Red rose hips
Hangover snow
Birds sing
Everything Flowers from Within
The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. Valentine’s Day is when we traditionally gift each other affection. Affection springs from empathy. Empathy makes so much possible: acceptance, forgiveness, kindness, patience and understanding. We start by sitting still. Jon Kabat Zinn describes “sitting still and being quiet for a time as a radical act of love.” When thinking about why this is loving, I was reminded of trying to meet the sometimes inexhaustible needs of a baby. I can bring so much willingness to a baby in my arms – especially when there is another set of arms when I get tired. One doesn’t control a baby. One doesn’t control the mind. Paradoxically we can become intimate with the nature of our minds. The loving awareness of our hearts can hold distraction, strong emotion, fatigue and even pain.
Sitting still this week I connected with that part of myself that spends so much energy trying to avoid feeling vulnerable. This is like trying to hide from the sun. Meditation is not about trying to stop thinking. It’s a practice that embraces our wholeness. Gradually we develop an inner stability to recognize the many mind-states we try to hide from – vulnerability, self-judgment, anger, fear among so many others. Slowly we learn to relax, tolerate and finally feel compassion for our difficult emotions. You can do it. You can be it. It starts with sitting still, relaxing and trusting.
We drew inspiration from poet Galway Kinnell’s poem, St. Francis and the Sow. Kinnell’s work was informed by his experience as a field worker in the Congress of Racial Equality and activist in the civil rights movement. He was a passionate follower of Walt Whitman.
In his essay, Healing the Cracks, Buddhist monk and meditation teacher Ajahn Sucitto describes ways of expanding the field of “loving awareness.” He teaches about empathy and “inter-subjectivity.” When we can offer ourselves empathy we can expand to include others. We can refrain from imprisoning ourselves and others in judgment. We can learn to accept our feeling, thinking selves as a constellation of experiences that are ever-changing. We are all subject to conditioning. We can learn to cultivate loving conditions, emotions and thoughts.
Finally we heard David Whyte’s poem Second Sight. David’s poem touches on our basic human needs to be seen, heard and touched.
Nightshift
Owl vibrating air
Over river flowing sound
Finding ears behind walls
Walking in Beauty
The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yogaon-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We practiced with the theme of inter-being today. Our very composition is a form of Life expressing itself. We contemplated how the world sustains us and naturally we turned to gratitude and reverence.
Teacher and poet, Thich Nhat Hanh, has dedicated his life to raising our awareness so that we can walk more lightly on the earth. He offers many artful ways of bringing mindfulness into every day life. We explored his “gatha” practice of reciting a verse acknowledging our relationship with whatever we are doing. If you have time, why not write one of your own to try during the week?
Mary Oliver’s words reminded us of the soft animalness of our being. Her invitation to allow ourselves to love what we love informed our ways of moving and sitting with more relaxation and relish.
We drew inspiration from Betsey Crawford’s essay, The Power of Allurement. Betsey is an environmental activist and photographer whose work centers around her appreciation for the natural world. Her writing explores our place as humans in the more than human world. We closed with Linda France’s breath taking poem Murmuration. If you have time, I highly recommend following the poem’s link to its beautiful animation. Linda stitched together parts of 500 poems submitted in answer to her request for work inspired by love of the natural world. It is utterly magical.
Early Morning Hours
Mountain lion softly lands
Aaaaach!
Taking backward steps
Grateful for life
Water Trails
White water sounding
Open eyes, open ears, open nose, open mouth
Taking it all in
Earth Time
The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We used qualities of earth to explore qualities of mind. The slow steadiness of grounding helps to bring our heart’s wisdom to what we are attending. Earth’s regenerative capacity metabolizes what has died and nourishes what is being born. We too can integrate our experience in ways that help us to include ourselves and future generations in our circle of caring.
We contemplated Pablo Neruda’s poem Keeping Quiet. The poem, written in the 1950s, speaks to our time. He imagines the healing a Great Pause could bring. The Earth gets a chance to regenerate, the skies clear and we can hear the birds sing.
We drew inspiration from Jay Griffiths’ brilliant essay, Dwelling on Earth. She takes us on a journey through living Soil by highlighting its inhabitants and their role in the circle of life. She takes us back in time describing Darwin’s last work centered on the “mindedness” of earth worms. You can read or listen to Jay read her work and learn about Water Bears aka Moss Piglets aka Slow Steppers!
Vietnamese monk and beloved meditation master Thich Nhat Hanh reminded us of the reverence we embody in mindful walking.
We reflected on Theravadan monk and teacher Ajahn Sucitto’s essay Mindfulness Its Friends and Relatives. He explains how, like fingers and palm, attention and loving awareness come together in mindfulness. We investigate experience and let it rest in our “heart/mind.” We inquire: “How am I with this?”
Water Bears – Moss Piglets – Slow Steppers
What I learned about Water Bears from author Jay Griffiths’ amazing article Dwelling on Earth makes walking meditation a whole new experience! Here is Jay’s wonderful writing:
Smaller than even a grain of sand is the water bear, a pioneer who inhabits new environments so that other invertebrates can then make themselves at home. They are found in almost every habitat on Earth, from tropical rainforests to the Antarctic, from mountain peaks to sea floors. This tiny creature, visible only through magnification, is also called the moss piglet, as it lives in films of water in mosses and lichens as well as sand dunes, soil, and leaf litter.
Water bears, so-called for their barreling rolling gait, are more properly known as tardigrades, literally “slow-steppers”: not for them the speed of a rocket launch. Slow and ancient, they are thought to be some 530 million years old. About half a millimeter in length, they are short and chubby with eight legs, and many have pigment-cup eyes and sensory bristles. They can survive cold at minus 272 degrees Celsius (520°F) and heat at over 150 degrees Celsius (300°F). They can go ten years without water and thirty years without food, drying out until they are only about 3 percent water. (When they get water, they rehydrate and reproduce.) They can withstand pressure up to 1,200 times atmospheric pressure and can suspend their metabolism, entering “cryptobiosis.” They have survived Earth’s first five mass extinctions and are the first known animal to survive in outer space—on the outside of a space rocket.
It seems like a parable. Yes, the water bears survived exposure to the vacuum of outer space without the protection of atmosphere, but they did so by entering their own death-zone. As soon as they arrived back on Earth, they rehydrated in delirious relief with the water of life, and then reproduced. Every scrap of life is eager to thrive in the one place where it can, living between two skins: the tissue of soil and the delicate skein of the ozone layer. Here is where life flourishes, in or on the soil, the source of our nourishing in every sense.
Deer Friend
Big earred wet nosed deer
Awake relaxed
Sharing the path
Morning Moments
Early morning barred owl
I’m here, here, here
Sitting in my warm box