A group is preferred for zikr. There is no comparison between zikr performed alone and zikr in an experienced group. There is much more room for higher manifestations in a group if the members are self-effaced. There is more emptiness to be filled, more invitation, more need.
Can the members of a group come without expectation? Can they come without engaging each other in a personal way, offering homage to the time and place, not each other? Can they abandon past and future? Likely they have nowhere else to be. They agree to be there in the simplest way, without artifice or ambition.
There is one who ‘leads’ the zikr. Does this one have faith in surrender and willingness to be led? Is there any another way?
Zikr is both invitation and response. Who is summoner and summoned? Who is answer and answered? Who remembers and who is remembered? This is a subtle dance, the steps are small, a little shy and very dear. How intimate this effacement.
