The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored how the inner light of our awareness can help light our way through darkness. Our seeds of potential open and grow toward the light.

We move through this manifest world only in relation.  We change each other and in so doing we we are changed.

We heard Robert Penn Warren’s poem, the Heart of Autumn.  He describes the intimate and uplifting experience of taking in wild geese migration.  He describes how, unquestioning, they follow paths across the sky.  We struggle with knowing ourselves – and still – can lift our gaze and feel joy.

We drew from Tracy Wulfers’ Kosmos Journal essay, Meeting Mugwort.  She draws from Earth Wisdom by encouraging us to open, relax our protection so that we can grow.  In opening we can offer our life’s potential to the world.

We hard David Budbill’s ode to All of Us.  In the simplest lines he describes how we are expressions of what Taoists call the ten thousand things.  We come to being from the undifferentiated in relation to one another:  human and more than human beings.

Relaxed Reflection

We are moving toward the heart of autumn.  In the space and time we give ourselves we can abide in darkness and breathe. Even the smallest glimmers of awareness can light the path.  Here we bring our lights together.  We breathe calmly and steadily and the long view emerges. We can appreciate the change and transformation continues.  We are part of a much bigger story.  

Bring breath or body sensations to the center of your awareness.  Sense your body’s natural rhythm and movement.  Sense brief moments of stillness.  Let them stretch out into time.  Observe the play of sensations, emotions and thoughts arise.  Let what’s true for you begin to emerge.  Breathe and notice how you meet what’s real for you. Emotions, thoughts, a sense of longing or restlessness:  all expressions of our animal being. We all need safety, satisfaction, connection. Feeling safe we can let down our guard. When we’re satisfied we can enjoy contentment. Feeling connection we can trust. We can grow toward the light of what we value and what sustains us.

We can also know that we are bound together in these truths.  When we recognize what matters most we touch the heart of our longing.  We can feel  beyond a particular object, person, place or thing.  A deeper value is something that matters to all of us – humans and more than humans.   It’s something we navigate by: hope, trust, peace,  love. What do you value most?

We are relational beings.  What we yearn for most deeply can bring us together.  In recognizing our relatedness – understanding our shared needs – we might find ourselves more inclined to forgive.  We might find our way together.  As Robert Penn Warren describes in his poem:

Heart of Autumn
Wind finds the northwest gap, fall comes.
Today, under gray cloud-scud and over gray
Wind-flicker of forest, in perfect formation, wild geese
Head for a land of warm water, the boom, the lead pellet.
Some crumple in air, fall. Some stagger, recover control,
Then take the last glide for a far glint of water. None
Knows what has happened. Now, today, watching
How tirelessly V upon V arrows the season’s logic,
Do I know my own story? At least, they know
When the hour comes for the great wind-beat. Sky-strider,
Star-strider–they rise, and the imperial utterance,
Which cries out for distance, quivers in the wheeling sky.
That much they know, and in their nature know
The path of pathlessness, with all the joy
Of destiny fulfilling its own name.
I have known time and distance, but not why I am here.
Path of logic, path of folly, all
The same–and I stand, my face lifted now skyward,
Hearing the high beat, my arms outstretched in the tingling
Process of transformation, and soon tough legs,
With folded feet, trail in the sounding vacuum of passage,
And my heart is impacted with a fierce impulse
To unwordable utterance–
Toward sunset, at a great height.

Here in the heart of autumn we can know what it is to lift our gaze – open our arms wide – feel “the tingling process of transformation.”  We can let our hearts feel the “fierce impulse of unwordable utterance.”  We can move forward together.

We are resting humbly on the ground of being.  The Latin root for humble is the same as humus:  Earth.  We rest, at ease, opening to Earth Wisdom.  Our very nature includes the smelly, rich fertile, expressions of life.  This is the earthy ground from which our deeper truths emerge.  We create the conditions in which our Earth Wisdom grows.  We learn what matters most to us.  We learn our sense of wholeness depends on others.   Others who sometimes delight and at other times disappoint.  

In her Kosmos Journal essay, Meeting Mugwort, Tracy Wulfers writes:

We are each like individual seeds—a packet of potential enclosed in a hard shell. The outer seed coat protects the embryo until conditions are favorable for germination. But this protection is also a form of isolation. We have to shed our separateness before we can push our roots into the soil and join the ancient network of our ancestors.

Many seeds need prodding before they’re willing to give up the safety of their shells. Some must survive fire, freezing or floods before they’re ready to let go and germinate. The earth doesn’t coddle her children. Perhaps she is trying to tell us conditions are favorable, and it’s time to reconnect and grow.

Earth Wisdom – the creative energy of life – courses through human and more than human beings.  We can experience it as we “shed our separateness.” We can “reconnect and grow’ by living with curiosity and care.   We intuit Earth Wisdom with our creative imagination.  Our imagination can take us outside ourselves in meeting each other and the world. We are fully human in relation to all beings.

We are free in the ways we relate to what life brings us.  We are free to conjure the magic of inter-being.  We are free to cultivate the seeds of our potential: the inner resources to sustain this magical network of life.   What resonates with your heart as I list these resources:  compassion . . . courage . . . gratitude . . . motivation . . . openness . . . . . . caring . . . imagination?  What inner resources speak to your heart?   These are gifts we can bring to the world.  They might enable us to meet a tree or a see a bird; to hear the honking of geese and care for their needs. 

Here is poet David Budbill’s beautiful ode to:

All of Us
Out of the undifferentiated Tao
come the ten thousand things:
the bug in the bird’s mouth,
the bird in the tree,
the tree outside the window,
the window beyond the chair,
the chair in the room,
the man in the chair
who has just risen from the chair
and walked across the room
to look out the window
at the bird in the tree
with the bug in its mouth.
See how all of us,
at our own and different speeds,
return to the Tao.
Oh, let us all
sing praises now for all of us,
so briefly here.

We – out of the undifferentiated Tao – are expressions of the ten thousand things. All of us.  We move through the manifest world only in relation – we change each other only in the process of being changed.