The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored what it means to be “relational beings” in the greater web of life. Mindfulness practice helps us to open our hearts to our shared vulnerability and resilience. Imagine, practicing reverence for life as simply as a standing tree photosynthesizing light.
These creative voices help us to reimagine a world that honors relational life:
Zen poet, Jane Hirshfield encourages us to embrace our vulnerability to realize our humanity.
Naturalist writer and teacher Robin Wall Kimmerer affirms the blessings of our natural world. If only we could transform light like trees!
Native American poet Linda Hogan yearns to be held in light. She imagines being deeply rooted as a tree sheltering unborn life.
Essayist and teacher Erin Rabke encourages to practice reverence in the ways we walk the Earth.
Herbalist and writer, Rosalee de la Foret, speaks of resilience and our own internal compass.
Natural World poet, Mary Oliver hears the language of trees inviting us to shine.
I invite you to step out of the stream of doing. Enter the stream of being. Sense how you are holding and being held in space, by gravity and Earth. Allow your awareness to ease through your body, perhaps landing in an area, feeling and sensing there. Sensations might move you to take a deeper breath or sigh.
You can explore the many expressions of being alive through eyes, ears, nose, tongue and touch. The subtle energy is perhaps lively, steady, dull or bright.
Sometimes an emotional quality surfaces. Can you be curious and open to the feeling? Thoughts may me threading their way through your experience. Can you hold them lightly without adding anything? Here in the sacred space of our practice we have room for everything even what poet Jane Hirshfield describes as:
A joy, a depression,. . . some momentary awareness com[ing] as an unexpected visitor. Even the anxious hardening of resistance . . . or the tenderness of unrequited longing . . . .
Self Reflection
We are so fortunate to pause our efforts to survive long enough to reflect on the meaning of our lives. Our search for meaning is something so essential to being human, knowing that in being born we are destined to die. In the moments of life that we have, we search for beauty, for justice, for truth and for love. May all beings know this freedom. We find courage and inspiration in those who touch our hearts. Poet Jane Hirshfield says :
[W]hen we become able to admit to ourselves our own frailties and dependence, perhaps then we will start acting and speaking in ways more fully human.
To be fully human is to know that we are part of a great web. Right now we can reflect on our constellation of relationships: through kinship, friendship or through our work, art, music and writing. What we do and who we become is always in relationship. And of course – our constellation is embedded in the greater web which sustains us. Earth and all creation. What and who touches you deeply?
In her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes:
We are showered every day with gifts, but they are not meant for us to keep. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Our work and our joy is to pass along the gift and to trust that what we put out into the universe will always come back. . . . .
Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow’s edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun.
In our practice we listen and are reminded of what we love, what matters most. We hold what we love and yearn to be held. As poet Linda Hogan writes:
To be held
by the light
was what I wanted,
to be a tree drinking the rain,
no longer parched in this hot land.
To be roots in a tunnel growing
but also to be sheltering the inborn leaves
and the green slide of mineral
down the immense distances
into infinite comfort
and the land here, only clay,
still contains and consumes
the thirsty need
the way a tree always shelters the unborn life
waiting for the healing
after the storm
which has been our life.
May our practice shelter us as we wait for healing after and during the storms that have become our lives. May we be held by the light of loving-kindness, compassion, joy in the happiness of others and equanimity.
As we rest on Earth’s body in this moment we can feel our aliveness. We can imagine being held by the light. The light that makes life possible. From the basics of survival – food and water, fire and shelter to the alchemical mysteries of culture – creativity and language, medicines, and values. The natural world inspires our dreams and transformation. What if we received these blessings with reverence? Essayist Erin Rabke writes: “. . . That [it] is . . . reverence we are missing.” She asks:
What if we recognize earthworms, snails, fungi, bugs, birds, and the branches they perch on as the gods in visible form – and behave accordingly? . . .
What if we see the insects who haven’t yet vanished under the onslaught of pesticides and the destruction of their habitats as tiny angels or fairies literally blessing our lives, because that’s what they are and what they do? . .
What if we imprint love and respect on the earth through our feet as we walk on the land in our neighborhood, even if it’s paved? Saying hello to the living earth beneath the concrete with each step? . . .
Right now we can imagine ourselves coming “back into reverent relationship with Life on Earth, through our own bodies, our own attentive presence.” As we remain present, we can enter that silent space that says we live only by grace. We can appreciate the amazing living web we’re a part of. We are relational beings. One of us developing, exploring and growing – the other deepening the capacity to care and to love. Together we cultivate resilience. When we pause with kind attention we affirm our resilience. We return to that state of openness and wonder.
Herbalist and author Rosalee de la Foret writes about resilience:
In the same way as a tree needs deep roots in order . . . . to stabilize, grow, and adapt to its environment; we need deep resilience, . . . to effectively handle the speed, stress, and overwhelm of modern life. But resilience is not a trait: it isn’t a goal to be achieved, and then set aside. Resilience is in fact a state: a setting on your own internal compass. . .
Here, together, we give ourselves the time to set our own internal compass. We can intentionally choose how we will navigate our lives. We can walk slowly and bow often with reverence. We – like Mary Oliver – will choose whether to take ourselves to the forest, the mountain, the ocean.
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.” The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,”
they say, “and you, too, have come
into the world to do this, to go easy,
to be filled with light, and to shine.”