The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  The natural world’s seasonal turning inspired us to find a deeper aspiration for meditation practice and for a way of being in the world.  A deeper aspiration may help us to establish a kind, calm presence, like sunlight on a forest. It may be an appreciative awareness. A forgiving awareness. A caring, kind or loving awareness.  We begin by nourishing ourselves with the breath.  We feel sensations in the body.  We draw on Earth’s support.  Breath, body and Earth can help us to feel our entanglement with the world.

We heard John Muir speak of our interdependence with all beings.  In his book, Mountain Thoughts, he seems to presage Thich Nhat Hanh’s teachings on inter-being.  We have the sun and the rivers, the trees and flowers inside of us.  The bird song and wind song, the song of rocks in the heart of the mountains are our own songs of love.  You can read a bit more of his Mountain Thoughts at the Sierra Club web-site.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We continued exploring the practice of conscious witnessing.  We witness with the intention of feeling the sensations that arise in the body in response to what we see.  We stay with this direct experience without thinking about what we feel.  This is a profound way of being present and open to the mystery of life unfolding.  In this way we open to an intelligence that is vaster than our own.  In this opening we can be with life’s joys and sorrows.

Today’s practice was inspired by Ayya Santacitti’s talk, Resonance:  Engaging Creativity Beyond the Intellect.  Ayya is a Buddhist nun in the Theravada tradition.  In her talk Ayya explores witnessing on a personal, collective and global level.  She believes that we can bring different energy to life: Compassion.  Interest.  Kindness.  Willingness.  We resonate with the bodily sensations that arise while witnessing.  In this way we can open to a vaster intelligence and with creativity beyond intellect.

We heard from Kiowa elder and writer N. Scott Momaday’s book The Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land.  In an Paris Review essay, We Must Keep the Earth, he reminds readers that:

We humans must revere the earth, for it is our well-being. Always the earth grants us what we need. If we treat the earth with kindness, it will treat us kindly. If we give our belief to the earth, it will believe in us. There is no better blessing than to be believed in.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored how mindfulness practice offers us a way of seeing reality more clearly.  We can develop our faculties of faith, energy, concentration and insight.  Alone and together we can open our hearts and minds to the difficult realities of climate change.  As Mother Earth suffers we suffer.  We can support each other in witnessing and responding with caring and compassion.  Thankfully we have a trail to follow.

Today’s practice is inspired by Ayya Santacitti’s talk, Global Witnessing:  Take In the Planet’s Feedback.  Ayya is a Buddhist nun in the Theravada tradition.  She is founder of the Aloka Earth Room, a practice space in which practitioners consider:  “What is ours to do as we walk the Noble Eightfold Path in these times of eco-social unraveling?”

We ended with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s poem Because.  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. Rosemerry’s heartening words encourage us to love as if our lives depend on it.

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