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.

Reflections & Guided Meditation

Last week we explored empathy and compassion.  Both experiences arise when we have the ability to be truly present with ourselves and others.  When we attune with others we resonate with their inner world.  This resonance is at the heart of the important sense of “feeling felt” that emerges in close relationships.  We become aware of this sense of “feeling felt” in our bodies, hearts and minds.  It is a somatic, emotional and mental experience.  

We all need this attunement to feel close and connected. In his recent interview with Krista Tippett our Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy believes loneliness and isolation are making us sick.  In the short term, the stress of loneliness serves as a natural signal that nudges us to seek out social connection — just as hunger and thirst remind us to eat and drink. But when loneliness lasts for a long time, it can become harmful by placing us in a state of chronic stress.

Dr. Murthy worries about the what the world is telling our kids:  “to be successful, you need one of three things: to be powerful, to be famous, or to be rich. But we all know people who have all three of those — who are wealthy, powerful, and famous — and profoundly unhappy, who don’t feel whole.”  

He goes on to observe how children come into this world contented.  “They care about finding moments of joy. They care about their relationships they have with the people around them.”  He believes we need to ”recognize what we already have inside of us, trust that . . .  and ultimately . . .  find fulfillment in who we are.”

He believes

that we need to be a nation that is kind, where people take care of one another, where people step up for one another because they can and because they know that we are all better off when we are all, in fact, better off. And I want us to be a nation where people are generous with one another, where they recognize that there are times all of us are going to be in need, where all of us may stumble and fall, but we have to help each other up.

In our practice we aspire to recognize our goodness, to be present, to be kind, to feel – within ourselves and with others, and to care with compassionate wisdom.  We build the energy to begin again and again in ways as small as following the breath and as large as companioning someone through suffering.  We endeavor to practice inclusivity in ever widening circles of caring.  

I invite you to reflect a moment or two about what draws you to practice.  Perhaps there is a specific intention that surfaces for you.  Let’s take a moment now to practice.  Take a few deep breaths and slowly let them go. Sense your experience of coming into stillness. Explore how stillness can hold the subtlest movements of your body. Notice what draws your attention: the sensations of weight, pressure, temperature, tension, relaxation. Be aware of how awareness moves and settles on these experiences. Notice how a responsive impulse may arise to care for yourself: adjusting, shifting, finding a blanket or pillow. You are always welcome to create conditions in which ease and awareness can arise. You might become aware of how your life is sustained moment to moment. You are living and aware.

As awareness rests with the body you might explore a sense of steadiness. A steadiness that abides with breathing, sensation, thought or emotion.  Now I invite you to think about the people who have loved you over the years, the people who have been there for you during difficult times, who have supported you without judging you, and who stood by your side even when it was hard. 

Think about the people who have celebrated your moments of greatest joy with you, the people who saw your successes as theirs, the people who derived such pleasure and fulfillment from seeing you happy. Feel their love flowing through you, lifting you up, brightening your mood, and filling your heart. And know that that love is always there, even if they are not physically with you, because you carry that love in your heart. And know that you are and always will be worthy of that love.

From thinking about love, see if you can feel this love and connection in your body.  What sensations and emotions arise?  See if you attune to them and savor this loving experience that you’ve embodied.  Notice how they gradually change and begin to fade.  

I invite you to take refuge in these moments of rest. You might tune into a sense of calm and steadiness. Feel your body resting on Earth’s body. Become aware of breathing and the subtle energy inside your body. I invite you to consider the refuge that’s available to you in this moment. It is so close. It is within and around you at all times.

The word refuge means “place of shelter.” It is possible to find shelter – a place of calm, safety, belonging? It might be in the knowledge of the love that’s inside you.  It might be a spiritual practice, engaging in art, music, literature, poetry or movement. I invite you to reflect on the caring presence you can give yourself. We can take refuge in relationship with others and in our own embodiment and loving awareness.  We can be a refuge for one another.  Our acts of caring presence will likely live beyond us. We can imagine them like seeds that find root and grow.

May our caring presence help us to be a sanctuary for one another. May our experiences of beginnings and endings help us to live with compassion and wisdom. May we as the poet Bhavya, belong in our belonging:

A sense of belonging

We belong in our belongingness.
When conversations run deep,
deep and then deeper until words become echos and echos transform to a healing silence.
When music brings us lyrics,
lyrics that stir the strings of our beings
in a rhythm that resonates, sometimes piercingly, sometimes gently, healing unfailingly.

We belong in that belongingness.
When you acknowledge me in you and I acknowledge you in me.
When barriers turn into bridges,
When we help each other evolve.
When ego dissolves,
When love surrounds and peace engulfs,
When there is nothing to prove but a yearning to piece up the scattered blocks of the puzzle to see the whole picture.
We belong in our belongingness.
When you and I dissolve and a greater we evolves.