The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We devoted our hearts and minds to appreciating our spiritual friends and the wisdom teachings of meditation teachers, poets and writers. We imagined the many people who have cared, nurtured and guided us to be sitting in our circle.

We expanded the circle by imagining who will be singing beautiful songs of love and compassion in the future.

We heard Sufi poet Rumi’s Search the Darkness, from  Love Is a Stranger Selected Lyric Poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi, translated by Kabir Helminski.

We practiced a guided meditation inspired by Oren Jay Sofer. We imagined our mentors, teachers, family members and friends sitting in a circle of care.

We heard Rainier Maria Rilke’s poem, My Life Is Not This Steeply Sloping Hour, from the Book of Hours translated by Robert Bly.

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 spirits.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored how meditation offers us the experience of being alone together.  We also reflected on how solitude offers us a chance to come to know ourselves more deeply.  This intimacy can also help us to recognize our interconnection with all of life.

In learning to be alone we find belonging.

We drew from the tenth chapter of Kathleen Dowling Singh’s book, The Grace in Aging: Awaken As You Grow Older. In this section, Solitude:  Liberation from Attachment, Release into Sufficiency, Kathleen encourages us “to transform loneliness to aloneness, far before the time of our death.”  She explores the nature of loneliness and “chosen aloneness.”  The solitude that we choose offers opportunities to recognize our ourselves as unique expressions of life.  In solitude we can also realize ourselves as inter-beings arising from innumerable conditions and relationships.

We heard Padraig O Tuama’s beautiful poem, How to [Belong] Be Alone.  Padraig is an Irish poet and theologian.  He presents Poetry Unbound a program produced by On Being Studios.  In his poem he explores the paradox of finding belonging in our aloneness.  He invites  us to live knowing we will die.  He invites us to listen to that part of ourselves that tells the more vital story of our life.  You can find a lovely animated version of the poem, “How to Be Alone,” on Youtube.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored the practice of silence.  We began, continued and ended with relaxation.  We cultivated an open receptivity while venturing deeper into silence.  The poets and teachers use words to point toward no words.  Awareness points toward our true nature and is our true nature.

We heard Kerry O’Brien’s poem Core from her collection Illuminate.  Kerry is an Irish poet who explores literature as a form of activism.  You can see and hear Kerry read her poem Dublin at her web-site.

We drew on Chan Dharma Master Hsin Tao’s teachings on silence.  You can read more about the practice of silence he teaches in his Tricycle Magazine article, Listening to Silence.  Master Tao invites students to: “Hear the silence in the mountains and rivers, the great wide earth, the sky. Eventually, the whole universe will fall into deep silence.”

We heard Still the Body by Sufi poet Kabir. The poem is from Beloved May I Enter: Kabir Dohas and Other Poems translated by Sushil Rao.  I love this poem because of the influence it has had on my favorite poet, Jane Hirshfield.  You can hear how the 15th century Sufi poet is alive in her poem:  Standing Deer.

We drew from the ninth chapter of Kathleen Dowling Singh’s book, The Grace in Aging: Awaken As You Grow Older. In this section, Silence: Liberation from Illusions, Kathleen explores the practice of inner and outer silence. She encourages students to “become silence by being silence [as one] becomes love by being love.”

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