The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We contemplated the need to look deeply at our stories and conditioning.  We can open our hearts and minds to the inspiration of Earth’s powers of healing and renewal.  We can engage our imagination and compassionate action to help restore Earth and her human and more than human inhabitants.

We heard a quote from Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke translated by Robert Bly.  You can read the complete poem at the Mindfulness Association website.

We heard from social activist and writer Rebecca Solnit’s Tricycle Magazine interview:  It is called  Life As It Is:  From Despair to Possibility.  We also drew from her book, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility.

I referenced Roshi Joan Halifax’s comments about imagination in the program she and Tara Brach offered:  The Sacred Work of Bridging Divides.

Our guided meditation was inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet.

We heard poet Jan Richardson’s invitation to “let there be an opening.” Jan is a poet, writer and artist.

Guided Reflection

Welcome.  Last week we explored the fifth of the Five Remembrances:  Our actions are our only true belongings.  They are the ground on which we stand.  We considered this ground to be compassion.  I find this to be a hopeful stance.  I try to come back to it when I feel overwhelmed.  I feel overwhelmed by the enormous need for climate and social action.  I despair when I witness the suffering in the world.  

Like a moth, this week I gravitated to poets, teachers and writers who hold hope’s flame. Rainer Maria Rilke reminded me:

You are not too old
and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives
its own secret.

I am not too old and it is not too late to care, to look more deeply into and through the cauldron of feelings, to find the still place inside the breath, the place where my heart can open.  The place where I recognize I am not alone.  We are not alone.  

This week I heard an interview with social activist and writer Rebecca Solnit.  It is called  Life As It Is:  From Despair to Possibility.  Rebecca likened hope to love.  In hope there is a sense of risk taking and being vulnerable to the possibility of grief and loss.  She said:

I’ve come to think of emotions as deep and shallow rather than happy and sad. . . .  We’re mortal beings on earth. Death happens, loss happens, change happens. Of course, we’re going to face things that will make us feel sad. And I think much worse than sadness is that fear of sadness . . .  you feel like you’re not supposed to feel this way and it’s wrong and you have to . . .  find some way to numb out or learn to not care. 

In her book, Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, Rebecca encourages readers to examine the deeper stories we’ve been told about how life is supposed to be.  She calls on us to reflect on what we hold most dear and to imagine our world getting better, humans and more than humans healing together.

. . .  we need to . . .  to look at the deeper stories we’ve been told: that life is supposed to be easy, that we’re very fragile creatures, that we can’t adapt. . . .  we . . .  live in an age of abundance and climate requires terrible renunciation of us. I think there’s a way to reframe that:  . . .  we live in an era of austerity when it comes to social connection, to joy, to friendship, to free time, to hope about the future, to living in a healthy world where the air is breathable, the food is good for you . . .  the ocean is thriving.

. . .  how we tell the stories is so crucial, and not only the stories about the natural world, but deep down, the stories about human nature. What do we really want? What makes us thrive? What is the nature of our connections to each other?  . . . And so the climate crisis . . .  is partly an imagination crisis, the lack of an ability to imagine . . .  the world could get better, maybe this is not as good as it gets. 

I realized that the light of my imagination had dimmed when I heard Roshi Joan Halifax urge us to take our imagination back from those influences external to us and also our conditioning.  There is nothing stopping me from imagining a world in which all beings can flourish.  A world in which all humans and more than humans belong.  bell hooks once said:  The moment we choose to love we move towards freedom.

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, Sister True Dedication explains how the

Plum Village community has a very simple definition of love.  We say that to love means to be there:  to be there, first of all, for yourself, and for the wonders of life and the Earth all around you.  And, once you are truly present, you can offer that presence to those you love.  

When we bring our mindful presence into daily life our senses bring the world to us more deeply.  When we pause in contemplation we can examine the deeper stories we carry.  We can consider who or what do we hold most dear. We ask a living question again and again:  How do we want to express our caring?

Practice is always an invitation.  An invitation Jan Richardson makes in poetry:

Let there be
an opening
into the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.

I invite you to let there be an opening to this experience of living right now.  Let’s practice together.  Breathing and aware, right here, right now.  Tune into your inner hum and vibration.  Let yourself settle.  As you rest, see if you can relax and stay present.  Let breath come to you. Where do you feel the incoming and the outgoing breath?  How is it to take this world in and then give it back out again?

Tune into the direct experience of gravity, holding you to Earth. With the gentlest weight.  Can you feel it? Just enough to hold you together.   I invite you to consider taking refuge in Mother Earth.  Feel Earth beneath you. Feel Earth inside you.  Earth abiding and alive.  Sister True Devotion suggests you might allow Mother Earth to sit for you.

When you breathe, allow Earth to breathe for you.  Let go of any effort.  Allow her to do it.  Let go of doing.  Let go of trying to be peaceful.  Allow the Earth to do everything for you.  Allow the air to enter your lungs and flow out of your lungs.  The breathing in and breathing out happen by themselves.  

Allow yourself to simply be.  Allow sitting or lying down.  Allow relaxation to come.  There is healing in relaxation.  Breathing in there is healing taking place.  Breathing out there is healing happening.  Allow your body to heal, to be renewed, to be nourished.  Allow your mind to heal.  

Allow relaxation.  Allow the release of tension, worry or fear.  Allow yourself to be nourished.  Allow any sense of pleasure.  Open to the experience of taking refuge in Mother Earth.

In the course of feeling body breathing there may be a sense of being in the stream of time.  Thoughts and emotions may surface, naturally expressing mind. Perhaps you notice how you are relating to what is surfacing.  Notice also how you can continue to feel body breathing, feeling and being alive.  You can explore awareness stretching, growing more expansive.

Can you let there be an opening to this experience of life perhaps “shimmering beneath the storm?”  What is it like to experience life flowing through this “you” expressed as Body?  Can there be an opening of awareness of how we change and are, ourselves, changed? All of life is moving.  And yet if we let there be an opening we might find

the quiet
that lies beneath
the chaos,
where you find
the peace
you did not think
possible
and see what shimmers
within the storm.