The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. This week we explored how our minds are so much more than our brains. We use the world to think. We include feelings and movements of our bodies, the minds of others and our environments in our extended minds. Mindfulness can help us to appreciate this inter-related network of which we are a part. Mindful awareness can guide us to an experience of wholeness. It can helps us accept ourselves and each other unconditionally.
We drew from Annie Murphy Paul’s book, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain. Annie explains that “thought happens not only inside the skull but out in the world, too; it’s an act of continuous assembly and reassembly that draws on resources external to the brain. . . . the capacity to think well — that is, to be intelligent — is not a fixed property of the individual but rather a shifting state that is dependent on access to extra-neural resources and the knowledge of how to use them.” I think we can develop our thinking minds with mindfulness.
We heard John Welwood’s poem about our basic goodness. John was an transpersonal psychologist. His work integrated Eastern spiritual wisdom with Western psychology. His teachings and writings centered around relationship as a spiritual path. You can find his writings and some of his teachings on his web-site.
Guided Reflection
Welcome. During the past few weeks I’ve been struggling with anxiety. So I’ve been studying how the mind works. There is growing new research that challenges our understanding that thinking takes place only inside the brain. In her book, The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain, Annie Murphy Paul writes:
Thinking outside the brain means skillfully engaging entities external to our heads — the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people around us — drawing them into our own mental processes. By reaching beyond the brain to recruit these “extra-neural” resources, we are able to focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively — to entertain ideas that would be literally unthinkable by the brain alone.
Reading her book helped me to recognize my tendency to navigate the world with my own brain. I am exploring my extended mind by slowing down to receive the messages my body is sending me. I am including the hearts and minds of the people that I love, my friends, even my community in my extended mind. I’m including other human and more than human beings, members of the natural world who I love so much.
These ideas prompted me to ask for help when struggling with interpersonal dilemmas and problem solving. When I asked for compassionate listening, my listening partner heard me. When I asked for help with brainstorming I felt empathy and hope that together we could move toward beneficial solutions. Asking for help really helped.
Slowing down long enough enabled me to truly take in more than human life. I was blessed with an amazing experience while hiking this week. Climbing up a ridge and traversing a high path on Tiger Mtn. I was stopped. I started hearing the whisperings of something – at first I thought it was rain – but then suddenly an incredible fall of hundreds of maple leaves floated down all around me. They were all ready to let go and gently slowly waft down to earth. It was utterly magical to experience the soft landing of life becoming compost for new life. I was witnessing a living wisdom.
I sensed a Life force so expansive and inclusive. A force that I could trust and learn from. I noticed that thinking started to take me out of this experience of wonder and I heard a mantra: “Receive what Earth is giving you now.” There was such happiness in letting go without struggle like the maple leaves. We are whole and we are also part of a greater wholeness. Extended mind. Extended heart.
Psychotherapist John Welwood worked to help people discover how:
. . . to be unconditional with themselves—to welcome their experience and hold it with understanding and compassion, whether or not they like it at any given moment.
John worked from the belief in our basic goodness. He believed our goodness is unconditionally wholesome because it is intrinsically attuned to reality. Here is one of his encouraging poems that speaks to my heart:
Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out,
Touch in,
Let go.
All of you is holy. You are already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, touch in, let go. We are whole and we are also part of a greater wholeness.
I invite you to open to this sense of wholeness in our mindfulness practice today. This is a wholeness that we share. This is a wholeness that includes the more-than-human world. A wholeness that is compassionate and wise. A wholeness in which we can ask for and receive help when we need it. Meditation can help us to relax and let go into wholeness. We can receive what we are given, we can receive our breath, our body sensations and we can receive ourselves unconditionally.
I invite you to find a posture that supports your being in this moment. Sitting on the ground, in a chair or lying down. Create a posture that enables you to receive this support. A posture of caring presence to this experience, moment by moment. Eyes can be open or closed. You might take a few deep, slow breaths, slow enough so it’s comfortable for you. Relax and allow your being to settle with the out-flowing breath.
If it’s easy you could extend the exhale a bit, drawing out the release, the settling in the body.
Notice how your breath returns to itself. Allow the exhale to help you settle into being here in your body. See if you can let go into a sense of being grounded and supported. You might notice those points of contact with Earth’s body. The warmth of your hands resting in your lap. This support might help you to open your heart to who you are, right now. Slow down so you can settle: being right here, inside you, around you.
See if you can allow the thinking mind to relax as you exhale. Maybe you can relax into your own caring. Your caring presence might ease the thinking mind. Thoughts can come and you can let them go like the maple leaves ready to waft away on currents of air. You might ease into some of the best qualities of yourself. Peace. Calm. Settle into a way of being in which there’s nothing wrong with you. As tension surfaces invite it to relax into the warmth of your caring attention.
Caring attention allows awareness of body sensations to give you embodied experience. Embodied experience gives rise to an intuitive wisdom that supports your well being. You might feel your breathing with care, accepting your breath along with whatever arises with a sense of equanimity. Here, in this space of being, you can love and care. You can make room and time to listen deeply receiving each breath, each sensation, each thought and then letting it go.
If you find your mind drifting off you might offer this moment to your heart, to your breath, staying present and receiving your heart’s healing. The path of deep peace and freedom can be your path. Stay present. Offer yourself the love, the care that you might offer a friend or family member in need of healing and support. You might imagine this person coming to you for listening or caring, for your support. You can offer your accepting heart and mind, with a sense of equanimity. This unconditional presence can help you to be a refuge for others, someone who is safe for people. You can support them to relax their deepest places of tension and holding. Together we can remember that:
. . . the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out,
Touch in,
Let go.