The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored the different states of being that arise in mindfulness practice. Navigating with intention, enlivened by attention helps to create the condition in which ease, joy and curiosity arise.
Sharing the journey has kept my heart open along the way.
We heard from Brother David Steindl-Rast’s essay, On Gratefulness and the Body from “Encounter with God through the Senses.” In this essay Brother David writes about the body’s language of the senses. He has adopted gratefulness as a method for cultivating mindfulness.
We heard Susan Aposhyan’s views on meditation. They are outlined in her Kosmos Journal essay, Our Animal Bodies and the Unitive State:
Open Heart/Body Awake. Susan urges us to to practice mindfulness of the body to open our hearts and love!
We heard Mary Oliver’s short poem about joy and grief. She simply affirms how we hold them both.
We drew from the fifth chapter of Kathleen Dowling Singh’s book, The Grace in Aging: Awaken As You Grow Older. In this section, Opening the Precious Package, Kathleen reminds us that we all have awareness and the potential for awakening. She teaches that devoted practice supported by intention, sustained by attention create the conditions for the experiences of contented ease, joy and curiosity.
We heard Jane Hirshfield’s poem Standing Deer. This poem speaks to the ebb and flow of life. How we are filled and emptied with experience and the passing of time. What we have left – if we are lucky – is our tender presence.