Our Moving into Meditation class is nearing the end of  Frank Ostaseski’s wonderful book the Five Invitations.  The book offers some fundamental principles for living a conscious life and for serving others who are nearing life’s end.  In today’s class we explored the 5th invitation to cultivate “don’t know mind.”  Two essential human experiences – intimacy and vulnerability – characterize this expression of mind.  I believe our willingness to be so fully human is also an expression of love. 

Guided Meditation

Welcome to this moment . . . feel being . . . breathing . . . resting . . . releasing . . . any preoccupation other than this moment . . . this breath . . .  coming closer . . . experiencing intimacy . . .  living right here . . . we can recognize our belonging . . . as simple . . . as close as this in-breath . . . this out-breath . . . awakening this this very life . . .  this now. . . . intimately connecting . . . 

We are slowing down . . . long enough to listen . . . long enough to hear the voice within . . . that speaks from the heart and the mind that senses what is needed and feels what is true . . .  Here we are . . . “presencing” . . . carefully feeling our way . . . moment by moment.  When we are close enough to be intimate with our living experience we don’t have to know anything . . . we are opening again and again to what is possible . . . beyond old habits of thinking . . . We open to a wider – perhaps boundless view.  In this spaciousness we can open to what arises.  

Frank O. writes:

At the deepest level of intimacy, subject and object fall away.  There are no longer any hard and fixed boundaries.  “I” am not intimate with “you.” Our separateness dissolves.  We experience undefended openness, complete union.  This is the real heart and beauty of don’t know mind. . . . 

When we are willing to surrender our knowing, our preconceived ideas we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.  Meditation teacher and writer, Tara Brach, writes of of intimacy and vulnerability as a passageway:

We each live with uncertainty and the fear of rejection and loss, and we each are conditioned to avoid feeling or expressing that vulnerability. Yet intimacy with this un-lived life is the gateway to connecting authentically with others, full aliveness and spiritual realization. 

Poet David Whyte’s Meditation on Vulnerability:

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. . . . 

How do we meet the vulnerability in our selves and in others?  

Frank O.  encourages us to listen and get out of our own way:

A willingness to not know is, at times, our greatest asset.  The degree to which we are able to live in this ever fresh moment – that’s the measure of our ability to be of real service . . . Not knowing is a gateway to a deeper appreciation of the potency of our basic nature, which cannot be known by the conceptual mind alone.  It takes us beyond our ordinary way of thinking and seeing things, into intimacy with this very moment.  

Right now we can recall times of great uncertainty . . . how they rippled the smooth waters of knowing in our lives . . . perhaps as great waves or even as shaky ground. . . . awakening us with feeling . . . perhaps vulnerability . . . 

How do we respond to these awakenings?  Do we struggle with our desire for security?  Did we cling to the familiar?  How can we keep the ground from moving . . the wind from blowing . . the water from flowing?

Frank O. describes:

. . . our attempts to make ourselves solid, separate things opposes the way reality works.  When we mistakenly attempt to pull ourselves out of the river of change, we wind up feeling increasingly alone, isolated and afraid.  This causes a great deal of suffering . . . In the end, pursuing security leaves us feeling even more insecure. . . . We are in a fight against nature. . . Reality cannot be mapped.  It is beyond description or any one view.  It is not a single static truth, but rather an endless unfolding mystery.  It is alive, dynamic and constantly being expressed through form and formlessness.  

Here we are sitting still together . . . and also sensing the endless unfolding mystery.  Aware of sensations . . . fully in the present moment . . . meeting whatever arises . . . we clearly see how everything is constantly changing . . . no separate self causing sensations to arise . . . they arise and pass on their own . . . As we attend to our living body we experience belonging to this natural world.  Our ever changing, moving energies . . . our very being . . . part of the great dance.  

With whom and with what are we most intimate?  Not knowing is most intimate.

In his poem “Hokusai Says,” Ken Keyes guides us on this path of seeing aliveness and, with kindness, letting be:

It matters that you care.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you…
Look, Feel, let life take you
By the hand.
Let life live through you.

I feel so blessed by your presence in our practice.  I feel live moving through our circle – taking us by hands and hearts.