Category Archives: cradle your heart

Hear Here [for deep listening]: beyond our greatest hopes | holly maakima

My friend Holly Maakima surprised me back in May with a simple note saying, that as she prepared to give a spiritual talk later that day, she would be holding me up as an example of someone who gives her hope.  Heart flooding. Tears welling. I breathed her blessing in deeply.

It was a stunning, divinely-timed affirmation that arrived when I most needed to be reminded that my endeavors — personally and professionally — to be a good spiritual friend were purposeful and impactful. My moment of doubt was silenced; questions were answered. Clarity and hopefulness blossomed, and I was reinvigorated to keep nourishing my aspirations.

I am so thankful to have companions who plant and water seeds of love, inspiration, kindness, hope and trust in my life.  It is the sustenance of healthy, trusting relationships. We feed and empower one another to be our authentic selves, giving guidance and support along the way.

A spiritual teacher and writer, Holly recently shared the recording of that talk at Fellowship for Today, so I’m spreading this loving message of hope near, far and wide! Hear Here: Beyond Our Greatest Hopes (http://www.fellowshipfortoday.org/files/sound/holly-makimaa-beyond-our-greatest-hopes-051715.mp3)

HEAR HERE [for deep listening]: Opening The Question of Race to the Question of Belonging | On Being with Krista Tippett

And I think being human is about being in the right kind of relationships. I think being human is a process. It’s not something that we just are born with. We actually learn to celebrate our connection, learn to celebrate our love. And the thing about it — if you suffer, it does not imply love. But if you love, it does imply suffering. So part of the thing that I think what being human means to love and to suffer, to suffer with, though, compassion, not to suffer against. So to have a space big enough to suffer with. And if we can hold that space big enough, we also have joy and fun even as we suffer. And suffering will no longer divide us. And to me, that’s sort of the human journey.
~ john a. powell

I was invited to facilitate a dharma discussion for my root sangha to address the wellspring of emotions and concerns members have expressed following the tragedy in Charleston last week. Drawing on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, I entitled the talk “Good Spiritual Friends: Taking Care of Ourselves & One Another in the Face of Racism, Bias, & Injustice” and asked that we actively investigate our own perceptions, intentions and behaviors as we reflect on how to apply and cultivate the dharma in response to such devastation. We expressed our confusion, anger, shame, fear, helplessness, outrage. We cried. We breathed. We sat with our discomfort. 

I asked that we continue to find refuge in practices that help to nourish and ground us as well as those that illuminate unskilfulness, awaken clear comprehension, and inspire compassionate actions.

That sweet space of refuge is fleeting: Our hearts burst open with the victory of the Marriage Equality Act last Friday. Then they are crushed once more with every church that goes up in flames at the hands of racist terrorists. 

For sanity and nourishment, I am mindful about what I consume–attempting to combat this madness by sharing this dose of sustenance (clear, compassionate understanding) for the mind and soul.

Hear Here: john a powell ~ Opening the Question of Race to the Question of Belonging

KnowTheirNames
artist: sarah green

embodied practice: tonglen

I have to be real: even after a decade of practice, conjuring compassion or loving-kindness is not always my default response in the face of arising difficulty or suffering.

Anger, irritation, disappointment, fear — primal and deeply-programmed — seep to the surface when peace, stability, safety and simplicity are threatened. They are quelled with time and, most important, my faith, effort, concentration, mindfulness, and discernment (five spiritual faculties). To penetrate and dissolve those strong feelings first takes faith, or conviction, in practices that offer me a deep sense of refuge. I literally need to move through it by going for a walk or run. The effort of exertion generates a physical and energetic heat that helps me burn off tension and generate enough concentration and mindfulness to spark clear-seeing wisdom. As the body cools off, so too does the heart and mind. Emotions, though tempered by mindfulness, are not so easily released. I still have two hands to hold anger or frustration alongside this newly-stoked calm clarity.

