Sacred Community Project

Sacred Community Retreat: Awakening the Heart Through the Path of Grace 2026

Each day of this retreat starts with meditation. Puja, teachings and community practices are woven throughout each day. We practice things like silence, compassionate listening, yoga, and art as ways to return to Loving Awareness. We actualize Sacred Community through intention-setting, small group reflections, and shared meals. Each night ends with kirtan from experienced chant leaders.

We hope you will join us this year at the Salt Spring Centre of Yoga for our 4th annual retreat! More information and registration is available at the link in our bio.
yoga .abrol

keywords | kirtan bhakti chanting retreat British Columbia ram dass maharajji neem karoli baba unity meditation devotion yoga asana

Something happens when a room full of people chant together—call it Magic, call it Bhav, call it Love, call it Joy, call it the Spontaneity of the Grace-Filled Moment. It can’t be manufactured, manipulated, or coerced. But, if we listen, its slow swelling can flood the senses as we enter a state of Holy Allowance.

Sacred Community Project Live (V. 2) is available everywhere music is streamed or sold, and it features tracks from (in album order): and .yoga 💕

The album was recorded from a collection of SCP-related events, and most of the tracks are from the Sacred Community Retreat that is happening again this August.

Click the bio link to learn more, and stay tuned! Over the next few weeks we will be releasing the live videos for many of these tracks👀

fun fact: took the polaroids and community members - led by - created the art featured in the album cover!

We’re adding another weekly satsang hang! Starting next week, Dec 18, we’ll meet on the SCP Discord every Wednesday at 10am PST // 1pm EST. Link to join the Discord server in our bio. This group will be primarily facilitated by Anna Le and Karla Montero, with support from other SCP volunteers.

The heart of the Discord is our “Satsang Hang,” an online spiritual support group that meets on video chat. In this space, we learn to treat our humanity as holy. The following words are the opening invocation of the online Satsang Hang:

“We have come together to invoke the Sacred through our shared humanity. For the next hour we each agree to attend to five things: ourselves, each other, the group, the world, and the shared Presence unifying it all. We do this as an act of devotion, knowing that God is manifest in all five.”

Anna Le (She/They) is a Vietnamese-American, Bay Area native, and licensed psychotherapist. She is a Bhakta, student of Ram Dass, and devotee of Neem Karoli Baba “Maharajji”. She utilizes compassion-based practices, mindfulness, and various spiritual modalities through a trauma-informed lens to heal others. She is interested in alleviating collective suffering and aiding in collective liberation. She holds a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Sonoma State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from University California, Davis.

Karla Montero (She/her) is a Self-Love coach, mindfulness meditation teacher, artist, public speaker, and skilled group facilitator. As a Maharajji devotee and a Ram Dass student, she embraces a spiritual journey through service, laughter, and play. Satsang is where she continues to find her heart and feels free to practice telling the truth and finding laughter even in tough moments. As a group facilitator, she creates nurturing spaces for heart connection and self-expression. She uses her social media platform to share her personal Self-love journey, guided by her teacher’s words, “I can do nothing for you but work on myself. You can do nothing for me but work on yourself.” ~ Ram Dass 

New Year's Day chanting of 108 Hanuman Chalisas in Portland, OR

with and the Pacific Northwest Satsang

Kick off the New Year by chanting 108 Hanuman Chalisas. No experience necessary, just come when you can, be with community, and chant.

This is a free event. Donations are appreciated to help offset the costs and can be made directly to the Sacred Community Project.

8am-8pm

Portland Insight Meditation Center
6536 SE Duke Street
Portland, OR 97206

In the Fall Newsletter, Sitaram Dass invites the Autumn quality of slowness to allow for a deeper self-reflection:

“Sacred Community Project’s activity during this Spring and Summer has produced the fruit of two retreats, our first year-long Loving Rock Karma Yoga Training Program, three weekly satsang hangs, and a commitment to ongoing community service.

“But the Autumn calm has its own benefits; slowness yields the fruit of reflection. As I contemplate these last six months, I can appreciate what these events have felt like. A sense of warmth, closeness, and affection have pervaded these spaces, and this alone is intrinsically healing.

“At SCP, our core vision is a world of Sacred Community, where interdependence is valued over individualism, truth over manipulation, caring over exploitation, presence over distraction, and where an expansive, all-inclusive Love joyously welcomes all Beings into Its warm embrace.

“The community that makes up SCP inspires me with the ways they continue to sing this Song of Truth through their work in the world. Slowness also allows the undercurrents of global grief to bubble to the surface, and the inspiration from the SCP community lends me the strength to continue resting in that slowness.

“The destruction of hurricanes Helene and Milton is a direct manifestation of human-caused climate change and stems from the same roots of greed, hatred, and ignorance found across the globe in abuses of power.

“My vow for this day is to feel this global grief as well as the wise hope that the SCP community inspires me towards.”

If anyone is in need of additional support during this time, please reach out or attend one of our ongoing Satsang Hangs, including our monthly grief-focused gathering. Subscribe to the SCP newsletter to read the full message and stay updated on all of our initiatives.