The Yogabliss on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. I so deeply appreciate the patience and kindness everyone gave me after so many technical interruptions.  (As if didn’t already have so much experience with interruptions!)  Today’s class was inspired by the wonderful poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke and the work of Rilke scholar Joanna Macy.  Joanna has spent over sixty years organizing environmental and social action groups.  Joanna is a national treasure.  In post-world war two Germany she worked for the CIA before volunteering for the Peace Corps to work with Tibetan refugees in Dharamshala.  You can hear more about her remarkable life and work by listening to A Wild Love for the World on On Being with Krista Tippett.

Guided Relaxation

Welcome and thank you for being here.  Even while we are sheltering in our homes – we still have many choices about where to place our attention.  How we give our eyes and ears – our whole bodies.  We create our lives through our bodies, our hearts, our minds . . . And we are also created by all that touches us – including our circle and the circles beyond.  We are drawn together like thirsty creatures at the water’s edge . . . What are you thirsting for today, at this time in your life?  Is it the rest that allows us to feel our body’s truth?  Is it the calm in which deeper emotions or insights surface?  

Consciousness begins with embodiment . . . right now we can feel ourselves embodied . . . awareness filling the field of the body – touching the hard and soft edges . . . the subtle pulses of energy – the flow of it or the pools of stagnation and fatigue . . . As effortlessly as possible – can you move your awareness to your feet and legs?  . . . Can you let your bones just rest in the cushioning of your muscles?  . . .   . . . Experiencing weight . . . Being touched by light . . . 

Feeling for legs enjoining your pelvis now . . . feeling the bony bowl and what it holds . . . How is it to let yourself just sink into the earth?  Feeling the soft swell of belly as the breath pulses inside . . . and the shallowing as the breath returns outside . . . What subtle experience lives here?  What moves through your center? . . . 

Can you let the breath have its own expression?  How does it move through your chest?  Can you sense the presence of your lungs . . . your heart nestled under your left lung?  . . . Do you notice presence of emotion?  Feeling your upper back . . . heavy?  . . . relaxed?  

As effortlessly as possible can you move your awareness through your arms and hands?  Can you let your bones fully rest in the cushioning of your muscles?  . . .   . . . Experiencing weight . . . Being touched by light . . . 

And now the curved bridge of your neck enjoining your head . . . feeling the bony bowl and what it holds . . . the weighty underside . . . the delicate tissues of your face . . . so soft . . . 

Awareness filling your whole being now . . . inside the edges of your skin . . . and Opening now to a voice from many years ago – the poet Rainer Maria Rilke also calling you to embodiment:

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29

Can we stay open to life – even now in these times of uncertainty and for many hardship and stress?  Can these life challenges become our strength?  Can our practice help us to move back and forth into the changes – especially these changes over which we have little control?

There are moments in which we find our strength and engage whole heartedly with the world – our families, friends and community – our earth home.  There are times when we can tap into inner resources of resilience – tender wholeheartedness – compassionate understanding . . . Can we bring these same qualities to ourselves when our courage wanes and we feel depleted or overwhelmed?  

Joanna Macy is an activist, author, and a scholar of Buddhism encourages us not to be afraid of grief:

. . . because that grief, if you are afraid of it and pave it over, clamp down, you shut down. And the kind of apathy and closed-down denial, our difficulty in looking at what we’re doing to our world stems not from callous indifference or ignorance so much as it stems from fear of pain. . . .

It relates to everything. It relates to what’s in our food, and it relates to the clear-cuts of our forests. It relates to the contamination of our rivers and oceans. So that became, actually, perhaps the most pivotal point in the landscape of my life: that dance with despair, to see how we are called to not run from the discomfort and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear — and that, if we can be fearless, to be with our pain, it turns. It doesn’t stay static. It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it. But when we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns. It turns to reveal its other face, and the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world, our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.

Right now we are all experiencing a difficult time – we have one or more  family members and friends who are in crisis.  What can we look at, take into our hands?  What can we be with and keep breathing?  Can we be present for those moments when we can see our pain as our love for this world?  Can we give ourselves over to the joy of being alive?

Joanna teaches about active hope: 

Active Hope is not wishful thinking.
. . .Active Hope is waking up to the beauty of life
. . . We belong to this world.
. . .Active Hope is a readiness to discover the strengths
in ourselves and in others;
a readiness to discover the reasons for hope
and the occasions for love.
A readiness to discover the size and strength of our hearts,
our quickness of mind, our steadiness of purpose,
our own authority, our love for life,
the liveliness of our curiosity,
the unsuspected deep well of patience and diligence,
the keenness of our senses . . .

In devoting time to mindfulness we come to know our minds and hearts . . . we slowly develop steadiness, practice patience and discover our strengths.  We practice the courage to stay and to live with uncertainty.  As Rilke says – “quiet friends who have come so far feel how your breathing makes more space around you” . . . . When we explore what it is to be embodied we “become the mystery at the crossroad of our senses, the meaning discovered there . . . ”   

Widening Circles by Rainer Maria Rilke

Listen

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.
I’ve been circling for thousands of years
and I still don’t know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?

Book of Hours, I 2