The Yogabliss on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored walking the path of the Middle Way.  This is the practice of moderation which we develop by working with our aversion and craving. With relaxed awareness we can observe and feel the underlying energy of what compels us to lose our balance.   We bring compassionate awareness to our inner struggles.  Little by little we deepen our capacity to be present with difficulties.  We become more able to offer a compassionate response to our circumstances.

We drew inspiration from our recently named 24th U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limon.  You can hear her discuss her wonderful work in her On Being interview with Krista Tippett:  To Be Made Whole.

Guided Reflection

Welcome. Take a few deep breaths.  Relax whatever you can.  As you feel your breathing extend a welcome to each breath.   Each mindful breath can be an affirmation of  intimacy:  intimacy with yourself,  intimacy with life.  You can feel breathing nourishing you. You can feel the outflowing breath affirming the life of other beings.

As we continue this simple practice we come to know, through direct experience, that we can only fill ourselves so much, we only truly need that which sustains us. The life of each breath is enough. We know we have to let go in order to be filled again. Feel the natural release as we empty.  The emptying just as vital as the filling. 

Feel the affects of gravity and time.  They create a container for our experience. A place where our outer edges meet the world. Our skin wraps around soft tissues.  One enveloping container holds another and then another deeper still down to the smallest cells.  All are intelligent and self organizing. 

Our bodies hold the space for surfacing mind states, emotions and the awareness that is present and aware of these arising expressions of life.  The compassionate awareness that knows there is energy and sensation.  There are emotions and thought.  It can know aversion and craving.  What a wondrous consciousness!

We come together to practice mindfulness.  I invite you to reflect a few moments on your intention in practicing mindfulness.  Relax and let there be some space for answers to surface in your awareness.  It’s just about what is true for you right now.  It will change and you can revisit this query again.

Mindfulness has also been described as the Middle Way.  It is the practice of moderation which we develop by working with our aversion and craving. On this middle path – this path of mindfulness – we learn to  affirm and feel the fullness of life.  We can realize the fullness of life by cultivating awareness.  We become aware of our cravings, how they arise and how we express them.  With relaxed awareness we can observe and feel the underlying energy of what compels us to lose our balance.  

The energy of craving is often expressed as a need for control. As we examine this need we recognize fear.  Fear of losing control.  Fear of the impermanence and the uncertainty of life.  Our aspiration is to bring compassionate awareness to whatever is arising in moment to moment experience.  We can develop the capacity to feel the raw experience of fear.  We can experience how it emerges in our bodies as sensation, emotion and thought.  And we can be present for how it changes.

In her writings about uncertainty, the Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron says  more people are afraid of uncertainty than physical pain.  I invite you to reflect a moment about the uncertainty in your day to day life.  How do you relate to it?  Is there an urge to be busy?  Is there a sense of anxiety?  Perhaps you can bring to mind the uncertainties that may trouble you right now.  Can you locate the energy of the experience of them in your body?  Can you be with the sensation for a time?  Is there an underlying emotion fueling sensation?  Can you name it?  If possible, can you hold this experience with loving awareness and compassion?

We can think of this as the practice of unconditional friendship with ourselves. Can we offer unconditional friendship to our very human fears?  When we indulge in our fears we often abandon ourselves. We get so scared we try to numb ourselves in any number of ways.  We might gratify unhealthy impulses or shut down in familiar ways that leave us feeling empty.  

In our practice of mindfulness we aspire not to abandon ourselves when we get scared.   We can come to know what it feels like when we start abandoning ourselves.  As we start to head in that direction, we might recognize when we start leaving our body.  When we feel the charge of a trigger it becomes a mindfulness bell.  The bell is sounding the need for self-care.  We slow things down so we can feel what’s happening in our bodies.  One by one we recognize and name sensations, emotions, thoughts.  We create space and time in which to relate to the experience with loving, compassionate awareness.

Why keep meditating? Why still practicing?   Maybe we practice so we can turn towards suffering.  Maybe we practice so our first response will be the compassionate response, the creative response.

Our recently appointed 24th Poet Laureate Ada Simon said her work:

 . . . is very much about learning to find a home and a sense of belonging in a world where being at peace is actually frowned upon. Where being at ease is not okay. . . .  It’s actually about fostering yourself in the sun, in the right place, creating the right habitat. And the right habitat for that, for all human flourishing, is for us to begin with a sense of belonging, with a sense of ease, with a sense that even though we are desirous and even though we want all of these things, right now, being alive, being human is enough. That’s really hard.

Here is the inspiration and hope of her poem, Dead Stars:

Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing.
Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us.
Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels
so mute it’s almost in another year.

I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.

We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out
the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full
of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—

to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward
what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.
We’ve come this far, survived this much. What

would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No.
No, to the rising tides.

Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?

What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain

for the safety of others, for earth,
if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,

if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big
people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,

rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?