The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored the experience of embodiment sensing inside and outside our bodies.  We explored the experience of inter-being:  how we are born and sustained in mutual relationship with others.  We cultivated appreciation and love: for Earth, her human and more than human inhabitants and the ordinary miracles of being alive.

We heard one of Erin Geesaman Rabke’s blessings from her Embodied Beatitudes.  A more complete list from her “work-in-progress” is like a prayer of appreciation for our amazing bodies.

We heard Daniel Ladinsky’s translation of Hafiz’ poem Today from The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master.  You can find more of his irreverent and whimsical writings, including Buddha After Hours in a Bar, at his blog.

We drew extensively from Orrin Williams’ Humans and Nature essay, Skinfolk, Kinfolk, and the Kingship of Oneness. Orrin is a community advocate and educator.  His work focuses on making urban space more productive and more efficient, particularly in terms of feeding people and generating energy.  His essay embraces  a vision of kinship consciousness.

We drew inspiration from Toni Spencer’s beautiful poem Reciprocal Rhythm.  Toni is a Deep Adaptation Advocate, poet, mentor and teacher.  She “seeks to enable a richer engagement with the ecological, cultural and social issues of our times.”  You can learn more about Toni’s work and her seven week course, Living Deep Adaptation at her web-site.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today’s class affirms the basic innate goodness we share.  We practiced appreciation as a way of attuning to this goodness within ourselves and each other.

We heard from Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche’s teachings on the five appreciations.  We drew from his Tricycle Magazine article, The Antidote to Self-Criticism.  Rinpoche encourages us to practice appreciation for our innate goodness or what many call our true nature.  We can recognize it within ourselves and in each other.

We heard Matty Weingast’s poem Mitta – Friend. This poem is from Matty’s book, The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns, a reimagining of the Therīgāthā.  This poem is inspired by the original writing of poet, Mitta.  It is about finding friendship and belonging on the spiritual path.

We heard from Jeanne Corrigal’s Tricycle Magazine series, Closer Than We Think:  Gentle Reflections on Death.  In this section of the series Jeanne shares practices to support others in the transition of death.

One practice is helping others to remember their own goodness.

We ended with Alberto Rios’ poem We Are of a Tribe.  The poem celebrates the common home we can find and share in the sky.  It affirms the freedom and joy we can find in leaping the world’s ties.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored caring presence as an inner quality and a unitive force we share.  Caring presence gives rise to responsiveness:  our acts of caring.  Awareness enables these life experiences which, through practice, can be the refuge we find on our life’s journey.

We heard from Jeanne Corrigal’s Tricycle Magazine series, Closer Than We Think:  Gentle Reflections on Death. Jeanne is the guiding teacher for the Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community.  In her four part video series she shares practices she has found helpful in cultivating loving presence and responsiveness. Jeanne cultivates wholesome qualities as part of her aspiration that at the time of death she “can meet whatever’s here to the best of [her] ability with an open, kind heart.”

We heard Matty Weingast’s poem Grandma Sumana. This poem is from Matty’s book, The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns, a reimagining of the Therīgāthā. You can find Matty’s wonderful article about the writings along with queries for contemplation at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies web-site.

We ended with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem December 31.  This poem is from Rosemerry’s A Hundred Falling Veils site which offers a poem a day.  She also co-hosts Emerging Form podcast on creative process, Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal) and Soul Writers Circle.

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