s issues, men’s issues, well-being programmes and educational courses.
The Living Room has a focus on justice issues, such as sex trafficking. Conversations based on taking ownership, exploring the power and discipline of love allows a forum to offer creative problem-solving, and development of life-affirming and life-giving understanding of arts and culture.
By seeing the trajectory of spirituality within a context of personal and community development, The Living Room offers a template of meditation, transformation and conversation which can be repeated in most cities, towns and villages throughout Ireland and indeed further.
The Living Room is approaching the dynamics of societal change as the potential for transformation. Connecting with the inner values of a happy, hopeful, responsible and productive individual, we see how such values can extend to a happy, hopeful, responsible and productive society. By using a framework of working from the inside out, by attending to the disciplines and demands of a compassionate reverence towards self and others, by radicalizing a sense of connection, and hence respect for our environment, community and nation, we are honing and reshaping the building blocks of our society in collaboration with the ancient wisdom of the spiritual traditions. It is this scope of influence which offers a very different, very relevant, very enterprising, very original, very replicable, very impacting model of secular spirituality attending to community and social development and involvement.
The Living Room offers
a dedicated silence space open to all
a contemplative attitude to all the spiritual traditions
holds common prayer mornings for all those wishing to pray together
holds lunchtime meditations open to all on a come and go basis
holds Chi gung, Taichi, yoga classes for all as part of movement and meditation focus
holds individual and group work around connection
spiritual conversation around the most pertinent and pressing issues we face nationally and internationally,
contemplates justice issues
works in a gender specific way by holding a women and men’s forum for change
teaches sacred texts.
The Living Room is housed by the Teresian Carmelite Community, Clarendon St., Dublin. The Carmelite Community are an order of contemplative men and women whose ancient teaching and wisdom center around a hermetical silence.