The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We explored perspective taking as a way of practicing radical compassion.  Our intention was to truly be present with a marginalized person, a person subject to stereotyping. Imagining the rich complexity of their lives helps to connect with the wholeness of their lives and our shared humanity.

We practiced mindfulness and explored Anu Gupta’s perspective taking practice.   We thought of a marginalized person subject to stereo-typing.  We imagined their life’s journey from the time of their birth, through their life’s transitional moments, to the dreams and aspirations they held for themselves. Our intention was to appreciate the wholeness of their humanity.

We drew inspiration from writer Richard Powers, author of many books including the Pulitzer prize winning book, The Overstory.  In his magical interview with Sam Fragoso on the Talk Easy program, Richard shared some of his ideas about the qualities we cultivate when reading a novel: stillness, focus, concentration, presence, empathy and compassion.  Reading is an exercise of imagination.  We are alone and also inside an unknown person’s life as we follow their story.  This is also what we bring to the practice of perspective taking, when we imagine the life story of another.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We continued the practice of building beloved community by exploring the pain of bias.  We used our imagination as an ally to help look beneath the surface of others.  We cultivated empathy and offered loving kindness to ourselves and others.  This is something we can practice informally as we go about our day.  We can slow down, pause and imagine the wholeness of a person we may see behind the wheel, mowing their lawn, shopping for groceries.  We can wish them well.

We practiced mindfulness and explored Anu Gupta’s loving kindness practice around the pain of bias.  This practice engages imagination to call people who have experienced the pain of bias into our hearts.  We visualize and sense their presence and the goodwill and love we share for one another.  In this way our individual separate practice becomes relational in a sense.  We cultivate prosocial qualities that can incline our minds toward beloved community.

We drew insight from Zen teacher and poet Norman Fischer.  His fascinating Tricycle Magazine article, Saved from Freezing, is an exploration of how our imagination can be our ally in experiencing life beyond the limitations of the beliefs, ideas, assumptions, even worries.

He gives examples of how music and poetry can transport us to a “different mind” that is more open to life.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We continued the practice of building beloved community.  We considered how identity enables us to flourish and how it can also divide us.  We explored Anu Gupta’s Individuation inquiry in which we imagined being subject to bias – someone’s mistake beliefs about who are.  We also imagined the counterposing experience of being recognized as who we really are. I hope these inquiries will help us to be more mindful and present with one another and ourselves.

We drew inspiration from Sharon Salzberg’s conversation with Dr. Simran Jeet Singh. Simran is the Executive Director of the Inclusive  America Project.  We also drew from his book, The Light We Give. This book is part memoir, spiritual journey and a call for greater acceptance and love.

We practiced mindfulness and explored Anu Gupta’s Individuation exercise.  This inquiry recreates the experience of being subject to stereotyping and then imagining the experience of being truly recognized without bias.

We heard the prosaic lines of Omid Safi’s On Being essay, May We Cherish a Love That Is Raw, Gritty and Real.  Omid is a professor of Islamic Studies specializing in mysticism and the liberationist traditions of Dr. Martin Luther King among others. He teaches in the Sufi tradition of Radical love.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We continued the practice of building beloved community.  We brought mindful inquiry to the human habit of stereotyping.  We often make assumptions about others.  We don’t often know what difficulties a person might be carrying.  The practice of awareness and intention, presence and persistence, can help us to think and feel beyond our assumptions to recognize a person’s humanity.  Love inspired short moments many times can move us toward beloved community.

We drew inspiration from Iranian American playwright Sanaz Toossi.  Her play, English, won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama.  It portrays the difficulties faced by immigrants.  It explores how we construct and adapt identity considering complexities including: sex, ethnicity, nationality, age, socioeconomic status and language.  As a first generation English speaker it reminded me of my immigrant mother and grandmother.  I feel so much empathy for the struggles to communicate and to be recognized.

We heard Micky Scottbey Jones’ inspirational poem: Invitation to Brave Space:  The poem is an invitation to “call each other to more truth and love.”

Our mindfulness inquiry was based on Anu Gupta’s inspiring Breaking Bias work.  He explains that stereotype replacement involves “a conscious act of replacing our mind’s habit to stereotype another human being with positive real life counter examples.”  We borrowed his teaching to help reveal implicit bias and then practice imagining another person’s full humanity.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We explored how mindfulness can help us to build beloved community.  We all need connection to flourish.  We can expand our circles of relationships by examining the obstacles to connection.  We can become aware of the implicit bias that we all learn as developing humans.  Awareness is the first step in relearning more life-affirming habits of connection.

