The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We practiced with the Earth and as the Earth today.  We explored the themes of deep time, earth stories and our bodies as earth bodies.

We began with Gregory Orr’s beautiful poem, This Is What Was Bequeathed Us.

Take a moment to watch Taian Lu’s beautiful animated film version of the poem.

We practiced Earth Breathing meditation inspired by Reggie Ray’s Tricycle Magazine article Touching Enlightenment: Digging Deep.

We drew inspiration from Geologist Marcia Bjornerud’s interview with Center for Humans and Nature journalist Anja Katina, Marcia describes us as temporal creatures. Marcia is the author of, Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World.  You can check out her book from the library or listen to her Seattle Town Hall talk for more inspiration.

We also heard from The Inner Landscape of Beauty, On Being’s last interview with poet philosopher John O’Donohue.  He died in January of 2008.  This is a wonderful discussion of the human spirit and how we come to know our essence by slowing down enough to allow our souls to be revealed.

We ended with Valerie Hope Cherrin’s poem Earth Dream Body.  Valerie guides mindful movement to help client’s find “ease in your body . . . joy in your heart . . . peace in your mind and  beauty in your soul.”

Guided Reflection

Let’s begin by hearing Gregory Orr’s poem, This Is What Was Bequeathed Us.

Listen
This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.
No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.
No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.
No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.
That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

We can take a few moments and reflect on what has been bequeathed us . . . What gifts of winter have you been given? The winter trees letting go their leaves and standing . . . almost inviting us to turn inward . . . to enter stillness. . . No other world than this one . . . right here . . . We can think about the meaning and the purpose of our circle . . . We can feel our bodies . . . the earth beneath us and open to the song that will sing us awake . . .

Our embodied awareness allows us to deeply appreciate the changing nature of all life . . . the changing nature of time . . . Our awareness allows us to experience ourselves as creatures of the earth and time . . .  Geologist Marcia Bjornerud’s describes us as temporal creatures.  She talks about how our awareness of timefulness changes our relationship to nature: 

. . . Everything in Nature is full of the work of time. Everything is evolving and changing, and our failure to embrace that causes all kinds of ills, ranging from neuroses about our own aging process to environmental problems that could have been avoided if people just had had the capacity to think on [longer] time scales and recognize the potential implications of our actions.

Right now we can consider how this awareness of deep time; this sense of timefulness might change our lives.  Can our creative imaginations take us back to earth stories?  Her stories are told by the ever changing expression of fire and rock and air beginning 4.6 billion years ago.  The earth’s core is as hot as the surface of the sun!  Imagine this white heat burning 1800 miles below our feet!  The earth’s crust is made up of huge blocks of moving rock . . . moving lands in deep time.  In between the core and the crust is a hot green mantle whose slow currents push the surface rock.  The Earth’s waters make life possible.  

Can we see the earth, as Marcia does, having had a childhood, an adolescence, a middle age?   Can our imaginations take us forward to the aging earth our children will call home?  Can we sense our relatedness?  Can this relatedness move us toward deeper empathy for life? Right now we feel our breathing . . . our bodies gently moving . . . drawing in and releasing out . . . Can we also sense the earth breathing . . . gently moving . . . expanding and contracting . . . earth waters offering themselves to the sun . . . we are part of it all . . . we are an expression of it all . . . 

In his book, Beauty, poet philosopher John O’Donohue writes:

The ancient rhythms of the earth have insinuated themselves into the rhythms of the human heart. The earth is not outside us; it is within: the clay from where the tree of the body grows.

In his last On Being interview, The Inner Landscape of Beauty, he suggests:  

. . . connecting to the elemental can be a way of coming into rhythm with the universe.  . . . And I think when you slow it down, then you find your rhythm. And when you come into rhythm, then you come into a different kind of time. . . . I think that if you take time . . .  as . . . the parent or mother of presence, then you see that in the world of spirit, time behaves differently . . .

Right now we can reflect on our own revelations of earth aliveness . . . the times we’ve come into rhythm with the universe . . . the moments in which we’ve experienced a different kind of time. . . 

Earth Dream Body by Valerie Hope Cherrin

You Are a Dream of the Earth
Remember, Earth has Dreamed you into Being.
Given you this EarthDreamBody.
Her longing to roam around on two feet, conscious of herself,
is fulfilled in your very aliveness.
Feel her rivers your veins,
her air your lungs,
her rocks and stones your bones,
her animal nature your flesh and muscle.
Deep fiery volcanic stirrings your gut.
She has dreamed you into being and you are bound to her by the force of love.
Your sweet life given to you by eons of creation and your only job here is remembering who you really are; a product of love more powerful than you can imagine.
Honor your mother, Earth. Remember and hold her love for you in the very core of your being for these few short breaths of aliveness.
When your time is done, your body will return to give more life.
Remember, Earth is dreaming you.
Filled and sourced by love.
Created to witness the beauty of creation.
Stand in this each day.
This is your task, to reawaken to the love that is patiently waiting for you in your EarthDreamBody.