The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. In today’s class we explored the felt sense of being.  Slowing time we can touch the Sacred and realize ourselves as inseparable from the universe.   In realizing our selves as mystery, we open the door to awe and wonder.

We drew inspiration from  the end of  Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book the Five Invitations.

The 5th invitation to cultivate “don’t know mind” explores the mystery being and the Sacred.

We heard Anne Hillman’s poem, We Look with Uncertainty. The poem, 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.

Guided Reflection

Welcome.  Last week we explored what it is like to be a grieving body.  Bringing loving awareness can help us attune to grief’s suffering. Consistent loving attention can help us to integrate our body’s response to loss.  Each of us must find our ways of offering consistent loving attention.

I’ve been struggling to find balance between bearing witness and feeling so much grief.  Last week I woke from a dream in which I was crying.  In the dream, I sorrowed over watching the reckless pollution of Phang Nga Bay off the west coast of Thailand.  In my dream people were spraying industrial waste over one of the spectacular limestone karst rock formations that jut up out of the sea. The dream was so vivid; I kept replaying it in my mind.  It seemed like something sacred was being destroyed. 

The lingering heaviness in my heart motivated me to re-examine the activities of my daily life.  How much of my time is spent reacting, distracted or lost in habit?  As an experiment I logged everything I did one day.  Spontaneously, I started bringing mindfulness to ordinary tasks.  I limited the amount of news I consumed.  I tried to be more present with the people around me.  I sought out more social connection.  I began noticing the beauty in living and non-living things in our environment. My experience of time grew more intimate.  I noticed life’s fragility and impermanence.  A sense of the Sacred seemed to arise in the way I was relating to the world around me.  

Frank Ostaseski writes:

The Sacred has always existed. Everything is saturated with it.  It is the nature of reality.  . . . most of the time, we walk around in the Sacred world with ordinary vision.  . . . as though we are color blind . . . we don’t always perceive . . . the Sacred.  We don’t appreciate the full breadth of its beauty.  We see in a conditioned way, staying on the surface of life.  When we pay attention . . we realize that the Sacred reveals itself continuously.  

This week I changed my experience of time and found an inner silence:  Slowing time to make tea.  Stepping off the trail to be swallowed by a blossoming coltsfoot.  Gazing up at the long beards of usnea lichen hanging from old trees.  Poet Jane Hirshfield describes these magical life forms as  “the pale green chemists of air, change [the] nitrogen-unusable into nitrogen-usable.”  Yes the mystery.  Yes the sacred revealed itself.  Frank suggests that  silence is a natural response to the  Sacred no matter where it appears:  “Through silence, we become aware the beauty, the unity and the depth of the Sacred that is always around us and within us.”

Anne Hillman’s poem, Looking with Uncertainty, affirms this mystery of life.  She suggests:

We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.

So here we are daring to be human and vulnerable.  In our practice we can experience the “softer, more permeable aliveness which is every moment . . . “  I invite you to welcome your whole self to this moment.  Take a deep breath in.  . Feel its energy within and then let it go to feel a growing stillness. Give yourself over to Earth.  Earth’s abiding support; its presence touching each moment of life.  

Perhaps we can feel what is Sacred right now. We need only pause.  Breathe. Attend to what is revealed in the pause.  How do you receive this gift of time?  The simple and profound felt sense of being.  The inner experience of being. Consciousness: a mystery.

You might feel those areas that feel solid:  the rounded pelvis settling on Earth’s body;  the hips’ deep capsules;  strong thigh bones;  hinged knees;  lower legs meeting ankle bones and feet.  You might feel the pulse and vibration in the soft tissues cushioning these areas.  

The river bed of the spine at center.  Basket of ribs holding lungs and heart.  The gentle filling and emptying of breath.  Heart beating.  Organs moving energy throughout the body.  Branching shoulders;  upper arms; hinged elbows; lower arms meeting wrists and hands.  You might feel the subtlest traces of movement potential; brain readying hands.

The rounded heaviness of head.  Hard bones holding brain. The soft tissues of eyes, ears, nose and tongue.  Sense organs window inner and outer world.  

Sensing whole body;  the inner experience of being.  You might intuit arising and passing away of conscious experiences.  The dance of ever changing molecules expressing our very being as nature.  Is it possible to truly receive the offerings of clouds and rain? Earth and trees.  In the fullness of time, we might recognize them in ourselves – part of our very being.  Sacred, here with us and within us.

You might recall moments of touching the Sacred.  Times when you’ve stood in reverence, in stillness, in nature, in art, in music.  Touching a beloved.  Holding a newborn.  Perhaps you sought it out or encountered it in surprise. Can you remember your response to encountering something holy in life?  How does your encounter continue to live inside you?

You might experience a deep stillness – every day momentum quiet.  No urge to do, to control;  just like with the out-breath we are released into non-doing.  What is it like to rest inside life’s constant change?  To be sustained by the universe?  Each moment of consciousness precious. Like the wave is to the ocean, we arise from the universe.  Not separate and apart.  Intimate.  Our very being expression an expression of nature.  Our very consciousness: the great mystery.  “A softer more permeable aliveness which is every moment . . something new . . being born in us. . . . We stand . . . vulnerable to the beauty of existence.  Learning to love.”