In a lively and moving conversation with On Being’s Krista Tippett ,we heard Professor john a. powell’s observations about how we approach belonging.  In exploring race he focuses on our shared human needs.  He offers many examples of how we can learn to resolve many of our race related social problems.  He shares personal memories of learning what is most important in relationship from his father’s example.  He is professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.

We heard about mindfulness approaches to building beloved community from the Boundless Love Project.  You can access many resources including their tenets of building beloved community.

We heard Anu Gupta’s approach to mindfully “breaking bias,” a habit that we learn and can unlearn.  You can watch Anu’s TEDtalk, What We Can Save by Breaking Unconscious Bias.

We heard part of poet and author Mark Nepo’s inspirational essay, More Together Than Alone.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today we explored ourselves as nature.  We reflected on the intimate relationships between breath, body and the natural world around us.  We sustain each other.  We breathe and live.  We drink in the world through magical senses. We sleep and dream.

Our love for Earth inspires us to bring our caring to her preservation. In his talk, A Primordial Covenant of Relationship, Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee writes:

At the heart of that ancient primordial relationship that existed, there was love. Not the Hallmark variety of love, not even the human variety of love, but a much vaster, more ancient, and simpler form of love. A covenant of love between the human and the living Earth.

We heard Robinson Jeffers invitation to “uncenter our minds from ourselves.”  In his poem Carmel Point he juxtaposes Earth time with modern man’s time and its devastating effects on Earth.

We were inspired by Ben Bushill’s beautiful prayer that we “may we save ourselves and our world – love by love.”  Ben is a poet and spoken word performer.  You can find more of his words, films and music at BenBushill.com.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  On this Mother’s Day we explored widening our kinship with others.  We contemplated the many who have nurtured and loved us.  We imagined the many forms of ancestral inheritance we carry in our lives today.  We also contemplated what we would be offering others as ancestors-to-be.

We drew inspiration from Susan Moon’s essay Grandmother Mind.  Susan offers a creative and eloquent exploration of the many meanings of honoring our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers.  She poses questions about who we consider to be our kin.  Finally she shares her own experience of grandmothering under the challenging conditions of pandemic imposed isolation. Susan is an accomplished writer, editor and teacher in the Soto Zen tradition.  Her compassion and humor shine in her writings.

We heard Joy Harjo’s beautiful poem Remember.  Her lyrical lines ask us to remember our human and more than human ancestors.  The repeating evocation to re-member seems to affirm our wholeness and inter-being.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  Today we explored wholeness by listening to the inner voices that are difficult to hear.  These voices want to be heard.  They often express painful emotions and reflect underlying beliefs that cause us suffering. We created a “ministry of presence” capable of listening.  The ministry is made up of healing councils such as: “a council of forgiveness, compassion and openness.”  We then cultivated loving presence and engaged our inner council to feel, listen and care.

We drew inspiration from mediation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg’s new book, Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom. In Real Live, Sharon describes how we can engage a ministry of presence and form inner councils of support. It is part of her intention to help reader’s live more expansively from the truth of their being.  Mindfulness, presence can help us to  lead authentic lives.  We can extend our ability to accept and care for others to the degree we can do this for ourselves.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored the experience of attunement.  We reflected on the widespread loneliness that afflicts so many people.  People are born in belonging.  We need belonging to flourish throughout life.  We visualized someone who loved us without judgment through good times and bad.  We rekindled the sensations and emotions enriching the memories of love. Like our meditation practice, these experiences and memories can be a resource for us in sustaining belonging in our lives.

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The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  This week we explored the qualities of empathy and compassion. We practiced a compassion meditation in which we directed caring and compassionate phrases to someone who is suffering.  The practice can help us turn toward suffering while offering our loving presence.  In the expansive presence of loving awareness we gain perspective as to what might serve to alleviate suffering.

We drew inspiration from mediation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg’s new book, Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom. In Real Life, Sharon encourages readers to live more expansively.   When we live expansively, we have room to experience both positive and negative emotions and to view them with openness and curiosity rather than restriction and resistance. When we are willing to experience emotion we develop our capacity to extend compassion to ourselves and others.

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