The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. Today we explored two precious gifts of mindfulness:  the experience of wholeness and the ability to hold grief and joy at the same time.  On this Juneteenth day we listened to poet J. Drew Lantham’s beautiful poem,

Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves.  May his spirit of generosity touch every heart.

We heard from hospice carer, teacher and author Frank Ostaseski’s book The Five Invitations.  The passage encourages us to let go of our striving and to embrace our full humanity.

We heard Jennifer Williamson’s  beautiful poem, I Am Enough. Jennifer, a suicide loss survivor, offers grief support through her website, Healing Brave.

We heard from philosopher writer Terry Patten’s essay, A New Republic of the Heart.  You can learn more about Terry and his book of the same name at his web-site.

You can learn more about poet, professor and writer J. Drew Lantham by listening to his On Being interview with Krista Tippett:  Pathfinding Through the Improbable.  Check out his memoir The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature at your local library.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored mindful embodiment and listening for the “baseline symphony” of our inter-being:  the body’s landscape of ease.  In this landscape we can use our “companion calls” to keep track of each other and “to affirm and reaffirm the wellness of the world.” Like the birds, we can call out:

Where are you?
I’m here . . . You there?
I’m here . . . You there? 

We oriented by meditation teacher, Tara Brach’s, definition of “radical compassion.”  Her book, Radical Compassion, offers many practices for times when we are facing life’s difficulties.

Poet and author, David Whyte, describes “embodiment” in his book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. David reminds us of the fleeting nature of our embodiment.

We heard poet, Marilyn Peretti’s poem, Still Living.  Marilyn reminds us of the enduring nature of our aliveness.  We are born of Earth, we return to her and new life emerges.

We were inspired by Seattle poet, Lisa Well’s wonderful Orion Magazine essay, The Sounds of Silence.  She describes  her experience of being intimate with nature.  She uses magical terms like “baseline symphony” and “companion calls” to affirm our inter-relatedness.  She lives in Seattle and is an editor for The Volta and Letter Machine Editions. She is the author of Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We contemplated the importance of remembering the lives of humans and more-than-humans, places and experiences and histories that have helped to make us who we are. We considered how emotions and values inform our memories.
What we carry from the past influences our personal and collective present and future.  May we continue the practice of mindful loving awareness on our journeys.

We heard from  Fabiana Fondelvila’s  Gratefulness.org essay, The Renewing Power of Ritual.  This insightful essay explores how our transcendent emotions and essential human values can inform our practice of ritual.  She offers examples and suggestions that help bring meaning to our personal and collective lives.

We heard Tibetan monk and teacher, Tsoknyi Rinpoche’s teachings on love.

Sophie Strand’s poem on love, The Final Lesson.

We heard from spiritual teacher, Ram Dass’ teachings on loving awareness.

We drew from Turning to Face the Dark, a Global Oneness Project conversation between Rabbi Ariel Burger and Parker Palmer.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We practiced a number of ways to cultivate empathy for the more-than-human world.  Our amazing faculties of mind enabled us to imagine, feel, sense and move as if we were an other being.

Zen poet and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, invited us to imagine our bodies as rivers.

Poet Laura Grace Heldon described a Riverbank Ceremony in which we could whisper our secrets to the water.  She has a remarkable collection of writings from her experience  which “includes teaching nonviolence, writing collaborative poetry with nursing home residents [and] facilitating support groups for abuse survivors.”

We drew inspiration from Sophie Strand’s essay Kaleidoscopic Empathy.  She describes how we can imagine ourselves to be more-than-human beings.  In this way we might deepen care for our earthly kin.  Sophie’s publications “focus on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and ecology. But it would probably be more authentic to call her a neo-troubadour animist with a propensity to spin yarns that inevitably turn into love stories.”

Lisa Couturier’s poem, Inheritance, invites us to imagine ourselves as birds.  She asks what it would be like to inherit the inner knowing of how and where to migrate.  Lisa’s writings draw our hearts and minds to care for the natural world.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored what it means to be “relational beings” in the greater web of life.  Mindfulness practice helps us to open our hearts to our shared vulnerability and resilience.  Imagine, practicing reverence for life as simply as a standing tree photosynthesizing light.

These creative voices help us to reimagine a world that honors relational life:

Zen poet, Jane Hirshfield encourages us to embrace our vulnerability to realize our humanity.
Naturalist writer and teacher Robin Wall Kimmerer affirms the blessings of our natural world.  If only we could transform light like trees!
Native American poet Linda Hogan yearns to be held in light.  She imagines being deeply rooted as a tree sheltering unborn life.
Essayist and teacher Erin Rabke encourages to practice reverence in the ways we walk the Earth.
Herbalist and writer, Rosalee de la Foret, speaks of resilience and our own internal compass.
Natural World poet, Mary Oliver hears the language of trees inviting us to shine.

I invite you to step out of the stream of doing.  Enter the stream of being.  Sense how you are holding and being held in space, by gravity and Earth.  Allow your awareness to ease through your body, perhaps landing in an area, feeling and sensing there. Sensations might move you to take a deeper breath or sigh.

You can explore the many expressions of being alive through eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch.  The subtle energy is perhaps lively, steady, dull or bright.  

Sometimes an emotional quality surfaces. Can you be curious and open to the feeling? Thoughts may me threading their way through your experience. Can you hold them lightly without adding anything?  Here in the sacred space of our practice we have room for everything even what poet Jane Hirshfield describes as:

A joy, a depression,. . .  some momentary awareness com[ing] as an unexpected visitor. Even the anxious hardening of resistance . . . or the tenderness of unrequited longing . . . .

