The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. Today we explored being present for what surfaces in body, heart and mind. Abiding in stillness allows an intimate awareness of life’s continuous change. When we feel safe, we can touch this vulnerability within. We can tend to our hearts.
We drew inspiration from poet Jane Hirshfield. Jane’s poem, Standing Deer, poignantly touches the ephemeral nature of life. She describes how our hearts fill and empty having to hold onto and then let go of what we love. Her writing encourages us to bring our awareness and engagement to life so we can receive its fleeting blessings. Her poem, Ripening, evokes the ease with which can let go and let ourselves care about the world. As in Standing Deer, we ripen into opening our hearts.
We were encouraged by guiding teacher of Common Ground Meditation Center, Mark Nunberg, to ask questions about caring, belonging and loving. In his talk, The Teachings in Brief for Troubled Hearts in Troubled Times, he affirms as truth that we are all deserving of these vital experiences. It is that truth that inspires us to care about the human and more than human world.
Relaxed Reflection
Welcome your whole self to this moment. Find stability and ease in the way you are sitting or lying down. Feel the length of you spine with a deep in-breath and then relax with the out-breath. Do this as many times as you need to encourage relaxed awareness. You’re giving your mind a solid and stable ground on which to settle. Feel your body. Feel your breathing. In settling into stillness, below sensation and thought, there is feeling. When we experience change and uncertainty emotions surge to the surface.
Recognize what is happening. Take a step back. See what it’s like for you. Acknowledge the reality of whatever you’re experiencing right now, name it. How are you relating to this expression of life? Getting caught up? Feeding it? Judging it? Resisting it? If you find yourself struggling you can steady your mind with your breath, with your body. We can make space for the energy of emotion in our bodies. See if you can observe how experience changes. Does it become more or less intense? Does it shift from one location to another? Does it transform from one sensation into a different one? Emotion comes and goes if we let it be.
In loving awareness, we can bring kindness and compassion to ourselves. Can you bring some caring and tenderness to this experience? You might place a hand on your heart. You might even say to yourself inside: May I be well. May I be at ease. May I be at peace. See if you can tune in to a quality of warmth in your heart. May I be gentle with myself here. We can care for ourselves in this way when we feel ourselves becoming anxious, afraid, sad or angry. We can bring a kind, loving attention to what is true for us in the moment. We can cultivate inner stability and tune in to the breath keeping us alive. We can create a space in which we can experience what we’re feeling with curiosity and openness. We can then bring our caring and compassion. We are so deserving of this care!
In her poem, Standing Deer, Jane Hirshfield describes the filling and emptying of the heart as we live our live’s love and loss:
As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.
And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.
As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.
Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible and so why not.
Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished and so why not.
Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken from us.
I have disappointed.
I am sorry. I knew no better.
A root seeks water.
Tenderness only breaks open the earth.
This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.
from The Lives of the Heart: Poems, by Jane Hirshfield
Filling and emptying the heart we live our love and loss. “A root seeks water. Tenderness breaks open the earth.” Our bodies breathe. Our hearts beat.
Abiding in the space of stillness we experience our changing seasons. We feel the heart’s filling and emptying, the letting in and the letting go. We just had the experience of taking care of our own heart. This is not so different than taking care of an other heart, even the heart of the world. Life experiences make deep impressions on our hearts. Our responding words and actions make impressions on the world.
Our hearts grow heavy as we live through change, conflict and loss. When we’re hurting, when we are overwhelmed, we sometimes have an instinct to put others out of our heart. Yet knowing that we don’t know how to alleviate great suffering can actually kindle a sense of willingness to care, to listen and to learn. Guiding teacher of Common Ground Meditation Center, Mark Nunberg, encourages us to start from a place of humility and ask a simple question:
Am I deserving of love? . . . Does this heart deserve to belong here in life? . . . Does it seem right to ask to try to do my best to uncover love to discover love to discover a sense of belonging? To discover . . . a deeper healing? We need at least that little thread, that little window – yes I’m deserving of this. We want to expand the question. . . . [A]re we all deserving of love? Are we all deserving the deepest healing that’s possible? . . .
This changes how we approach the work of taking care of our suffering and the world’s suffering when we realize that I’m deserving of love, healing and belonging . . . You are deserving of real love, safety, healing belonging . . . [W]e should be moving in this direction . . .being grounded in what we do know. I have some clarity . . . some certainty that we’re deserving of love and healing; that it’s a real possibility for this heart and this world.
This is that work of realizing that I care – I care about this heart, I care about your heart I care about . . . the wildness of the present moment this world, my body, my heart, my life because I sense what might be possible. . . . The world is a mess in so many ways and we contribute to that every moment in our lives either in our silence or our engagement.
Right now we can tune into the kind of caring that can hold us all. Start with your own heart Feel it open, with curiosity, tenderness, acceptance and mercy. We can celebrate our ability to enter the stream of life fully. We belong in the flow, of caring. Right now we tend to the heart beating in our chest: this heart that was once held by a mother, whose hurts were once soothed by her mother. In connecting with this lived truth our love ripens as poet Jane Hirshfield describes:
Ripeness is
what falls away with ease.
Not only the heavy apple,
the pear,
but also the dried brown strands
of autumn iris from their core.
To let your body
love this world
that gave itself to your care
in all of its ripeness,
with ease,
and will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease,
is also harvest.
And however sharply
you are tested —
this sorrow, that great love —
it too will leave on that clean knife.
“Let your body love this world that gave itself to your care in all of its ripeness with ease.” Give your kindness and compassion as it “. . . will take itself from you
in equal ripeness and ease . . .” in life’s harvest.