The practice of tonglen speaks to me deeply because it allows space for the complexity of our human-ness, where both the suffering and the relief co-exist. It feels more accessible and authentic to me than the Metta Meditation, which seems to require superhuman leaps and bounds toward lovingkindness. Beautiful as it is, I find it reminiscent of the fake-it-til-you-make-it philosophy. It’s a worthy aspiration. Just not one that I can sustain in practice. Tonglen seems to honor the teeny-tiny baby steps and stumbles and the slow, tentative climb out of the pit back onto solid ground. Sometimes that’s all I can muster. I trust it to be enough.

 

More from Pema Chodron: The Practice of Tonglen [Shambala, 2007]

 

The Girl Who Got Up | TashmicaTorok.com

A truth about meditation: it can be uncomfortable or even excruciating, as my friend Tashmica so eloquently shares below.

First we meet the process of physically conditioning our bodies to find and sustain a steady posture (practice note: for me, “conditioning” means understanding how to take care of the tensions in the body not torturing ourselves to endure a rigid alignment that can create more distress). Holding the body through sitting meditation, in particular, takes time…just as training the body to walk a half marathon takes time, diligence and patience.

What we may be surprised to learn is that meditation is not “passive.” Rather, I’ve found it more accurate to frame meditation as I would yoga asana — in which we discover that the opposite of being active is not being passive; it is the more complex and dynamic energy of being receptive.

Sitting within the quiet space of receptivity, we open up to the possibility of encountering the hidden/neglected/protected parts of ourselves. With that, difficulties and discomforts may arise well before any insights or understanding that we may be longing for.

How, then, do we take care of ourselves through those moments when we discover that this practice, which is so often extolled for delivering peace, actually puts us face-to-face with the stunning reality that cultivating peace is a process…a training, not unlike a marathon. Tending to our hearts and minds requires our patience, diligence, and self-compassion.

I love that Tashmica is choosing not to give up but to keep getting up!

spirit. human. black woman.

V shared a personal revelation —

spirit. human. black woman.2

she had come into an awareness of
her magnitude and design as a

spirit/soul
human/body
black + woman

in that precise order.

how necessary to acknowledge
being so much bigger than this body
and to cherish the fleeting human life span

of a woman
of hue and shape
of undeniable origins 

giving refuge and expression to
a boundless and indestructible force.

to celebrate her blackness —
a unique dna of history, culture, biology, and expression

is to nourish her body —
mindful of its resilience and fragility
its cycle of consuming, creating, destroying, releasing, renewing

is to honor the spirit —
a source of radiance, wisdom, compassion
empowering a life with purpose

[january 2014]

Continue reading “spirit. human. black woman.”

toward wholeness: “song of myself”| walt whitman

 Song of Myself 
[select verses]

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me
as good belongs to you.

 Clear and sweet is my soul,
and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Welcome is every organ and attribute of me,
and of any (wo)man* hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile,
and none shall be less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied—I see, dance, laugh, sing;

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound

I exist as I am, that is enough
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

~Walt Whitman
Song Of Myself (full poem)
*[punctation ( ) mine]

toward wholeness.project6050
toward wholeness: race, faith + gender matters in mental health | project 60/50 ~ 14 nov 2014|

Let us celebrate ourselves,
and sing ourselves
We are large,
We contain multitudes.

embodied practice: caring for ourselves + others

As sanghas around the globe are breathing deeply for our beloved Thây who is recovering from his recent hospitalization, I am remembering this beautiful practice that he teaches, which my dharma sister has shared with our community over the years: Second Body Practice.

“Our practice is not an individual practice.
We practice with other people, we practice with our Sangha.
The Sangha is also our body…
The practice of the second body is one way we take care of each other in the Sangha.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh

View/Download Thich Nhat Hanh’s article in The Mindfulness Bell Issue #24: Taking Care of Each Other.

 

[18 March 2020 | Content updated to include quote + link to the .pdf of the original article.]

 

#music for #MellowOutMonday: “Retrograde” | James Blake

…for magic + mindfulness + movement + meditation

AND, most especially, to honor mercury retrograde‘s final day of madness!