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored how we can bring mindfulness to how we speak and listen. We can begin by bringing awareness to the state our hearts and minds and our purpose in entering communication.  We can go deeper by contemplating the potential impact our words might have on our companion listener.  Equanimity can help us stay open to differences and caring about others’ concerns.  Finally,  compassion allows us to accept the mistakes we are likely to make in risking difficult conversations.

We heard Anne Hillman’s poem, Look With Uncertainty, from her collection Awakening the Energies of Love: Discovering Fire for the Second Time.  The poem is a “dare” to be human in our vulnerability and openness.

We heard from  Ursula Le Guin’s essay, Listening is Telling, fromm her collection The Wave in the Mind. This essay invites us to consider the power and the magic conjured by our words.  Speaking and listening can form an alchemical wholeness that brings the potential for transformation.

We heard Kamala Masters’ teachings about bringing mindfulness to communication in her interview, Get Happier Without Losing Your Edge. Kamala offers practical ways of getting clear about our intentions in speaking.  She shares her personal experience of using mindfulness phrases to maintain inner balance and openness.

We ended with Jeanne Lohmann’s poem, Invocation from her collection  Shaking the Tree. Her lyrical phrases invoke a sense of reverence and sensitivity about what we let fly in our use of language.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored expanding our idea of self to include all of nature.  We drew on loving imagination to feel and sense the experience of life as a tree and as a salmon.  These living beings naturally sustain life.  They evoke the wisdom of the ancient Tao. Their generosity “recall us to our common fate in the kinship of all creation.”

We heard from Rupi Kaur’s collection The Sun and Her Flowers.  Rupi writes and reads her poetry, performs Kirtan and classical Indian music.  Her work touches on themes of love, loss, trauma, healing, femininity, and migration.  You can listen to her moving TEDtalk, I’m Taking My Body Back.  She will be performing live at Seattle’s Paramount Theater on May 25th.

We heard Washington State Poet Laureate, Rena Priest’s poem, Cycloid, Focus, and Circleis.  Rena, a Lummi Native, writes and speaks about her reverence for the salmon.  She shares her aspirations to bring poetry to celebrate the gifts of our natural world in this AFAR article, The Pacific Northwest Through the Eyes of a Poet.

You can complement Rena’s offerings with this beautiful short documentary, Maiden of Deception Pass.  In this film, Samish Nation tribal members tell the story of the salmon maiden.  They collaborated with local community members, including carver Tracy Powell, to honor her with a story pole. The pole is carved from a 24 foot tall, five foot wide cedar log transported from Mt. Baker. The film is moving example of how strong hearted people worked to preserve the Samish culture.

We worked with environmental activist, Joanna Macy’s, life affirming principle of “the greening of the self.”  She encourages a shift from identifying as a separate self to a sense of inter-being.  She says “What we most need to do is to hear within ourselves the sounds of the Earth crying…”  You can find a filmed interview at  Kosmos Journal’s beautiful program, Climate Crisis as Spiritual Path.  Joanna is now 93 years old. Since her 30’s she has worked tirelessly on behalf of Earth sovereignty.

We heard an aphorism from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored embodiment and vulnerability.  These qualities can nourish the ground from which our compassion, empathy and courage can arise.  Like plants, we also embody a natural innocence and an impetus to grow.

We heard Tara Brach’s definition of “radical compassion.”  In her book, Radical Compassion: Learning to Love Yourself and Your World with the Practice of RAIN, Tara writes that it means including vulnerability of all life in our hearts. Tara offers helpful mindfulness practices that help students to bring inner resources of compassion, kindness and insight to the difficult feelings of fear, loss, and self-judgment. You can find a free study guide at the book’s link above.

We heard Innocence, from Linda Hogan’s 2014 poetry collection Dark, Sweet.  The poem describes the natural state of innocence we all share.  Linda’s simple phrases about gardening recognize our vulnerability. They describe how we grow into being and fullness.

We drew from Krista Tippett’s interview with poet David White:  The Conversational Nature of Reality in which he spoke to our essential vulnerability.  He describes it as an “ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state.”   When we can acknowledge the truth of our humanity – we also find our compassion, empathy and courage.

We ended with Mary Oliver’s poem, Messenger from her 2007 collection, Thirst. Mary’s words of wonder, gratitude and joy remind me of qualities that are sometimes overshadowed by our challenging times.  They give me the wanting to stay alive and engaged in the world.

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The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  In meditation, we focused on the experience of stillness in the body.  We experienced movement of body, heart and mind in the still space of kind attention.

Observing how life moves through us we can know impermanence, uncertainty and also our inter-relatedness. In time and the kinship of loving awareness, we may come to know what is needed. This is how we begin to work with what we are given.

We drew inspiration from Jane Hirshfield’s poem, Rebus. The poem is from her 2002 collection, Given Sugar, Given Salt.  It touches on how we respond to life and how we become our choices. It invites us to feel life’s sorrows.  Our only certainty is all is subject to change.   It invites us to enter life’s questions and at the same time enter each moment unadorned.

We also drew on Larry Kramer’s book, Insight Dialogue.  The book offers a relational and social understanding of traditional Buddhist teachings. Insight Dialogue involves  developing mindfulness and tranquility together. Students reflect on present moment experience with guidance from a topic such as change, kindness, death, or doubt. You can learn more about this relational practice at Larry’s web-site.

We ended with a from Alla Bozarth’s book, Lifelines: Threads of Grace through Seasons of Change. Alla is a poet, Episcopal priest and “soul caregiver.”

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