The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We cultivated wonder and gratefulness. We imagined living our lives as a sacred pilgrimage. We considered what our inner compass would look like: how we might navigate the rest of our days with intention, letting go of what we no longer need and letting in the guidance and resources we will need to make the journey. A pilgrimage often involves solitude and silence, contemplative states that enable us to hear our hearts speak. May our heart’s wisdom can support us through the sorrows and wonders along the path.
We drew inspiration from Grateful Living’s Live Your Life As a Sacred Pilgrimage: A 5-Day Practice. The program is a gratefulness practice that offers a guided pilgrimage of the heart.
We heard John O’Donohue’s poem, For the Traveler. The poem is an encouragement and a blessing. When we travel we experience a new aloneness and a new silence. In the silence we can hear our heart speak. We are encouraged to venture into the unknown and to allow ourselves to be changed by the experience. He blesses us with a homecoming in which we will live our lives to the fullest.
Guided Reflection
Last week we connected with heart wisdom in the practice of gratefulness. Mark Nepo suggests that wisdom arises when we recognize the preciousness and wonder of life. He urges readers to cultivate wonder by affirming the “unseeable thread” that holds all life together. We can also think of heart wisdom as our inner knowing. Ram Das called it loving awareness. It’s that part of ourselves that recognizes when it’s time to pause, look and listen. In these moments we can tune into gratitude and wonder. We can also recognize the painful ways we move through the world. We can open to the grace of letting go and letting be.
Many of us are living through our later years. Our life’s horizon is drawing nearer. The creators at Grateful Living propose that we envision the rest of our lives as a sacred pilgrimage. They suggest that:
A sacred pilgrimage is made with intention and preparation. It emerges from some kind of yearning — for meaning-making or healing, soul-searching or adventure. It includes an openness to change, perhaps even a longing for it. Even though we know that the road will shift beneath our feet, a pilgrimage is most often begun with a specific destination in mind.”
Let’s tune into our heart’s wisdom to explore how we want to journey through the precious years we have left to us. In his poem For the Traveler John O’Donohue writes:
. . .
When you travel,
Anew silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
. . .
I invite you to listen for what your heart would love to say today. Let’s begin by settling. Adjust your posture so you can be relaxed and alert. Take some deep relaxing breaths. Once you feel settled cultivate steadiness of attention by being mindful of your breath or sensations. While you steady your attention you can also allow all the other experiences you may be aware of – sounds, thoughts, feelings – to be in the background of your awareness. Take some time to steady yourself in this way.
Now expand mindfulness to include the stronger waves of experience – those that are pulling at your attention. When a compelling emotion or thought arises, shift your attention to receive this experience. Allow it to be in loving awareness. When the experience begins to fade or you’re at ease with it, return your attention to the breath or sensation. Mindfulness can alternate with attention on the breath and body or with other experiences as they arise.
In time you might notice the spacious quality of loving awareness. Loving awareness can hold the present moment and the hopes and visions we have for our lives. I invite you to imagine your life as a sacred pilgrimage. Imagine the inner compass that will guide you. Let your hopes and intentions for the next phase of your life’s journey be your north. What are you traveling toward? Is it healing, a quality of being or another vision? When something arises name it simply. One or two words.
To the south, imagine the things you are leaving behind. What no longer serves or what you have lost? You might pause for moment to acknowledge all you’ve experienced on your journey so far. Allow your heart to speak. Silently name what you hear.
As you are ready, imagine what lies to the east and west are the touchstones that will guide and support you. Imagine things and beings that are essential to you in the next part of your life’s journey. Friends and family, art and music, inspiration, learning and service. A sanctuary or mountain top. Perhaps it is the greater spaciousness of the unknown. Who and what will guide you into your future?
Living life as a sacred pilgrimage is an invitation to open your eyes, heart, and mind to wonder and surprise. Can you imagine the causes and conditions for wonder and surprise? Visualize or sense what you imagine as clearly as you can.
When you’re ready you can let this reflection go. Know that you can return to it again and again. You can let it grow and live in your loving awareness. That same awareness you can turn to what is present here and now. Let yourself become the spacious and relaxed witness to the breath and body, or to the rising and passing waves of experience. Stay steady and attentive in the middle of them all, centered, mindful, at ease. Keep the heart receptive and open to meet whatever arises with loving awareness.
Here is more of John O’Donohue’s blessing:
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.