I mentioned in class the other day, Jean Klein’s word, becoming. He spoke of how we tend to be in a constant habit of becoming. When you start to see what he was saying, it’s pretty amazing because it seems like we’re always doing that. We seem to long for breaks and rests and vacations, but even when we are on a break, the momentum of becoming carries on, on some level, and we never seem to completely stop and relax for very long.
So often when the topic of meditation comes up, I get the sense that many of us do not think we are even able to try such a thing. We may have ideas about what it is that are so foreign that we just don’t feel drawn to it, or we may feel that it would be an impossible task. The interesting thing is that through the yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we explore how this kind of stopping can happen even while moving. Just entertain the possibility that in this very moment, on the level of the whole, you are completely achieved, an expression of life’s intelligence in your very existence. If you can maintain this perspective, the fuel for the engine of becoming is cut at its source. There is an internal stopping, no longer trying to close the gap on feeling like one is ‘too much’ or ‘not enough’. This is the peace that we ultimately desire. In this peace, the mind’s desire for becoming tries to convince us that it needs to keep invalidating ourselves and the moment, or we will never get things done, but when you actually ignore the mind’s plea to keep its momentum, and explore this from the position of being already achieved, what you find is not a passive life, but one more fully engaged actually. Some things that were desperately unhealthy begin to drop away, as the stress of the continual invalidation that innocently feeds our addictions and desires for relief… but we begin to find a clear source of relief that does not cost anything, and does not have negative consequences. We then slowly, unsurely perhaps, begin to connect more and more to an authentic sense of movement. We find ourselves responding more accurately, and more appropriately to our own needs and the moment itself. We cease the impossible task of continually trying to pull life into how we think it should be, and begin to see the gifts that surround us all the time. All of suffering amounts to this, the invalidated now. Peace is available indeed. It’s an open door.
When we rest in this peace, the Universe reveals itself as both stillness, in this sense, and movement…. maybe that all sounds a little complicated, but it’s not. You’ll see. Just come on out to enjoy, not whether or not this makes sense in the mind, but how it feels in your own experience. Of course things sometimes feel a little impossible on our own. Why do we even think we should be able to do all this by ourselves? It is wonderful that when we get together, it helps make this a little easier to see, do, practice, and realize.
4 More Evenings:
Tues & Thurs ~ Yoga 6-7:10pm Meditation 7:20-8pm
(Aug 14,16 / 21,23)
This Saturday: Yoga & Breathing workshop 10 am- Noon!
(Aug 18, 2012)
peacelovenamaste’
Mandee