Whitman began meditating in the 1850s from the evidence we can find in his notebooks. Much of his poetry and ideas reflect an awareness that Dr. Maurice Bucke described in his book based on Whitman as “cosmic consciousness.” In this meditation, led by Neil Richardson, we will spend an hour reading some of Whitman’s spiritually inspired words and spend about 20 minutes in a silent and lightly guided meditation. 

Whitman was far from religious in any conventional sense yet he integrally incorporated insight from Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. 

This is part of the multi-venue, 12-day Walt Whitman 200 Festival, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of America’s most significant and enduring poets, who was a resident of Washington, DC for ten years during and after the Civil War.