The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We practiced with the intention of disarming our hearts.

When we open our hearts the truth of our belonging and love are known.

Our compassion can help us to bridge the divide of difference and separation.

We drew on meditation teacher and writer Tara Brach’s teachings on disarming the heart.  We heard excerpts from the talk she gave at Upaya’s Gathering Dharma: Bridging the Divide.   In this beautiful program Tara, Frank Ostaseski and Roshi Joan Halifax teach about making peace within ourselves and the world.

We heard from novelist, playwright, essayist, poet and civil rights activist James Baldwin. You can find out more about his work from the American Masters program Take This Hammer. I quoted from an essay from his book, Nothing Personal. This beautiful prose was set to heart felt music by Morley and Friends as, Nothing is Fixed, part of the 2020 Universe in Verse program. I hope you have time to give it a listen.

Guided Reflection

Welcome.  Last week we reflected on our relationship to time.  The “in-between” or bardo states that can be described as a period in life or after death – or even a breath.  Our moments of joy and loss are so precious.  I have recently returned from a visit to our Olympic coast.  Standing at the surf’s edge I was gifted the sight of otters frolicking in the surf; harbor seal heads surfacing – they seemed to be as curious about me as I was of them;  flocks of gulls and terns skimming over unfurling waves. So, so beautiful . . .

And then I felt a great mechanical bird overhead.  A Navy Growler jet’s roaring, rumbling sound, vibrated through my body.  Such overwhelming power seemed painfully transgressive in this pristine wilderness.  Fear, anger and grief passed through me in waves. My heart armored itself so quickly!  I imagined the many non-humans frightened beyond understanding.  My mind began making bad others of those who seemed to be an invading force.  Standing on the beach, I invited the war into myself.

Slowly my mind began to disentangle from the stories that separated the world into us and them.  I surrendered to the precarious uncertainty of being human.  Walking grounded me again.  A great wish that all be safe and well arose in my heart.

As I write this I am reminded of meditation teacher Tara Brach’s teachings on disarming the heart.  We are here today in a circle of caring formed around this practice.  In her recent talk, Bridging the Divide, she said:

At the moment we disarm the heart, the truth of our belonging becomes so apparent.  It needs us all to dedicate attention to it.  . . . [We] sense the pain of separation, the world’s unraveling . . .  We’re fractured by so much fear right now – it’s fueling the authoritarian regimes every where.  It’s across the globe.  And so much violence.  So much violation of the earth of other species.  

And we can also feel it in our personal lives, the atmosphere. . . . We’re caught in our story lines, our narratives, that make us forget our belonging with those of different races, faiths, politics, our belonging with the earth, our belonging with the spirit that lives through us all.  

. . . Disarming is really the path that’s so necessary for our planet.  . . .  Each of us can impact the atmosphere we’re breathing.  We can each bring in more love.  . . . It takes a real dedicated practice.  . . .   Because the arming, the blaming, the judging, is such a deep conditioning.  . . . We arm our heart with judgement, blame, resentments and then we get habituated to it – we almost get resigned to the divides.  

We’re living in this trance of separation . . .  We’re not inhabiting the loving we’re capable of.  . . .  If I am not disarming the heart,  if I’m letting blame and anger, resentments carry on, if I’m in that illusion of my side, your side, how are we ever going to be part of the awakening loving movement that can transform our world?  How?  We have to pay attention close in.  

In this time of great uncertainty we form a circle of light.  It’s the light of compassion . . . the light of witnessing presence.   Writer James Baldwin speaks to this witnessing presence:

One discovers the light in the darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light. It is necessary, while in darkness, to know that there is a light somewhere, to know that in oneself, waiting to be found, there is a light. What the light reveals is danger, and what it demands is faith.

This is why one must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found — and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is.  . . .

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

Let us now dedicate ourselves to disarming our hearts.  We can hold each other with this intention.  We come together around this light in the darkness.  I invite you to create the physical and spiritual space in which your heart can open.  Feel your being from inside out.  Let the breath be a way of collecting and gathering.  Take a slow deep breath in, hold it briefly and then let a slow smooth breath out.  Let there be a sense of letting go and releasing.  And once again.  Relax the breath out.  Let go.  As the breath gradually resumes its natural rhythm, sense the quality of presence now.  

Take some moments to scan the body.  Ask what wants to let go just a bit more.  Perhaps easing across upper back and shoulders.  Release feeling in the arms and hands.  Loosening the smallest muscles in the fingers.  Relax and feel.  Let the chest be open.  This next breath softening the belly.  Breathe as you need; perhaps a sigh passes.  

See if  you can feel this life breath awakening in the whole torso.  Widen the attention and feel the whole body as a field of sensation.  Letting life live through you.  Being the presence that’s aware.  Aware of this in flow and out flow of breath.   Aware of this tender awareness that everything is happening in. Sense the possibility that with whatever arises is an energetic way of saying yes, yes to this life.  

If there is anything difficult, notice what happens when that yes comes with tenderness, a sense of kindness. Create space in which to feel emotion.  Emotions have a life – a beginning, middle and end.Like Earth’s layers, feelings are layered.  Anger over fear.  Fear over grief.  We can tend to them.  We can learn from them.  So often our conflicts, are rooted in deeper concerns that we have for ourselves and for others – the need for safety, respect, equality, acceptance.  Needs we all share. Find the loving awareness that can meet these feelings with tenderness.  Can there be acceptance, understanding, compassion?  

Now can you sense the larger community of caring people you belong to – the people that are here today – the many people in the world training in keeping their hearts and minds open?  Sense the generosity, the caring and the willingness to act.  These are qualities we all share.  Can sense your heart’s wisdom?  Let whatever is true for you be there without the burden of judgment.  

Tara suggests we could meet our difficult experiences with something like this part of the Bodhisattva’s life-honoring prayer:

May these circumstances, may these feelings that I am having, may this experience serve to awaken my heart — serve to awaken compassion and wisdom.