Metta-Mates

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Loving KindnessToday we had the final Saturday meeting of the 9 week meditation series in the Daring Greatly: 60 Day Gratitude Challenge at Two Rivers Yoga. This week we focus on cultivating deep appreciation and loving kindness toward ourselves and to the many others who have supported us on our journey.

Together we created our own light in the rainy dark and began with a prayer inspired by Ana Forrest’s teaching:

. . . Let us dance with what is immovable in our lives.  Let us find the courage & help one another enter the mystery!  Let us find the courage and help one another live awakened lives.  Let us find the courage and help one another to really see ourselves clearly.  Let us find the courage & help one another to honor our wisdom.  Let us find the courage and help one another to value and share our gifts. Let us find the courage and help one another practice patience, loving kindness and compassion. . . .

Let us give thanks!

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Storymaking

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Crow & Weasel 5We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  We’ve been working with the four foundations of mindfulness:   awareness of the body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions and then all phenomena.   We drew our practice inspiration from B. Alan Wallace’s Minding Closely:  The Four Applications of Mindfulness.  We included two practice periods and a walking meditation.

In meditation we work with the mind to establish cognitive balance, a direct experience of equanimity.  Alan describes balance as having two critical aspects:   seeing the impermanent as impermanent and differentiating the true sources of happiness from false ones.  In cultivating mindfulness we first focus on the “the body and physical sense fields”; then attend to feelings of pleasure, pain and indifference; then events arising in mental domain; finally to the space of all phenomena and their interdependent relationships.

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Rainbow Warriors Awakening

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Rainbow Warrior by Mara Berendt“Let the things that enter into your life wake you up!”  Pema Chodron

Today we had the eighth Saturday meeting of the 9 week meditation series in the Daring Greatly: 60 Day Gratitude Challenge at Two Rivers Yoga. This week we focus on what we want to cultivate in our living gardens this year.  We began with a prayer inspired by Ana Forrest’s teaching:

Let us dance with what is immovable in our lives. Let us find the courage & help one another enter the silence! Let us find the courage & help one another dare to do new things.  Let us find the courage & help one another to challenge what is false. Let us find the courage and help one another to speak our truth.  Let us find the courage & help one another to live our wiser selves.  Let us find the courage & help one another to revel in joy. Let us find the courage & help one another to enliven & express our Spirits . . . Let us give thanks!

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Perceiving What We Are

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Thinning Veil-300We had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss today.  We’ve been working with the four foundations of mindfulness:   awareness of the body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions and then all phenomena.   We drew our practice inspiration from B. Alan Wallace’s Minding Closely:  The Four Applications of Mindfulness. We included two practice periods and a walking meditation.

Alan suggests observing what we perceive and how we perceive it.  Oh yes, and don’t get caught up with proliferating thoughts about whatever “it” your awareness lights on.  Sounds simple but it isn’t easy.  The key to practice is to feel the body as the body; feel thoughts and emotions simply as thoughts and emotions; experience all phenomena, internal and external, just as phenomena.  Notice when you are embellishing the direct experience of what you perceive with a projection of your own.  How are you cloaking your experience?  Are your windows of perception clear?  Sometimes the veils are so thin they’re really tough to recognize.

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Transitioning

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Thinning of the VeilsLiving is changing:  the veils of transition are thinning.  Yesterday we had the seventh Saturday meeting of the 9 week meditation series in the Daring Greatly: 60 Day Gratitude Challenge at Two Rivers Yoga. This week we focus on “embracing and being change.”  We began with a prayer inspired by Ana Forrest’s teaching:

. . . Let us dance with what is immovable in our lives.  Let us find the courage & help one another recognize the winds of change blowing through!  Let us find the courage & help one another let go of what no longer serves. Let us find the courage & help one another to challenge what is false.  Let us find the courage & help one another to honor nature’s seasons of life & change within us.  Let us find the courage & help one another to become gifts to our people . . . Let us give thanks!

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Wholeness

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Earth SpiralWe had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss today.  We’ve been working with the four foundations of mindfulness:   awareness of the body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions and then all phenomena.   We drew our practice inspiration from B. Alan Wallace’s Minding Closely:  The Four Applications of Mindfulness. We included two practice periods and a walking meditation.

Alan suggests ways of enhancing concentration by balancing two mental faculties:  mindfulness and introspection.  He writes that “mindfulness requires discerning, ethical concern. We must apply mindfulness strategically and discerningly because we care about ourselves.  Are we flourishing or are we sowing the seeds of our own misery and discontent?”

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En-Lighten Up!

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winter_solstice-82381-127-135It’s Soulstice!!!!!!!  We’re lightening up and emerging from the fertile darkness.  Today we had the sixth Saturday meeting of the12 week meditation series in the Daring Greatly: 60 Day Gratitude Challenge at Two Rivers Yoga. This week we focus on “the power of ceremony”:  creating balance and celebration  We began with a prayer inspired by Ana Forrest’s teaching:

. . . Let us dance with what is immovable in our lives. Let us hold space for one another in ceremony & celebration! Let us find the courage & help one another step into the sacred space with our life questions. Let us find the courage to live as earthlings in honor of nature’s seasons of life & change. Let us find the courage & help one another to enter the mysteries: our dreams & dark places. Let us find the courage & help one another to use what we have harvested with wisdom & to plant seeds of well being, love & gratitude . . . Let us give thanks!

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Mind in Nature

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ringed beetsWe had our Sunday Introduction to Meditation Class at Yoga Bliss yesterday.  We expanded our focus to include awareness of the body, feeling tone, thoughts, emotions and then all phenomena.   We drew our practice inspiration from B. Alan Wallace’s Minding Closely:  The Four Applications of Mindfulness.  We included two practice periods and a walking meditation.

Alan guides students in systematically settling the body, breath and speech.  He encourages relaxation and vigilance while allowing all that arises in the various modes of perception to simply be and then pass away.  What remains is the luminous quality of unwavering awareness which “knows” or “cognizes.”  This awareness illuminates appearances.

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Bridge Through Fog

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Bridge Thru FogToday we had the fifth Saturday meeting of the12 week meditation series in the Daring Greatly: 60 Day Gratitude Challenge at Two Rivers Yoga. This week we focus on “turning shit into fertilizer”:  turning over life’s challenges and disappointments into the soil that will nurture new growth.  We began with a prayer inspired by Ana Forrest’s teaching:

 Let us dance with what is immovable in our lives.  Let us find the courage & help one another to hold on to what’s precious no matter what.   Let us find the courage & help one another disobey the direction of poisonous conditioning.  Let us find the courage to use our healing breath to find humor and beauty in despair.   Let us find the courage & help one another to stop; breathe; wait; look and see. Let us find the courage & help one another to take a stance, do our Power Dance & sing our Song . . .  Let us give thanks!

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The Berry Thief

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bird_paintingThe Berry Thief:  Painted by Esther Morrison Smith for this year’s 30 Day Art Challenge.   I only got to meet Esther through her work.  This painting expressed the bitter cold of that evening and the way all creatures have to adapt to survive.  It also conveys resilience and sharp wittedness.  This bird is awake.    I doubt this bird is spending much time thinking about what it will do next or what it did yesterday.  Survival depends on being here now.

I’ve been thinking about how to enliven my own animal sensibilities:   tracking sensation, tuning into environment, seeing, hearing, feeling people.

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