Our Moving into Meditation class explored what it means to live with a trusting heart.  We drew inspiration from Jack Kornfield’s book, No Time Like the Present:  Finding Freedom, Love and Joy Right Where You Are. In Chapter 3, Trusting the Living Universe, Jack invites us to trust and let the mystery be.  Poet David Whyte‘s poem, Working Together, is a word dance we enter through life’s ordinary miracles.

Guided Relaxation

Welcome to this time we devote to awakening . . . to awareness . . . In this time we learn to trust our bodies, our hearts, our minds.  We begin by mindfully and lovingly feeling what is going on in our bodies.  Sense the state of your body today, how it communicates . . . through sensation . . .  Now listen to what your body is saying . . . what attention and care does it want?  What healing is needed?  Or perhaps there is an intuition – an inner knowing – a wisdom it wishes to impart. . . . 

Our bodies wait for our attention . . . Sometimes we’re surprised by the many ways our bodies seek to be acknowledged, to be heard, to be seen . . . How are we keeping faith; how are we trusting our bodies?  Each time we feel, each time we listen we are building trust and confidence in our body experience.  We come to trust our intuition and our instincts.  Right now you can consider any problem or situation . . . What do your instincts tell you?  Listen deeply – below the level of assumption and habit . . . let yourself be fully immersed in caring, feeling.  Be fully present to the light of intuition glimmering . . . .

Can we discover the loving awareness big enough to hold all experience?  As we train in loving mindfulness our confidence and resilience grow . . . we learn to be aware of whatever is present . . . we can trust ourselves . . . Meditation teacher, Ajahn Chah said: . . . “If you hold on to any expectation, you miss the wisdom.  It is impermanent.  Be the One Who Knows, the witness to it all.  This how trust grows.”

We are life unfolding . . . expressing itself . . . even when enduring loss and pain . . . We can survive and grow strong like the plants and trees moving through seasons and storms . . . becoming more beautiful, more themselves . . . deepening roots . . . scattering seeds and supporting so much life. 

Their very existence seems to be an expression of trust, an empowering trust continuing life beyond any efforts to control it.   

We reflect again on the force of trust in our own lives.   How would it feel to live with wise trust, to live as though things will work out in ways beyond our imagining?  Does your body relax?  Is your heart at ease?  Perhaps you’re in the midst of hard times . . . feeling contracted and fearful . . . Can you imagine yourself going beyond the stories that bind you?  

We’ve all experience the pain of broken trust . . . We can offer ourselves loving attention to restore our spirit and renew our faith with life.  We can learn to trust wisely.  We can trust and protect our bodies, our hearts and our minds.  Loving mindfulness is often the practice of discernment, the ability to recognize what is worthy of trust and most importantly keeping faith with ourselves.  

Jack Kornfield writes:

We can trust that the joy and the suffering given to us are what we need to awaken to freedom.  Hardship and loss are the graduate school of trust.  They teach us survival and a freedom that is unshakable.  There is a force born in us from a thousand generations . . . survivors who have offered us life.  Now it’s our turn.  . . .
Like the grass that pushes through the cracks in the sidewalk, trust can grow again.  No matter how lost or desolate we may feel, something new awaits us and life continues.

We live in a time that enables us to witness accident, natural disaster, conflict in our communities and throughout the world.  We are encouraged to fear every time we hear or read the news . . . sadly we develop an underlying anxiety.  We begin to scare ourselves. Our fears and insecurities cloud our perceptions and make our world smaller – we resist life rather than allow it to unfold.  Jack K. advises:

With awareness and compassion, we can release our fear.  With trust, we can put down the demons of fear and insecurity and allow the unfolding of life.  With a trusting heart, we become both loving and detached, combining serenity and care open to whatever comes. . . . How do you hold this mystery?

When we can trust, we can relax, we can let the mystery be.  And truly that is our only option – to let the mystery be.  Our very being is mysterious because it ends.  That knowledge can paralyze us or let it inspire us to live with meaning and purpose.  Like Jack,  “I want to serve the world and live in it with trust, love and full presence to the last.  This is the great invitation – to live with a trusting heart.”  We let the mystery be.

Here poet David Whyte elegantly describes our wondrous dance with life:

Working Together

We shape our self
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again.
The visible
and the invisible
working together
in common cause,
to produce
the miraculous.
I am thinking of the way
the intangible air
passed at speed
round a shaped wing
easily
holds our weight.
So may we, in this life
trust
to those elements
we have yet to see
or imagine,
and look for the true
shape of our own self,
by forming it well
to the great
intangibles about us.