The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored the experience of befriending:  ourselves and others.  Mindful presence makes befriending possible.  Truly listening is loving.  We have the possibility of learning what is needed in the moment.  We have the opportunity to respond with kindness, patience and understanding:  what the world needs now and has always needed.

We drew inspiration from poet and teacher David Whyte.  We heard a few paragraphs from his essay on Courage from the book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.  I think David speaks to the courage we express in our willingness to care, to stay engaged with life and to respond to what is needed when we can.

We heard Jane O’Shea’s poem I’ve Come to Listen. The poem is from her collection Follow Yourself Home.  Not surprisingly Jane spends some of her time “teaching people how to have effective conversation.”  I enjoy the poem because the simple lines read like a healing mantra.

We ended with Parker Palmer’s poem Everything Falls Away.  Parker posted this poem on Facebook page in 2020.  One of his latest books is On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old. He writes compassionately from his experience of being “on the brink of everything” as he navigates elderhood.  I think he speaks about befriending when he writes: “The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around -everything- we know ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy.

Relaxed Reflection

In our practice we are making the gift of showing up.  We show up for ourselves.  We show up for each other.  You might notice the gentle rhythm of breathing or the sensations in your hands.  You might open to the experience of hearing.  As you notice areas of tension in the body, can you acknowledge them for a moment? Perhaps you can place a warm hand there; invite them to ease. As you notice feelings in your heart, can you be with them?  Can there be a sense of tenderness? As you notice states of mind, can you recognize them?  Can there be curiosity and care?  What is it like to open to what is true for you today? 

In the compassionate space of practice everything is welcome.  We don’t have to do or fix.  We don’t have to judge or solve.   We are encouraged to gently be with what arises. Every now and then, we take a deeper breath as needed.

We can open our eyes and look about as needed.  What helps to bring comfort, ease, kindness, the nurturing qualities that may be needed?  

Our practice is about befriending ourselves and befriending others.  Right now you can reflect on the last time you experienced the joy or the warmth of sharing with someone:  the exchange of attention, time, understanding, vulnerability. What was it like?  How did it feel?  

Perhaps no nurturing quality or no person comes to mind. Perhaps there is fear, pain or sorrow.  Perhaps there is confusion, heaviness or numbness.  If there is, see if you can receive the sound of my voice or feel the sensations of Earth supporting your body.  Sense the presence of others in this practice. You can know you are not alone.   

Each of our hearts form this circle of caring.  Take a moment to consider what drew you here today. Can you sense this quiet connection as each of us takes time to be present?  We slow down to bring kindness to the truth of our moment to moment experience.  What is it like to feel the energy of this deeper intention of showing up?  What is it like to  strengthen the willingness to be present?  What is it like to respond to life in this moment with what’s needed?  Keeping this question alive brings our practice into the world.  We can share this question together.  Perhaps we can answer this question together. 

Essayist David Whyte wrote:

. . . only slowly do we learn what we really care about, and allow our outer life to be realigned in that gravitational pull; with maturity that robust vulnerability comes to feel like the only necessary way forward, the only real invitation and the surest, safest ground from which to step. On the inside we come to know who and what and how we love and what we can do to deepen that love  . . .

Perhaps we are deepening that love right now.  In her poem, I’ve Come to Listen, Poet Jane O’Shea’s simple words affirm the pull that draws us to life.

I’ve come to listen
Even when it’s hard

I’ve still come to listen
. . .

Even when I forget
and fill the listening
with my own words
I’ve still come to listen

Even when I’m unsure of the silence
I’ve still come to listen
. . .

To listen carefully
so my feet can mind the earth
And my heart can hear those hushed voices
that bring me back to here
So I can hear past my own thoughts
to distinguish you from me

Enough of my words
I’ve come to listen
. . .

Mindfulness can become heartfulness in meditation and in daily life.  In meditation we develop self awareness and the wisdom to know when we are out of balance, when we need help.  In other moments we can recognize the inner resources we can offer the world. The qualities of caring, curiosity, compassion and the willingness to help make our relational life possible.  We hear voices that struggle to be heard.  We have the difficult conversations of grieving and healing, reconciliation and repair.  

Again from David Whyte:

Courage is what love looks like when tested by the simple everyday necessities of being alive. . . .To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.

Sometimes love looks like calling for help.  Sometimes it looks like courage.  Our practice offers us the opportunity of knowing what is true. Sometimes our friends help us follow that truth.  In his poem, Everything Falls Away, poet Parker Palmer describes this journey:

Sooner or later, everything falls away.
You, the work you’ve done, your successes,
large and small, your failures, too. Those
moments when you were light, alongside
the times you became one with the night.
The friends, the people you loved
who loved you, those who might have wished
you ill, none of this is forever. All of it is
soon to go, or going, or long gone.

Everything falls away, except the thread
you’ve followed, unknowing, all along.
The thread that strings together all you’ve
been and done, the thread you didn’t know
you were tracking until, toward the end,
you see that the thread is what stays
as everything else falls away.

Follow that thread as far as you can and
you’ll find that it does not end, but weaves
into the unimaginable vastness of life. Your
life never was the solo turn it seemed to be.
It was always part of the great weave of
nature and humanity, an immensity we
come to know only as we follow our own
small threads to the place where they
merge with the boundless whole.

Each of our threads runs its course, then
joins in life together. This magnificent tapestry –
this masterpiece in which we live forever.