The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today we dedicated our hearts and minds to compassion.  We explored ways to cultivate it within ourselves so that we are prepared to offer it to others.  The practice goes deep – touching our fear and vulnerability and our caring and courage.

We drew inspiration from the poet Naomi Shihab Nye’s Kindness and Mary Oliver’s To Begin With:  The Sweetgrass.  They paint pictures in words that land in our heart, flesh and bones.  They move us beyond the edges of our skin into the “gravity of kindness” and to “becom[ing] a child of the clouds.”

Our guided meditation was inspired by meditation teacher and writer, Oren Jay Sofer.  He offers many ways to contemplate and cultivate compassion.  His teaching outlines the dimensions of compassion to include equanimity and wisdom.  He offers ways of “resourcing ourselves” so that we can bring caring action to others without becoming overwhelmed.

Teacher and writer Parker Palmer’s short essay, We Deserve the Compassion We Give, reminds us of the “inner mending” we all need to do in order to be there for others.

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The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored different ways of sustaining attention:  in meditation, movement and contemplation.  Training our hearts and minds to stay with personal experience is a way of strengthening the ability to “be with” another person.  We need to see and touch another person in order to flourish and grow.  Sadly, being with another is something that social distancing has made painfully difficult.

I am so grateful that we are able to create a safe space in which to communicate and care.

We drew on a podcast discussion, How to Meet Your Needs for Connection: Attunement,  between psychologists, Forrest and Rick Hanson. They explore our fundamental need for connection and the qualities that are essential to meaningful relationship. They also share about their personal experiences with the emotional risks of attunement.

We heard Oregon poet laureate, Kim Stafford’s poem Believe in Song.  In down to earth language, the poet asks us to trust the exchange of deep listening and singing our song.  Kim offers a series of Pandemic Poems at his web-site. Writing poetry is an inspiring way to bring heart and creativity to metabolizing the difficult experiences of the past year.

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The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored empathy by cultivating a sense of tenderness.  We evoked tenderness through imagination, memory and poetry.  Tenderness is intimately connected to the experience of attunement:  sensing another’s emotions.  We are such sensitive, relational creatures. These qualities are often buried by the busyness, noise and stress of modern culture.

We were moved by Teddy Macker’s poem, The Otters and the Seaweed.  Otters are such beautiful playful beings. Teddy’s poem offers powerful imagery showing their vulnerability to the harshness of life.

We drew on the work of Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk.  Her 2018 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, The Tender Narrator, describes tenderness as an essential quality to our human relations as well as her writing.  In her speech and her magical book, Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead, she writes about our capacity to see all living beings as worthy of our tender concern.

We also reflected on meditation teacher Ajahn Sucitto’s essay, The Good Friend.  A good friend is someone who is willing to stay with us.  This willing acceptance leads us to compassion.  We sense our shared fate – we see ourselves in one another – and our hearts open. Continue reading →

The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We practiced investigating our experience of being – body, heart and mind.  We allowed whatever surfaced in awareness just to be – without having to change it in any way. We can experience ourselves as nature and encounter all our creatureliness without judgment.  Like all living things, we are conditioned by experience.  We form beliefs and views which shape the way we grow and learn.  Mindfulness/Heartfulness practice allows us to recognize how beliefs and views operate for better or worse.

We drew inspiration from Jane Hirshfield’s beautiful poem, Metempsychosis.  This term refers to the supposed transmigration at death of the soul of a human being or animal into a new body of the same or a different species.  Jane’s poem explores the realization of our inter-being.

We also heard teachings about how views operate in our lives from Insight Meditation teacher, Andrea Fella.  In her recent interview with Dan Harris, Uprooting Your Delusions,
she describes how mindfulness practice gives us a chance to reveal the many unknown beliefs that inform who we think we are and how we behave in the world.

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