Yesterday, we had the third meeting of our Yoga for a World Out of Balance Meditation Book Group at Yoga Bliss.  In yoga we explored sensation before the level of thinking:  taking in and letting go with breath and movement.   Postures and slow movements became containers and vehicles in which a sense of interconnectedness could arise.  We practiced guided bell sound and formal sitting meditation periods.    Our discussion focused on the fifth chapter, Ahimsa:  Nonviolence.

We used yoga tools to cultivate the clarity of perception and the energy needed to live fully, to experience feeling inside and to open ourselves to the world outside.  In listening without knowing – hearing the strike, tone, reverberation and fading away of sound – we entered sound directly – maybe even becoming sound for a few moments.  In following the exhale to its very end, pausing long enough to let go and let be, we created the space and time in which to drop our fixed ideas about who we think we are or how the world is supposed to be.  In this state of suspended animation images present more slowly, revealing themselves in ways we can perceive more clearly – perhaps without the overlay of our racing minds’ judgments and labels.

The author, Michael Stone, says that when we teach and learn nonviolence we’re taking an evolutionary step forward in allowing multiple perspectives by extending flexibility, tolerance and patience in choosing to act for the welfare of all.  He observes that conflict and aggression arise from the “ancestral habit energies” we’re born with.  If we cannot accept the shadows within we will be forever constrained by them.

We discussed building our capacity to experience strong emotions – the challenge of allowing  energies of anger, joy, fear, love and sadness without trying to suppress or amplify them.  We investigated what it means to wholly allow anger and frustration to arise – like experiencing the sound of the bell – its strike, tone, reverberation and passing away.  Can we pause long enough to attend even while facing issues that challenge our perception of security or the well being of a loved one?  How does this practice of embodied awareness, feeling inside ourselves, give rise to engaged, skillful action in our outer world of relations?  Do we make ourselves fertile ground from which helpful involvement grows?

Our personal dramas become the training ground in which we build our circle of concern.  Everyday letting a little more of the world inside.  Yoga for a World Out of Balance asks us to consider our part in the greater social and economic fabric of the world.  Today I consider the true cost of my cell phone.  Congo’s conflict minerals leave a trail of destruction as they make their way from the mines in eastern Congo to the phone in my pocket.  I take small steps to engage:  learning more about the issue (Raise Hope for Congo) and contributing to an organization dedicated to relieve suffering on the spot  (Doctors Without Borders).  Yes, I’m still using my cell phone, computer and iPad.

Truly embracing Ahimsa, reverence for life seems boundless.  We’re implicated in everyone’s condition just be being here, part of the web.  In the process of following the trail of consequences associated with my purchase and use of a cell phone I learned:

On June 8, thousands of volunteers clad in white placed one million handcrafted clay and paper mache bones on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The installation of bones, completed as the focal point of the One Million Bones event weekend, represented a mass grave of persons killed by current genocide and mass atrocities around the world, including Congo, Syria, Somalia, Burma and Sudan. By incorporating volunteers into the installation of her piece, artist Naomi Natale called participants to be responsible for that which they carried – the bones of genocide victims. The social art installation was a forum to raise awareness, as well as a powerful “visible petition” calling citizens and members of congress to action, by illustrating the repercussions of inaction.

Yoga for a World Out of Balance states that awareness starts with glimpsing our own shadows – the parts of ourselves we’d rather stay behind us, our forward momentum keeping them out of sight.  But what are we moving toward?  An activist in the One Million Bone project stated:

We all want to give our children an inheritance, and we don’t want that inheritance to be bones. Don’t invest in bones, invest in life.

Michael writes that in the face of fear what we need most is flexibility, imagination and the willingness to offer others our generosity and help.  Here at Yoga Bliss on Mercer Island the circle we form provides the space and time, the acceptance and support to shine light broadly in as many directions as we can – to recognize our shadows are shared expressions of humanity.  In the light of recognition we engage.

You can find this week’s homework and other resources at:

Yoga for a World Out of Balance Homework 3