The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We continued exploring the practice of conscious witnessing. We witness with the intention of feeling the sensations that arise in the body in response to what we see. We stay with this direct experience without thinking about what we feel. This is a profound way of being present and open to the mystery of life unfolding. In this way we open to an intelligence that is vaster than our own. In this opening we can be with life’s joys and sorrows.
Today’s practice was inspired by Ayya Santacitti’s talk, Resonance: Engaging Creativity Beyond the Intellect. Ayya is a Buddhist nun in the Theravada tradition. In her talk Ayya explores witnessing on a personal, collective and global level. She believes that we can bring different energy to life: Compassion. Interest. Kindness. Willingness. We resonate with the bodily sensations that arise while witnessing. In this way we can open to a vaster intelligence and with creativity beyond intellect.
We heard from Kiowa elder and writer N. Scott Momaday’s book The Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land. In an Paris Review essay, We Must Keep the Earth, he reminds readers that:
We humans must revere the earth, for it is our well-being. Always the earth grants us what we need. If we treat the earth with kindness, it will treat us kindly. If we give our belief to the earth, it will believe in us. There is no better blessing than to be believed in.
Guided Reflection
Last week we explored how mindfulness practice offers us a way of seeing reality more clearly. We can develop our faculties of faith, energy, concentration and insight. Global witnessing offers us a practice to open our hearts and minds to the difficult realities of climate change. As Mother Earth suffers we suffer. We can support each other in witnessing and responding with caring and compassion.
Ayya is encouraging us to witness and to ground ourselves while experiencing what we feel in the body. We stay with experience that is so often painful. This week I brought this witnessing and feeling to a joyful experience. It happened at a special place where the three forks of the Snoqualmie River come together. I was walking along the river with my dear friends, Gloria, her eleven year old grandson Miles and Patti, and her young dog Archie. We watched as Miles, tirelessly threw a stick in the water for Archie. Archie tirelessly retrieved and returned the stick for Miles. Young boy and young dog ran and jumped with abandon. Mt. Si was peaking out of the clouds under a patchy blue sky. I lost myself in those moments. My body felt happy and light. I loved my friends, the boy and the dog.
A few days later, during a sleepless night of mind wandering, I replayed the images of our time together. The experience was so simple and sweet. It was unadorned and complete, impermanent and transitory. I watched my mind begin to create stories about the experience and then stopped to just let it be. Global witnessing often breaks my heart. And this break creates an opening in which both sadness and joy can enter.
In a recent talk Ayya Santacitta talks about creating an inner space that is capable of mirroring what’s going on and compassion arises.
[In] a more fully embodied presencing . . . we teach ourselves gently to really stay with what we are witnessing. . . . Through . . . sensing our deep entanglement with the world, not only the beautiful but also the ugly, the broken . . . Sensing into the body and establishing a conscious resonance with what’s happening . . . without . . . thinking . . . it shouldn’t be like this or I must fix it . . . Taking interest in what stories are coming up [as] we’re allowing ourselves to resonate . . . . If we can hold steady . . . we can go beyond the intellect to touch into this much larger intelligence than our own human intelligence. That’s what I mean by engaging with creativity beyond intellect.
From this grounding we can then develop a relational . . . sensing as well. But only if we stay grounded in the body and that’s a practice which needs to be trained. By being conscious of a sense of gravity which gently pulls us to the planet there is a grounding which comes from that and from that grounding we can then engage with creativity. The gravity and the creativity we need both.
Let’s meditate by first grounding in the body and then opening up to this creativity. Let’s start by becoming aware of the presence of everyone here today – all of us contributing to this space. This is a space in which we can listen wholeheartedly and sense what is happening in our bodies as we are listening. You might let any excitement settle down. You can feel it in the body as you breathe and gradually let it go. Perhaps letting it go into the ground. You might soften edges of tension or holding. Feel the gentle hug of gravity around you. The breathe nourishing you. Mother Earth supporting you.
How is it to trust your nervous system to guide you? How is it to open to what the body and its sense organs communicate? It’s taken 4 billion years to arrive here to this amazing life which we are a part of. We’re embodied in something much vaster that we can imagine: a life force that is a mystery unfolding. We can make this mystery conscious by setting an intention or remembering why we are here today. You can begin by becoming aware of what you are bringing to our circle. Tune into your inner state: the body, emotions, energy and thoughts. You might notice whether you’re stressed or relaxed. This direct experience is where transformation happens.
If you sense the mind wandering into thinking see how it is to allow direct sensing to open you up to a much bigger world. Not thinking about how you feel. Feeling how you feel. Make sense of things by sensing. Explore what it is to feel alignment or coherence with bodily experience. Our senses opening into this bigger world. This is like learning a new skill. We begin with intention. We enliven our intention by returning to our senses.
We practice for the benefit of all beings. We emerge from Mother Earth and we return to her. We arrive with an in-breath and depart with an out-breath. We are Earthlings. We take in the earth element through eating. The water element through drinking. The fire element through the sun. The wind element through the breath. The space element through our inner hollows. We need all of these elements to live. Our very lives are an expression of these elements. How is it to know that we aren’t separate?
How does your body meet this direct experience of inter-being? What is it to consciously open to that more-than-human intelligence? No need to struggle or try. Relax into the spaciousness of sitting – in a space that doesn’t end with the walls of the room. With the in-breath we feel our earth body rooted into Mother Earth’s body. With the out breath we can relax into the limitless space of an expanding universe. How is it to connect with this vaster intelligence by sensing into it?
This is the kind of space that can hold suffering. Our individual suffering, the suffering of humans and more than humans. As we become aware of suffering we can begin relational sensing. Just allowing the awareness to be there. Sensing whatever awareness of suffering you can take in. Allow it to be sensed into and bring compassion to it. With the in-breath, sense into the tangle and with the out breath the wish that all beings be from harm. May all beings relax into spaciousness. This is a process of relating to life. This is a practice that we co-create together. We can have an influence by relating to what we witness. We can bring in different energy. Compassion. Interest. Kindness. Willingness.
This is a good place to begin. We don’t know about the outcome of our practice. We know it is something we can do. We can cultivate a more compassionate relationship with our own experience which can grow into a more compassionate relationship with the world. We can connect with a different kind of intelligence beyond human consciousness. Bio-intelligence is all around us. We are embedded in it. We are it. Kiowa native poet N. Scott Momaday writes “I am an elder, and I keep the earth.” In Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land he writes:
When we dance the earth trembles. When our steps fall on the earth we feel the shudder of life beneath us, and the earth feels the beating of our hearts, and we become one with the earth. We shall not sever ourselves from the earth. We must chant our being, and we must dance in time with the rhythms of the earth. We must keep the earth. . . . If we give our belief to the earth, it will believe in us. There is no better blessing than to be believed in.