The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We practiced mindfully pausing, relaxing and opening. These levels of attention help to move from all of our doings to simply being. We explored relaxing enough to be with difficult experiences. Opening involves a willingness to embrace what emerges from uncertainty. These mindfulness skills may come in handy as we move from our masked and virtual lives to “in-real-life” engagement.
We drew guidance from Insight Dialogue co-creator and Insight Dialogue: The Interpersonal Path to Freedom author and meditation teacher, Gregory Kramer. Insight Dialogue involves mindful sharing within qualities of attention, contemplation and intimate inquiry.
We drew inspiration from eco-philosopher David Abram, author of Spell of the Sensuous. David is director of The Alliance for Wild Ethics. You can find a series of fascinating, heartfelt and mindful essays on the Alliance web-site.
We enjoyed Tom Hennen’s poem, “Looking for the Differences,” from Darkness Sticks to Everything: Collected and New Poems. The poem beautifully reminds us that “. . . That each thing on earth has its own soul, its own life . . . ”
We also heard Anne Alexander Bingham’s poem “It is Enough” as published by The Writer’s Almanac (01/22/14). The poem expresses content in the knowledge that we are part of every thing.
Relaxed Reflection
Let’s take a few moments to breathe – breathe in until you are full and breathe out until you are empty. Notice how you feel in the fullness . . . and what it is to empty again. Is it possible to breathe out and relax? To breathe in and open? In this space we pause, relax and open. How is it to disengage from the habitual flow of doing your day and to truly enter the state of being? Allowing whatever surfaces to be in awareness . . .
Right now we can imagine the light inside that draws us here . . . the spark that moved us to stillness . . . What is this inner energy that enables us to pause? How do you experience this energy, this light that draws you to stillness? Where is it in your body? How does it feel in your heart? What is it saying in your mind? It takes a lot of energy to stop doing . . . to enter the stillness – the stillness in which we can tune in to our inner light. In the fullness of time – we may have the opportunity to perceive what is illuminated.
Insight Dialogue author and teacher, Gregory Kramer writes:
The pause is a way of slowing down. It is a way of having some space between what we hear, what we see, even what we think, and what we say. The pause is a time when we can really take in what’s been said, along with how we are feeling, and the specific flavor of this moment. During the pause we become aware of the body, we become aware of our feelings. We come home to being in the moment of this particular experience, right now. Even as you are . . . sitting here now, you can pause and simply notice: . . . . “How am I feeling, right now?”
When we stop at any time in our lives we are giving ourselves the opportunity to be fully alive. We gift ourselves the time to see, to listen and to feel. We gift ourselves the experience of relationship and wonder. How are we relating to our experience as it emerges? How do we respond to the fleeting expressions of personality? How do we sense the abiding presence of awareness? How we relate to ourselves often determines how we relate to others.
All relationships call for deeper engagement: awareness, compassion, presence. Eco-philosopher David Abrams, author of Spell of the Sensuous,” writes:
Humans are tuned for relationships. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils—all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of otherness. . . .
For the largest part of our species’ existence, humans have negotiated relationships with every aspect of the sensuous surroundings, exchanging possibilities with every flapping form, with each textured surface, a shivering entity that we happened to focus upon. All could speak, articulating in gesture and whistle and sigh a shifting web of meanings that we felt on our skin or inhaled through our nostrils or focused with our listening ears . . .
The color of sky, the rush of waves—every aspect of the earthly sensuous could draw us into a relationship . . .And from all of these relationships, our collective sensibilities were nourished.
Right now you can realize how you are tuned for relationship! Eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin gateways through which we experience the world. Everything around us is nourishing otherness. Right now we can imagine the lights glowing in living beings around the planet. All of us living with the knowledge that our lives utterly depend on each other. We come together to practice awareness and compassion. We are retreating from the many ways we habitually move through the world. Pausing . . . relaxing . . . opening . . . realizing our relatedness.
In his poem, Looking for Differences, Tom Hennen writes:
I am struck by the otherness of things rather than their sameness.
The way a tiny pile of snow perches in the crook of a branch in the
tall pine, away by itself, high enough not to be noticed by people,
out of reach of stray dogs. It leans against the scaly pine bark, busy
at some existence that does not need me.
It is the differences of objects that I love, that lift me toward the rest
of the universe, that amaze me. That each thing on earth has its own
soul, its own life, that each tree, each clod is filled with the mud of
its own star. I watch where I step and see that the fallen leaf, old
broken grass, an icy stone are placed in exactly the right spot on the
earth, carefully, royalty in their own country.
We can watch where we step. We can appreciate each thing on earth has its own, soul, its own life, its own star.
Again Gregory reminds us:
To pause means to step out of the automatic reactions of the heart and mind. If the mind is racing along, detach from the thinking. For just that moment, stop constructing that world. When we pause, when we step out of the push of conditioned thoughts and feelings, awareness naturally arises. Notice this natural awakening. One does not have to try so hard to be mindful. When the torrential thoughts and feelings are not fed by identification, mindfulness is the natural result.
As Spring turns to Summer, we move from living in isolation to re-entering the stream of person to person inter-action. We may experience anticipation, happiness and anxiety and uncertainty. All of our creatureliness will respond to life’s changing circumstances. We will be “struck by the otherness of things.” We will enter the stream of many lives “busy at some existence.” Even in the stream we can pause, relax and open. We can be lifted toward “the rest of the universe” and realize . . . that each thing on earth has its own should, its own life.”
We can affirm our relatedness with a deeper presence. We can offer our awareness and compassion. We can watch where we step through the outer world and in our inner world. We can allow our tension and conditioning. Gradually relaxing into the silence that underlies reactivity. Gregory describes how:
We observe in meditation that our thoughts come up unbidden: they are not entirely within our control. You may notice that, as much as you may want to calm the body, sometimes it just doesn’t calm down. To relax means to be present with experience, to cease battling experience. But to relax also means not feeding the reactivity. . . . With relax, we meet that experience with acceptance.
Over time our practice reveals what is to have enough, to be enough as poet Anne Alexander Bingham writes “It Is Enough.”
To know that the atoms
of my body
will remain
to think of them rising
through the roots of a great oak
to live in
leaves, branches, twigs
perhaps to feed the
crimson peony
the blue iris
the broccoli
or rest on water
freeze and thaw
with the seasons
some atoms might become a
bit of fluff on the wing
of a chickadee
to feel the breeze
know the support of air
and some might drift
up and up into space
star dust returning from
whence it came
it is enough to know that
as long as there is a universe
I am a part of it.