The Yogabliss on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  I look forward to our class all week.  I love the feeling of belonging.  I take courage knowing that we share very simple and powerful intentions.  We are learning about ourselves in an intimate way and an expansive way.  We’re intimate with sensations, emotions and thoughts.  We expand our hearts to allow our human experiences to belong.  We draw inspiration from each other.  It is a joy to see your faces even on a screen.

Our practice and reflection were based on Tara Brach’s new book, Radical Compassion and a reading 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 Relaxation

Close your eyes and turn your awareness to being . . . sensing your body’s place in space and how you are connected to the earth . . . feel your body breathing . . . feel your your heart pulsing . . .  notice what sensations make themselves known . . . Being and feeling . . . Being and breathing . . . Notice the presence of any emotion . . . how the feeling expresses . . . Notice the mind state that may be present . . . that may be lingering or passing through . . . Being in this moment . . . feeling . . . and breathing . . . . all of what you are bringing to practice . . . Let there be a tender allowing for your whole being . . . 

Can you feel yourself saying yes to your experience?  Whatever  thoughts, emotions, feelings or sensations that surface right now.  Asking “What is happening inside me?  Curious . . . receptive . . . listening  . . . meeting your being as if for the first time . . . You don’t have to look for anything . . . just allow your experience of being . . . becoming a  witnessing presence . . . Allowing . . . letting be . . . whatever thoughts, emotions, feelings or sensations you witness . . . Ask youself “Can I be with this?” . . . “Can I let this be?” . . . Even allowing any resistance . . . the truth of your “no” . . . 

If you feel yourself drawn in to analyzing or fixing . . . recognize that . . . Let your awareness include everything that is going on inside you.  . . . You might feel impatience or sadness or fear . . . You can tell yourself:  “It’s okay.”  

Your witnessing presence is allowing your experience . . . creating more space for the waves of experience living through you . . . You are not having to fight or resist what is unpleasant or even painful . . . All of your being belongs . . . You don’t have to block or constrict your experience . . . Witnessing presence includes our whole  being.  Tara Brach describes the power of yes as a way of saying yes to life:  

. . . Our deeply grooved habits of “no” our angry reactivity, anxious worry, defensiveness . . . and self blame keep us from living true to ourselves.  When we interrupt these habits with a mindful allowing presence, we begin to access our full human potential. This is the power and freedom inherent in “yes.” It may help us end a prolonged conflict and find a way to reconciliation.  We may become able to speak a difficult truth that has kept us from authenticity.  We may let go of over-consuming or oversleeping and live in a more healthy way.  

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

One discovers the light in the darkness, that is what darkness if 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.

We hold ourselves and we hold each other in our hearts.  We hold our families, friends, communities . . . all beings.  Let us say yes to life . . . in the smallest and largest of ways . . . beginning with what is true for us . . . Being and letting be . . .