The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We came together to move toward our heart’s light. We listened to heart song. I heard notes of gratitude and love as we entered the New Year together.

We drew on essayist and spiritual teacher Jeff Foster’s encouragement to honor our heart’s wisdom. Jeff is an astrophysicist on a spiritual journey.  He describes his teaching as being about “unconditional friendliness and infinite kindness. It’s about making it safe, finally safe for all of those unloved, un-met, unseen waves of the ocean of yourself to crawl out of the depths, out of the darkness, out of the corners and holes and crevices of experience and come into the light, blinking and full of wonder.”

We heard poet Joy Harjo’s poem This Is My Heart.  We heard an excerpt from her poem:  For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet. You can listen to an amazing musical rendition from her performance I Pray for My Enemies.

We also heard from Port Townsend poet, Kathryn Hunt.  Kathryn draws from her experience as  “a waitress, shipscaler, short-order cook, bookseller, printer, food bank coordinator, filmmaker, and freelance writer”.

In our circle we’ve been drawing on the inspiration of poets and writers and our own heart wisdom.  We’ve been grounding ourselves with Earth stillness.  We’ve been feeling and moving with presence.  With the turning solstice we move toward light.  What better time to reflect on what matters most?  What do we want to bring forward?  What are we ready to let go?

Guided Reflection

Bring your attention to the space around your heart center.  Invite your heart to reveal what matters most to you right now.  Notice how you are meeting this awareness of what’s important to you. Who, what, where is it that you love?  It could be that your heart is very quiet. You can meet the silence. Let it be your teacher. Whatever surfaces for you. Let it be in your heart.  Essayist, Jeff Foster encourages us:

. . . bow to the heart in its current state. If it’s closed, let it be closed; sanctify the closure. Make it safe; safe even to feel unsafe.

Trust that when the heart is ready, and not a moment before, it will open, like a flower in the warmth of the sun. There is no rush for the heart.

Trust the opening and the closing, too, the expansion and contraction; this is the heart’s way of breathing: safe, unsafe, safe, unsafe; the beautiful fragility of being human, and all held in the most perfect love. 

Take a few moments to imagine how you and I are held in the most perfect love.  You might imagine your heart energy holding and being held in the most perfect love. You might notice the mind wanting to move off into something else.  That’s o.k. Notice the pull.  Feel it in your body and let there be space for this experience too. When you are ready, come back to what you care about most deeply. As you breathe you can imagine drawing the love in the world toward your heart. Breathe out love.

May our practice help us welcome all those parts of being that yearn to be felt, heard and healed.  Joy Harjo’s poem This is My Heart reminds us of the goodness we are:

This is my heart. It is a good heart.
Bones and a membrane of mist and fire
are the woven cover.
When we make love in the flower world
my heart is close enough to sing
to yours in a language that has no use
for clumsy human words.

My head, is a good head, but it is a hard head
and it wirrs inside with a swarm of worries.
What is the source of this singing, it asks
and if there is a source why can’t I see it
right here, right now
as real as these hands hammering
the world together
with nails and sinew?

This is my soul. It is a good soul.
It tells me, “come here forgetful one.”
And we sit together with a lilt of small winds
who rattle the scrub oak.
We cook a little something
to eat: a rabbit, some sofkey
then a sip of something sweet
for memory.

This is my song. It is a good song.
It walked forever the border of fire and water
climbed ribs of desire to my lips to sing to you.
Its new wings quiver with
vulnerability.

Come lie next to me, says my heart.
Put your head here.
It is a good thing, says my soul.
May we feed our souls so that our hearts can sing.

This is a good time to rest – to lie our heads close to our hearts.  Right now our spirits are nourished by belonging.  Each of us belongs to this circle of caring.  Coming together in this way we affirm what we hold dear:  awareness, compassion and love.  We breathe, we move, we rest.  We are grateful.  In gratitude we breathe in, in giving we breathe out. In giving and receiving we are whole. 

The world makes it easy to forget.  We witness so much fear, pain and suffering.  We forget the goodness that we are.  We forget our inter-being with life.  We forget those who are patiently, quietly dreaming the world anew.   Again Joy Harjo counsels us to remember:

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark. 

We come together to help each other find our way through the dark.  We are moving toward our heart’s light.  We listen for our heart’s song.  We stop our doings and remember being.  In remembering we recognize ourselves in all our relations, human and more than human beings.  We practice to become heart-minded – to awaken and feel our love for the world so intimately.  In cultivating this intimacy we embrace a rainbow of diversity.  In heart-minding we recognize everyone, humans and more than humans in our tribe of relations.

Today, we enter the unknown New Year.   We bear the cold alone and together.  And yet, there is snow-light in the darkness.  Earth offers what she can.  Roots live under quiet blankets of snow.  Lake and river waters move under ice.  Life is still here to cherish.  We are still here to learn.  Port Townsend poet Kathryn Hunt describes our place and our practice:

The seed wheel turns and the air itself
tastes of snow & sleep. The grasses
lie down. The horns of the mountains
rise above the burrowed blood-sweat
of the plain, further away than memory.
The wheel turns toward the sun
once a day. And then into the dark.
That the two-legged nose-breathers
may learn how to stand within
all they don’t know.