The Yogabliss, Your Heart Life on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning.  We explored expanding our idea of self to include all of nature.  We drew on loving imagination to feel and sense the experience of life as a tree and as a salmon.  These living beings naturally sustain life.  They evoke the wisdom of the ancient Tao. Their generosity “recall us to our common fate in the kinship of all creation.”

We heard from Rupi Kaur’s collection The Sun and Her Flowers.  Rupi writes and reads her poetry, performs Kirtan and classical Indian music.  Her work touches on themes of love, loss, trauma, healing, femininity, and migration.  You can listen to her moving TEDtalk, I’m Taking My Body Back.  She will be performing live at Seattle’s Paramount Theater on May 25th.

We heard Washington State Poet Laureate, Rena Priest’s poem, Cycloid, Focus, and Circleis.  Rena, a Lummi Native, writes and speaks about her reverence for the salmon.  She shares her aspirations to bring poetry to celebrate the gifts of our natural world in this AFAR article, The Pacific Northwest Through the Eyes of a Poet.

You can complement Rena’s offerings with this beautiful short documentary, Maiden of Deception Pass.  In this film, Samish Nation tribal members tell the story of the salmon maiden.  They collaborated with local community members, including carver Tracy Powell, to honor her with a story pole. The pole is carved from a 24 foot tall, five foot wide cedar log transported from Mt. Baker. The film is moving example of how strong hearted people worked to preserve the Samish culture.

We worked with environmental activist, Joanna Macy’s, life affirming principle of “the greening of the self.”  She encourages a shift from identifying as a separate self to a sense of inter-being.  She says “What we most need to do is to hear within ourselves the sounds of the Earth crying…”  You can find a filmed interview at  Kosmos Journal’s beautiful program, Climate Crisis as Spiritual Path.  Joanna is now 93 years old. Since her 30’s she has worked tirelessly on behalf of Earth sovereignty.

We heard an aphorism from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula Le Guin.

Relaxed Reflection

I invite you to relax and enjoy the comforts of your surroundings.   Poet Rupi Kaur encourages us to:  

look down at your body
whisper
there is no home like you

You might look at your body, your arms and hands, chest and belly, legs and feet.  You might trace your fingers over the contours of your face and neck.  Perhaps you are feeling a sense of self, a sense of  “Me.”  I invite you to notice how your body arises from Earth’s body.  Feel Earth supporting you.  You can sense your aliveness:  the water bathing, flowing and pooling inside.  You can sense the inner fire of the body’s metabolic workings.  Feel the currents of air moving through lungs into tissues and cells.  

When the breath comes in, can there be a welcome for the energy that sustains you?   Can you sense the body as a field of energy?  Notice how effortless it is to be part of the greater field of life’s energy.  Our bodies, our “Me’s” are nourished as we breathe in.  We, in turn, are nourishing green beings – bacteria, algae, plants and forests, our “We”, as we breathe out.  Our very act of breathing takes us beyond the edges of our skin.  What is it like to experience this kinship with all creation? 

I invite you to reflect on some being, some kin, that is dear to you.  We belong to the family of trees, flowers, four leggeds, winged ones, soil and rocks.  We belong to the  fresh and salty waters, the scaled and hard shelled ones.  Who or what have you let yourself fall in love with?  Who or what do you imagine you could give your love to?

Our Washington State Poet Laureate, Rena Priest is a Lummi Native who loves Salmon.  She observes how

. . . .the salmon goes and it has this adventure and it comes home, and its final acts is to regenerate and then to feed everybody:  the trees, the fungus and the soil, the insects will take their piece, and the animals. Everything benefits from that journey. I was thinking about the hero’s journey . . . 

Here is her poem:

Cycloid, Focus, and Circle
      Growth on the scale starts at the focus . . .
      Circuli . . . are similar to rings on a tree.
     – Alaska Department of Fish & Game

A salmon is a song sung in rounds
a series of concentric circles
lke a raindrop in the sea,
rippling out and returning.

A series of concentric circles,
a chorus and a verse
rippling out and returning
in a shining body of treasure.

A chorus and a verse,
a hero, home from adventure
in a shining body of treasure
bearing gifts from the deep,

a hero home from adventure
like a raindrop on the sea
bearing gifts from the deep,
a salmon is a song sung in rounds.

Can we learn from the salmon?  Can we live in life affirming, life sustaining ways?  We share a spiritual practice that holds life sacred.  May we consume just what we need.  May we offer what we can for the benefit of all beings including future generations. 

Imagine saying Rupi’s word’s again:

look down at Earth’s body
whisper
there is no home like Earth.

I invite you to consider expanding the boundaries of self.  Imagine a greater all inclusive self. Explore shifting from a separate self to all beings, animate and inanimate environments on our planet.  Environmental activist, Joanna Macy, describes this transformation as the greening of the self.

Greening of the self begins with love.  Our love enlivens our imagination.  Can you bring your loving imagination to the world?  Imagine yourself a tree.  You stand among your family of trees.  Feel your roots penetrating deep into the earth.  They intermingle with the mycelium threads exchanging nutrients.  Sense your trunk growing upwards and your branches reaching and leafing all around.  You make magic.  Your whole being is sustaining life as you draw in carbon dioxide and release oxygen.  You exhale water vapor cooling the air around you. Your body offers itself to feed and shelter animals, birds, insects, fungi, the Earth.  

Imagine yourself as a salmon.  You begin life in the fresh waters of streams and lakes.  You grow into a silver body that swims down river to the ocean.  Your body transforms so you can live in the ocean for many years growing large.  Miraculously you change again to move from salt water to freshwater as you return to your home stream or lake.  Imagine the hero’s journey you are making up river to bring the next generation.  Your body is carrying nutrients from the sea.  Your final gift is to feed everybody: the trees, the fungi and the soil, the insects and the animals. Everything benefits from your life. 

The greening of the self happens as we begin to feel tree bodies, animal bodies, bird and fish bodies.  Our inter-relationship is so intimate.  We are capable of suffering with our world: compassion.  We grieve for the trees burning in the Amazon and for the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies.  As our heart breaks open we respond.  Together we realize the shift from “Me” to “We.”  We are greening from within bringing forth one compassionate act at a time. 

In the aphorism on Recovering Roots, The Tao Te Ching advises:

Reach for the higher
Desert places of your self
All calm and clear
And see
Now all things rise
To flourish and return,
Each creature coming home
To recover its roots.
Recovering the root
means just this:
The dynamics of peace—
Being recalled to our common fate
In the kinship of all creation.

May our practice help us to reach for the higher places of calm clear awareness.  May we recover our roots as we care, nurture and protect in kinship with all creation.