The Yogabliss, Two Rivers/RiverTree Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation classes met this morning. We explored the experience of letting life move through us.  We celebrated the moments of recognizing our wandering minds.  We rested in moments of stillness the pauses between thoughts and movements.  We experimented with being present to what surfaces in the space of stillness:  our grief, our gratitude, our joys and our sorrows.

We drew inspiration from poet David Whyte’s poem, Winter Apple from his book, Pilgrim.  His evocative imagery reminds us of nature’s wisdom helps us in the inevitable cycles of life:    ripening, dying and renewal.

We drew from psychotherapist, author and soul activist Francis Weller’s Sun Magazine interview, The Geography of Sorrow.  He poignantly observes the relationship between grief and gratitude and the vital importance of keeping our hearts open. I found reading this interview to be very meaningful.

Finally we received John O’Donohue’s Friendship Blessing.  John O’Donohue was an Irish poet, author, priest and philosopher.  He compassionately encourages us to befriend ourselves and suggests that this might change us.

Relaxed Reflection

Winter Apple

Let the apple ripen
on the branch
beyond your need
to take it down.
Let the coolness of autumn
and the breathing,
blowing wind
test its adherence
to endurance,
let the others fall.
Wait longer
than you would,
go against yourself,
find the pale nobility
of quiet that ripening
demands;
watch with patience
as the silhouette emerges
and the leaves fall;
see it become
a solitary roundness
against a greying sky,
let winter come
and the first
frost threaten,
and then wake
one morning
to see the breath
of winter
has haloed
its redness
with light.
So that a full
two months
after you
should have
taken the apple
down
you hold it in
your closed hand
at last and bite
into the cool
sweetness
spread evenly
through every
single atom
of a pale
and yielding
structure.
So that you taste
on that cold,
grey day,
not only
the after reward
of a patience
remembered,
not only
the summer
sunlight
of a postponed
perfection,
but the sweet
inward stillness
of the wait itself.

What can we allow to ripen within ourselves in this changing season?  What light, what sweetness fills our inward stillness? What inner voice asks us to wait?  What appears in the fullness of the waiting?  What are the fruits of awareness in our lives?  What fruits do we harvest in sensual pleasure?  What fruits do we allow to cling to the trees until quietly dropping down becoming earth’s composting life? 

In our mindfulness practice we surrender to the mystery of the moment . . .  the life of the breath . . .  like watching an apple ripen or a flower to open in accordance with nature’s wisdom.   We can allow these questions – life’s mysteries – to live in our hearts.  In our mindful presence we listen . . . we see . . . we feel . . . we breathe . . . we bring ourselves so intimately into life’s ripening, dying and renewal.  Nothing is wasted . . .

We can welcome the return of awareness and celebrate those moments of remembering. Each time that we notice that the mind has wandered we can appreciate the noticing. Can we meet this moment with curiosity . . . openness? Gently let go – a small surrender – an inner bow of appreciation . . . and begin again . . . Breathing at the ever changing threshold of the present moment . . .

Beginning again requires a certain humility, a willingness to not know. A willingness to be with the emotions and thoughts that give rise to frustration or struggle . . . a desire for things to be other than what they are. So often our struggles are expectations born in the past . . . ideas we project into the future . . . something we hold onto in uncertainty . . . some form of distraction from the deeper feelings within.

Can we meet these uncomfortable or painful moments with loving kindness and compassion? These moments reflect the larger realities we are living through today. All of us have surrendered our plans, our time with loved ones some of us have lost our livelihoods or our health . . . Can we offer ourselves and others loving kindness and compassion? As we do this – we remember we are not alone in our troubles. Perhaps these qualities are the ripening fruit of our practice.

There is surrender in the wisdom of allowing life to move through us.  There is courage in allowing these questions to continue living in our hearts.   We learn the ways of living mystery – not knowing what the fruits of our being will be, whose lives we will nourish or harm.  

All the lives we have ever touched . . . all the beings who have shared our breath are fleeting.  And they are some how with us.  The parts of ourselves we abandon or suppress keep whispering.  In the moments we meet with presence we can allow their presence to be known.   So often we live on the surface of the deeper feelings we can allow in the fullness of our humanity.

Francis Weller is a psychotherapist, author and soul activist.  In his Sun Magazine interview, The Geography of Sorrow, observes: 

Everything I love, I will lose. That’s the harsh truth. You either have to shut down your heart — and miss the love that is around you — or wrestle with that truth and come out the other end. There is indeed such a thing as joyful sorrow.

The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them. How much sorrow can I hold? That’s how much gratitude I can give. . . . . Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible.

Right now we can reflect on the grief we carry in one hand  . . . and the gratitude in the other . . . They are so immense we cannot hold them alone.  In the fullness of time, when our hearts are ready, we share our sorrows and our joys.  Like an encounter with a wild animal we approach with care.  We stop.  We breathe.  We feel our heart pulsing.  We share moments of pure presence.  

In his book, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, John O’Donohue writes:

When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.

These moments of meeting the deeper parts of ourselves and the vulnerabilities of others are the places that make compassion possible.  They are the moments we are stretched large and make our life journeys possible.  The moments we affirm in stillness when we remember and come back to feeling each breath.   John O’Donohue offers us this blessing:

May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where
there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you.
May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them and may you be there for them;
may they bring you all the blessing, challenges, truth,
and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam ċara.

(Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Celtic world was the “soul friend.” In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam cara.)