The Yogabliss on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We continued exploring our place on the wheel of life.
We examined the habitual ways we make meaning around the self.  Looking at ourselves as expressions of Nature can be a powerful way to find freedom and experience compassion.

We heard a quote from Native American native poet, Linda Hogan’s book, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World.  Linda’s writing reminds us that we are born from the love of thousands.

Much of the practice centered around insights about aging drawn from the second chapter of Kathleen Dowling Singh’s wonderful book, The Grace in Aging: Awaken As You Grow Older.  Kathleen draws from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition which encourages us to view our experiences of body, heart and mind as organic life processes.  These processes arise out of causes and conditions that will always change.  We can lessen life’s suffering by cultivating a broader, more spacious awareness of our experiences.

We heard from “Ninja” poet and writing guide Maya Stein.  Maya is the author of many books, the latest is her edited collection Grief Becomes You. Her writing inspires us to loosen our grip on who we think we are.  She encourages readers to open their hearts and minds.

We ended with William Stafford’s poem, Being a Person.  The poem is drawn from his 2010 collection, Even in Quiet Places:  Poems.  The poet invites us to stand, listen and breathe.

Our dream of life may be much vaster than we imagine.

Guided Reflection

I invite you to allow awareness to travel over and through your body.  You Might feel areas of heaviness settling onto Earth’s body.
You may sense areas of lightness – like the air on your skin.  You may be aware of sense organs contacting light and sound, taste, smell and touch.  Turning inward, you might sense how your heart pumps blood, your lungs breathe, your food metabolizes and your cells are nourished all by themselves.  So many causes and conditions give rise to living. 

I invite you to reflect on what brought you here, to this moment, to this time in your life.   How did you walk through your life?  Who held your hand?  We are here because of others.  Our very conception arises from a coming together of a many causes and conditions including those of our human and more than human ancestors.  As Native American poet Linda Hogan writes:

Walking, I can almost hear the redwoods beating. And the oceans are above me here, rolling clouds, heavy and dark. It is winter and there is smoke from the fires. It is a world of elemental attention, of all things working together, listening to what speaks in the blood. Whichever road I follow, I walk in the land of many gods, and they love and eat one another. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

We are born of the love of thousands.  This love is both a cause and condition for our life.  Love creates us, sustains us and we, ourselves, create and nurture others through love.  We are incredibly blessed to be on this wheel of life.  We share our place on the wheel with those that have come before us, those that are here today, and those who will be here tomorrow.  In her book, The Grace in Aging:  Awakening As You Grow Older, Kathleen Dowling Singh observes:

99% of the species that ever existed on our planet are extinct. . . Any causes and conditions that come together will also come apart.

I invite you to reflect on where you are on the wheel today.  You might see, feel and hear this place through your body.  You might imagine your cells being born, breathing and then dying.  You might reflect on the nature of your thoughts and feelings.  Most of us feel our bodies, thoughts and emotions belong to us.  They are “me;” they are “mine.” Kathleen writes:

The processes of the body, with which we so identify and to which we are so attached are utterly impersonal.  We may feel ourselves to be the possessor . . . but they are unownable and beyond our grasp.  . . . 

In the same way, our thoughts and emotions, such convincing evidence of “me” and of “my views” occur as organic processes.  They arise as long as appropriate causes and conditions remain.  They arise by themselves.  They’re not personal.  . . . . 

We are capable of . . . greater depth, more spaciousness.  When we open ourselves to the fragility of this body and the impersonal nature of organic processes of body and mind, we deepen our appreciation of this life ours.  We increase our presence and ease.

Poet Maya Stein echoes these beliefs:  

It looks like the sky is coming apart and together at the same time*

And the body is holding its losses like a fist. And a fleshy hope
is opening to an unprecedented vastness. And whatever we think
we are leaving behind will keep insisting. And the things we desire
will elude us. And our efforts will pose as failure. And we will not recognize
how far we’ve come. And we will solve one problem and create another.
And we will feel broken. And we will not be broken. And the silence
will be deafening. And we will love destructively. And no one
will appear to be listening. And there will be too many doors
to choose from. And we will keep saying, “I don’t know how to do this.”
And we will be more capable than we ever imagined.

Our body is holding.  And a fleshy hope is opening to an unprecedented vastness. . . . We don’t know how to do this.  And we will be more capable than we ever imagined.

I invite you to rest.  Feel your body on Earth’s body.  As you notice breath changing, body settling, you might become aware of what body is holding. Can there be a sense of ease as your experiences of being surface?  Can there be a spaciousness around moments of feeling or thought? 

To ripen as an elder – to ripen as a human being – is a choice to see things as they are.  We live on the wheel of aging, illness and death.  They can teach us so much. Each time we can look upon ourselves with awareness – we have a chance to recognize and a chance to choose.  In choosing to awaken, we may experience freedom.  There is the freedom “from” and the freedom “to.”

I invite you to take a few moments to reflect on the kind of freedom your spirit is calling for.  

Awakening invites us to go beyond the conditioning and confines of our small self. Each time we choose to move outside of our habitual processes of self-reference we can look upon ourselves with awareness.  We have a chance at changing. We can realize our consciousness as the light of awareness.

The moment we feel the clothing of self binding our bodies, narrowing our breathing – we can pause.  Feel what there is to be felt:  a loss, a fear, a grief, a longing.  Create a spacious place in which this experience can reveal itself fully.  We can bow – this too is a miracle and mystery of life.  When we hear our spirit calling, we can choose to go to the forest, the river, the sunrise or sunset.  Stilling ourselves to be intimately present to life unfolding.  This belongs.  We belong. One day we might realize this is enough.  

Then we can, as poet William Stafford describes, go about Being a Person:

Be a person here.
Stand by the river, invoke the owls.
Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.
A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.
Suddenly this dream you are having matches
everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.
How you stand here is important.
How you listen for the next things to happen.
How you breathe.