ACRL-VWIG & ALA Virtual Communities in Libraries Program

February 19, 2017  CVL Auditorium in Second Life 12:00pm SLT

 Mindfulness Meditation Using Basic Second Life

presented by:

 Ewan Bonham and Starlight

For the February 2017 ACRL-VWIG Program, Ewan Bonham and Second Life artist, Starlight met with a group of librarians and educators to provide both an introduction to Mindful Meditation and more specifically, to demonstrate how basic Second Life building skills can be used to enhance and expand the meditation experience for practitioners. At the end of this presentation, he led a tour and demo of the meditative space used by Transformative Action group at the Hikari sim in Second Life.

Ewan first gave a brief overview of Mindful Meditation by reviewing what it is and explaining some of its' basic techniques and practices. Simply said, the goal of mindful meditation is to put oneself in a calm space in which distracting thoughts and feelings are observed nonjudgementally in order to create detachment from them and thus gain insight and awareness of ones' self.

After this overview, he went over how basic Second Life  building skills can be used to make and greatly enhance ones' own personal meditation space.

What followed was a series of demonstrations of various aspects of Second Life building skills that can be used to create and greatly enhance a personal meditation space.  He pointed out that one of the great things about Second Life is that one is able to create a meditative space with a single mouse click.  Either by creating a space and saving it in one's inventory or by teleporting to one of the many  sims that already exist in Second Life.  Briefly, he went over the ways basic Second Life building skills  can be used to enhance and create a personal meditative space. 

With some basic Second Life building tools, one can create an immersive, meditation environment.

Sunrise or sunset mood?

The ability to manipulate one's surroundings and the quality of light was the first technique reviewed.  Second Life gives one the ability to adjust the quality of light in the environment to suit your particular mood or frame of mind.  It can be bright or it could be darker and moodier.

Setting to dusk can help create a quieter mood.

Manipulating the light in Second Life is one of the most powerful tools for directing meditation.

Another powerful tool in the Second Life builders kit is the ability to use textures and colors to create and enhance concentration and the sense of immersion.  This was demonstrated by a series of kinetic art works/color sculptures and settings created bySecond Life kinetic artist, Starlight. 

Kinetic sculpture artist, Starlight who provided the visual works for this demonstration.

In Second Life one is able to create and surround oneself by moving, changing colors and objects that help enhance your meditative state.  These work either by immersing you in a space or by providing an object to focus and reflect on.

These moving objects or sculptures allow the practitioner to concentrate on the space/moment they are in and so help create and promote a stronger meditative state.

Equally powerful is the ability to use visual and verbal affirmations and music and sounds.  All of these are easily manipulated in Second Life with basic building skills.
 

At the end of his presentation, Ewan told us about an in-world group that meets regularly and offers practical training on how to effectively meditate using the techniques of mindfulness focusing.  This group meets each Sunday at 3pm SLT within Second Life.

 Ewan and Starlight concluded their presentation by taking the group on a tour of the meditation space in Second Life at the Hikari sim.

The Hikari sim is set up to be a totally immersive meditative environment complete with various meditation spaces, music and other interactive spaces.

A more traditional group mediation space.

This space makes use of all the tools in the Second Life builders kit, textures, light, music, sounds and nature scenes to help create a truly immersive and personal meditative space. (photo courtesy of Valibrarian Gregg)

In addition to the group spaces, there are individual spaces for meditation.

All in all this was a powerful demonstration of how Second Life can be used to do things not traditionally considered a part of virtual worlds.