The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We practiced “right effort” by creating the conditions in which we can attune to our inner wisdom. Settling into embodied presence can help us find freedom and ease even in our heartfelt aspirations. We can invite living questions to help us go deeper to find those beginnings quietly born. May this new year bring peace to all beings.
We continued to draw from Oren Jay Sofer’s new book: Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love. We focused on how attention, aspiration and energy enable us to establish the settledness of being in which to hear our inner wisdom.
We also drew inspiration from Insight Meditation teacher, Gil Fronsdal’s teaching. Gil and his fellow teachers offer a library of talks, guided meditations and courses through AudioDharma. You can experience his talk, Desire for Right Effort, in this archive. You can hear his exploration of “What Wants to be Born” in his talk, Return to Your Center.
John O’Donohue’s poem For a New Beginning is from his collection, Anam Cara. Anam Cara is a phrase that refers to the Celtic concept of the “soul friend” in religion and spirituality..
Guided Reflection
Thank you for being here. For the past few weeks we’ve been exploring – as Oren Jay Sofer writes – what our hearts are made for: the qualities of attention, the aspirations and the energy that powers our bodies, hearts and minds. Attention is one of our most precious inner resources. We can open our hearts to what we pay attention to. Oren writes that our aspirations “yearn for something deeper, more fulfilling, just or good in life.” Our aspirations can kindle compassion and energize caring action. These life experiences are made possible when we can exercise what the Buddha called “right effort.”
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nsight meditation teacher Gil Fronsdal believes that “all Buddhist practice could be summarized as the practice of discovering what right effort is.” Gil believes the practice is one of discovery. He describes right effort as being:
. . . wholesome with no attachments, no pressure, and no resistance in it, and there is freedom, ease, and peacefulness in the efforts we make. In some ways, finding the right effort is a constant adjustment that we make as we find our way.
It’s a practice we make on and off our meditation cushions. I think it’s a good way to navigate life. Gil says:
As we understand the difference between wholesome and unwholesome effort, and between wholesome and unwholesome mental states, and we are able to see them for what they are, we see that the unwholesome states drain us, diminish us, stress us, and are painful, while the wholesome ones do the opposite. This is a powerful insight.
I resonate with the terms wholesome and unwholesome. They seem less charged with judgment. This week I found myself in unwholesome states of judgment and resentment, troubled by recursive thoughts. I found myself resisting the experience. The contraction of stress and limited focus made the world darker and smaller. Yet I don’t remember ever having made the conscious choice of inviting these unwholesome states to visit me. It wasn’t until I could relax, let the experience be, that spaciousness and ease were restored.
I had to remember to take it easy. To let it alone. To let myself alone.
Gil’s teaching reminded me that:
Right effort is also a powerful way of discovering what freedom is. In the end, it is a kind of freedom to be able to live with ease and choice, staying close to that place where the effort itself is almost effortless or easy, and does not carry the weight and distress of conceit of the self.
Discovering freedom is definitely one of my aspirations. How to stay close to that place where the effort itself is almost effortless or easy? To be free of the weight and distress of mind-made stress and worry? Maybe it’s about opening to the heart’s living questions. Opening to the wisdom of the heart.
We are undergoing a solstice turning time. We are emerging from the long hours of darkness into the growing light of days. What a good time to settle ourselves. What a good time to reflect on what has been gestating in our hearts and minds. We can do this by resting our eyes in the darkness of meditation and then returning to the light again as we open them. For many of us there is a daily rhythm of dark and light awareness. Gil describes this time as a:
. . . return to something deep inside, [a] harmony, [a] wholeness. The deeper possibilities that meditation offers arise out of a kind of return to this healthy way of being. Being settled, whole, no longer living in conflict, no longer living with this tension we often carry in our every day life.
This is a good time to consider what wants to be born in the growing light of the new year. Gil poses this living question:
What wants to be born? How do we allow it to be born in us? One of the functions of meditation is to create the room in our hearts, minds, bodies that allows something to be born out of the darkness. When we go through emotional challenges, really depressed, really feel betrayed, feel angry, really feel we’ve lost something profound, grief, anger, fear. All these difficulties that people struggle with. I think there can be less struggle around it all if we appreciate that in the heart of the right conditions something wants to be born.
This living question is going to guide me this year. I aspire to keep it alive and listen to my heart’s wisdom. I will draw on this wisdom to keep my heart open. I can hear John O’Donohue’s voice in my ears encouraging me to take compassionate action in the world.
The poet philosopher John O’Donohue writes:
Sometimes the greatest challenge is to actually begin; there is something deep in us that conspires with what wants to remain within safe boundaries and stay the same… Sometimes a period of preparation is necessary, where the idea of the beginning can gestate and refine itself; yet quite often we unnecessarily postpone and equivocate when we should simply take the risk and leap into a new beginning.
In his poem For a New Beginning he writes:
In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.
For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.
[ . . . ]
We may be poised between the gestational state that wants to remain safe and the heart’s newly emerging state that wants to be born. Perhaps the right effort of meditation, that healthy state of being settled, open and spacious will allow us to explore what has been gestating in the heart. What wants to be born?
Let’s begin by feeling each in-breath waxing and each out-breath waning. The breath’s natural rhythm. You can place one hand over your heart and the other over your belly or simply rest your arms. Feel Body’s rhythmic movement through sensation and currents of subtle energy. Filling with light and emptying into darkness; joining in the subtle rhythms of the universe. Can you be curious about when Body next wants the in-breath; when Body releases the out-breath? Can you rest in the silent stillness between?
As you begin to experience the settledness of meditation, can you allow yourself to trust being here? Being present. There is a possibility of inner health that comes from letting go and settling. This is about making space for what the heart wants to be born. Being present in an intimate way allows for possibilities to be born. The inner voice of your heart might speak. It might say:
Love is a part of you. You can BE love. You can smile at a stranger anywhere. You can give love wherever you are.
Take a moment now to attune to your heart space. Sense it as vividly as you can. Embodied presence can illuminate being – in stillness and movement. Let it reveal what may be in the shadows and the light. See it in your mind’s eye.
As we turn toward the light this may be a time to be receptive. This may be a time to slow down, to do less, to not have to know. This is a time to be careful with ourselves. To nurture the living question : What is it that wants to be born in you?
If silence and shadow are present spend this time with sensitivity and tenderness. You don’t have to know. Allow this time to what may be getting ready to emerge. If something wants to be born you can nurture it with the qualities of attention, aspiration and energy. As John O’Donohue writes For a New Beginning:
Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.
Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
May we, together, prepare the best we can offer the world. May we learn what it is that wants to be born and grow in the light.