The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We reflected on the vast web of inter-being of which we are a part. In today’s class we reflected on our power to feel, witness and to choose kindness.
We considered the different ways we can support ourselves in claiming our power.
We drew on eco-philosopher Joanna Macy’s framework for responding to the environmental crisis. The framework and the excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies are drawn from the Tricycle Magazine article Rilke’s Book of Hours as Portent and Guide. The article describes four successive stages of social activism: “opening to gratitude, owning our pain for the world, seeing with new eyes, and going forth—that are predicated on the idea that in order to heal ourselves and our ecosystems first we must be willing to feel both suffering and joy.”
Our guided meditation was inspired by the meditation offered by Kaira Jewel Lingo’s Meditation on Loving Our Skin published in Tricycle Magazine.
Suggestions for the specific ways we can support ourselves in feeling, witnessing and choosing kindness were inspired by Zenshin Florence Caplow’s Zenshin’s Ten Practices for Frightening Times.
