Thank you, Rosina Newton (Regional Helper for Subud Midwest), for sharing these thoughts.
Wow! What a weekend! David, my husband, and I just returned Monday evening from the Subud National Congress in Vancouver, WA.
Every gathering like this reminds me of the movie “Brigadoon” – about the little Scottish town that wakes up every 100 years, but to the residents, it feels like the next day. We may not see each other for a year or more, and we may not even know each other (yet), but here is this large community where we all worship through the latihan, and that is what we are there for. We may do latihan once, twice or three times a day while we are there – it is total immersion in the power of latihan. There are positively transformative experiences, through the power of “big” latihans, and also through group and personal testing.
I found one of the talks in which Ibu mentions this concept by doing a search in the Subud Library online.
“When many people gather and worship God, naturally, the power of the latihan can be greater. You can feel this – if you do latihan by yourself, or in the hall on your own, your latihan is less energetic compared to a group latihan at, say, a Congress. Then the atmosphere can be very different, the power might be a thousand watts, but when you do latihan alone it may just be five watts.
So the strength varies. This is why we need to do latihan together, as that’s what God intends us to do so that we help each other and God helps us too. So, it is weaker when we are on our own, but if we gather together, the strength is much greater.”
Ibu Rahayu, Talk to men and women
Surabaya, East Java, 9 February 2004
So, especially if you have never been to a regional, national or international Congress, I invite you to make it happen when you can. I pray that every Subud member gets to practice large group latihans to get this high-watt latihan experience. I don’t want to keep this experience all to myself!