Thanks for your posts, guys!
After reading them, one thing first and foremost comes to my mind. It is what my teacher told me,
"You should never expect to have complete silence in your surroundings and atmosphere. When you try to meditate, you have to learn to focus by practicing the Kriya techniques with your best love and devotion. Devotion is the most important part. It is the key to the universe. Once you've managed to do that - and this is not easy - you can go into the deepest meditation anywhere, in busy places or even on Times Square." - I paraphrase his words here as I remember them from many years ago.
Peace and Love to you guys.
✌️
It is all relative. What I mean by that, is that it is more important to do the practice then to abjure because the atmosphere and surroundings do not suit our temperament.
Yet I went to many years of long meditations at the SRF temples and we were asked to quietly leave if for instance we started coughing during meditation. There was definitely an aura of joy that lifted our spirits when we could tune in to the spiritual uplifting influence of combined efforts to quiet the mind and senses from all distracting sensory experiences. Silence is truly golden when it is experienced both externally and internally by the group vibrations and the saying holds true that; “Where two or more are gathered in my name;‘there I shall be also”.
Sometimes it takes just that extra absorption of body and mind to rise above and experience the depth of others in our midst.
~ Mathew 18-20