Hello, I’m Neil McKinlay
I have always suspected meditation brings something important into the world. Whether moved by the beauty of an unexpected moment or the challenges of this time we share, a wordless knowing has always affirmed the relevance of practice to the situation at hand. Only recently, however, have I really felt able to articulate this.
My Story
I first learned to meditate as a teenager. A swim coach offered instruction to a small group of us while away at a competition. Later that night, I lay awake tingling – alive with an indescribable sense some fundamental possibility, potential, or promise had awakened.
This feeling stayed with me as I deepened my engagement with meditation in more formal ways. For three decades, I trained within two Buddhist communities, both of which offered structured curricula and long retreats. Throughout this time, there was a near-unwavering belief that everything we were doing—every practice, every course, every retreat—was somehow of benefit.
This resonance continued as my own coaching career ended and I started to teach meditation myself. For over fifteen years, I have now had the privilege of leading both short- and long-term events, online and in person, for diverse groups in the Pacific Northwest and around the world. Through it all, the impression has remained: this offers something valuable.
In early 2020, my involvement with one of the communities noted above ended on difficult terms. Though I felt relief at leaving that group, my sense of loss and betrayal were profound. Facing the challenging uncertainty of this, I turned to what I knew: meditation. I practiced alone, of course. More often than not, however, I meditated with others. As I did this, a long-elusive understanding began to crystallize.
Practiced in community, meditation helps us remember. The settling we surrender to and our deepening relatedness with others help us remember the radiant brilliance that lies within all.
This was when the Online Gatherings began to convene. Three times a week, we came together to practice and discuss meditation. Immersed in this routine, I slowly started to grasp what the meditative tradition had long affirmed: we each have an innate brilliance burning within. Terms like stable and peaceful, wise and tender—such qualities are part of who we are at our very core.
While I had long known meditation can help us touch this brilliance, the Gatherings – and the classes that resumed as Covid-era lockdowns concluded – deepened my understanding. I realized that responsiveness, clarity, warmth, and all the other inner attributes so many of us long for are, curiously, most powerfully experienced in community.
In the shared space of the Online Gatherings and in-person classes—through our ongoing exchanges, insights, and contemplations—I clearly saw what I had only glimpsed in solitary practice. I witnessed, again and again, how human brilliance not only exists, but actually reveals itself most potently through connection. And the more I experienced this, the more I became confident this radiance could, if allowed, guide us in the world.
Which, I now understand, is why I do this work. It is why I have always engaged this work and why I have been teaching this work for decades. Practiced in community, meditation helps us remember. The settling we surrender to and our deepening relatedness with others help us remember the radiant brilliance that lies within all.
In a human world that feels increasingly distracted and divided, increasingly overwhelmed by impulse and consumption, this remembering is not just important – it seems to me essential. It affords us opportunities to reconnect with a nourishing, encouraging beauty. A beauty I feel privileged to witness near every time I teach. A beauty I hope you and I will soon experience together. A beauty I aspire to see burning evermore brightly in this world.
“I have been thinking for days about the most deeply meaningful things I can say about Neil as a teacher and as a principled human being. I think the two words that first come to mind are honesty and integrity. And an ability to hold the space, whether it is with one person or many. His many years of study and immersion have given him the skills to be a very very fine teacher. I treasure my connection with Neil and recommend him often to folks looking for a meditation teacher.
— Babs O’Brien