The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We contemplated the importance of remembering the lives of humans and more-than-humans, places and experiences and histories that have helped to make us who we are. We considered how emotions and values inform our memories.
What we carry from the past influences our personal and collective present and future.  May we continue the practice of mindful loving awareness on our journeys.

We heard from  Fabiana Fondelvila’s  Gratefulness.org essay, The Renewing Power of Ritual.  This insightful essay explores how our transcendent emotions and essential human values can inform our practice of ritual.  She offers examples and suggestions that help bring meaning to our personal and collective lives.

We heard Tibetan monk and teacher, Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s teachings on love.

Sophie Strand’s poem on love, The Final Lesson.

We heard from spiritual teacher, Ram Dass’ teachings on loving awareness.

We drew from Turning to Face the Dark, a Global Oneness Project conversation between Rabbi Ariel Burger and Parker Palmer.

Continue reading →

The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We practiced a number of ways to cultivate empathy for the more-than-human world.  Our amazing faculties of mind enabled us to imagine, feel, sense and move as if we were an other being.

Zen poet and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, invited us to imagine our bodies as rivers.

Poet Laura Grace Heldon described a Riverbank Ceremony in which we could whisper our secrets to the water.  She has a remarkable collection of writings from her experience  which “includes teaching nonviolence, writing collaborative poetry with nursing home residents [and] facilitating support groups for abuse survivors.”

We drew inspiration from Sophie Strand’s essay Kaleidoscopic Empathy.  She describes how we can imagine ourselves to be more-than-human beings.  In this way we might deepen care for our earthly kin.  Sophie’s publications “focus on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories.”

Lisa Couturier’s poem, Inheritance, invites us to imagine ourselves as birds.  She asks what it would be like to inherit the inner knowing of how and where to migrate.  Lisa’s writings draw our hearts and minds to care for the natural world.

Continue reading →

The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored what it means to be “relational beings” in the greater web of life.  Mindfulness practice helps us to open our hearts to our shared vulnerability and resilience.  Imagine, practicing reverence for life as simply as a standing tree photosynthesizing light.

These creative voices help us to reimagine a world that honors relational life:

Zen poet, Jane Hirshfield encourages us to embrace our vulnerability to realize our humanity.
Naturalist writer and teacher Robin Wall Kimmerer affirms the blessings of our natural world.  If only we could transform light like trees!
Native American poet Linda Hogan yearns to be held in light.  She imagines being deeply rooted as a tree sheltering unborn life.
Essayist and teacher Erin Rabke encourages to practice reverence in the ways we walk the Earth.
Herbalist and writer, Rosalee de la Foret, speaks of resilience and our own internal compass.
Natural World poet, Mary Oliver hears the language of trees inviting us to shine.

I invite you to step out of the stream of doing.  Enter the stream of being.  Sense how you are holding and being held in space, by gravity and Earth.  Allow your awareness to ease through your body, perhaps landing in an area, feeling and sensing there. Sensations might move you to take a deeper breath or sigh.

You can explore the many expressions of being alive through eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch.  The subtle energy is perhaps lively, steady, dull or bright.  

Sometimes an emotional quality surfaces. Can you be curious and open to the feeling? Thoughts may me threading their way through your experience. Can you hold them lightly without adding anything?  Here in the sacred space of our practice we have room for everything even what poet Jane Hirshfield describes as:

A joy, a depression,. . .  some momentary awareness com[ing] as an unexpected visitor. Even the anxious hardening of resistance . . . or the tenderness of unrequited longing . . . .

Continue reading →

The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored how we can bring mindfulness to how we speak and listen. We can begin by bringing awareness to the state our hearts and minds and our purpose in entering communication.  We can go deeper by contemplating the potential impact our words might have on our companion listener.  Equanimity can help us stay open to differences and caring about others’ concerns.  Finally,  compassion allows us to accept the mistakes we are likely to make in risking difficult conversations.

We heard Anne Hillman’s poem, Look With Uncertainty, from her collection Awakening the Energies of Love: Discovering Fire for the Second Time.  The poem is a “dare” to be human in our vulnerability and openness.

We heard from  Ursula Le Guin’s essay, Listening is Telling, fromm her collection The Wave in the Mind. This essay invites us to consider the power and the magic conjured by our words.  Speaking and listening can form an alchemical wholeness that brings the potential for transformation.

We heard Kamala Masters’ teachings about bringing mindfulness to communication in her interview, Get Happier Without Losing Your Edge. Kamala offers practical ways of getting clear about our intentions in speaking.  She shares her personal experience of using mindfulness phrases to maintain inner balance and openness.

We ended with Jeanne Lohmann’s poem, Invocation from her collection  Shaking the Tree. Her lyrical phrases invoke a sense of reverence and sensitivity about what we let fly in our use of language.

Continue reading →