Having arrived in Fairfield last night, Ali and Kristian wake up to find that Janet Attwood's out at the domes meditating with a couple thousand other people. Fairfield is the city that is the center of the transcendental meditation (TM) community in America. There is a university, the Maharishi University of Management, that is the center of the community. In the middle of the campus, there are these two massive domes, one for men and one for women, that has capacity for over a thousand meditators each. When people live in Fairfield who are meditators, they usually wake up and go meditate in these domes for an hour and a half 730 - 900, and after work from 500 - 630. With so many meditators in such a small town, the energy of the city is quite unique.
Kristian is more excited about waking up today than he's been in a long, long time. Today is the day, Ali and Kristian get to talk to kids at the Maharishi School of the Age of Enlightenment. A typical day involves the kids arriving at school, and before the academic school day begins, they do yoga, breathing exercises and meditate. The classrooms are organized to create maximum coherence, and the curriculum is created to make learning as enjoyable and stress-free as possible. At the end of the day, the kids do yoga, breathing exercises and meditation again.
The presentation runs through really well. These kids have a lot of the same passions as all the other kids across the US. Such things as: Spending time with family, playing sports, and performing (singing or dancing). What made the presentation unique was that we presented to a group of grade 6, 11 year olds, and they had really long attention with very little distractions coming from among them.
After the presentation, Janet, Kristian and Ali headed over to the mayor's office. Ed Malloy, the first Mayor of the city of Fairfield who is a meditator. They city of Fairfield has a long history, even before the TM community came along in the mid 1970's. Over the last 4 years since he's been the mayor, he's managed to build a massive Auditorium/Event center and created other things for the community.
Today, Ed gave a proclamation that tomorrow would be Unleash Americas Passion day in Fairfield, and that all five of us: Ali, Kristian, Shah, Christy and Nicole would be honorary citizens for the day! After all the photo and pictures, Ali, Janet, and Kristian headed back to her house to get ready for The Passion Test - Live Your Destiny! this upcoming weekend that Janet is holding out of her home!
