"Mindful" by Mary Oliver (Inspiration as August ends)

Mindful

Every day
  I see or I hear
     something
        that more or less

kills me
   with delight,
       that leaves me
          like a needle

in the haystack
   of light.
      It is what I was born for ---
         to look, to listen,

to lose myself
   inside this soft world ---
     to instruct myself
        over and over

in joy,
   and acclamation.
      Nor am I talking
          about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
  the very extravagant ---
     but of the ordinary,
        the commonplace, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
   Oh, good scholar,
       I say to myself,
          how can you help

but grow wise
   with such teachings
       as these ---
          the untrimmable light

of the world,
   the ocean's shine,
      the prayers that are made
         out of grass?

from Why I Wake Early, Beacon Press, 2004

Building Meanings Again

Loss of a steady gaze coming back at me

And subtle knowledge that a conscious mind was observing

Recognizing that no arms could hold the child as the heart now yearns

Understanding that those soft voices no longer attend my sleep.

So I begin again, not as though newly begun.

As with memory, there are confusions.

Even my own role has slid quietly into a slow single step

And another. Who to tell of the ripening raspberries?

I don’t want to tell their stories that change the shapes to fit

Nor do I want to sing the songs that erase that phantom cadence

With my own voice.

Some lilies bloom on a rainy day.

Some of the birds eggs are found broken in the grass.

Yet clover blooms and gravel washes in rivulets.

These are the meanings I collect.

Of clouds moving in a backlit sky,

And sounds of poplars whispering of winds and hidden nests.

When I draw breath there is movement throughout my being,

Whether I am really here, understanding, or not.

Making the offering, Being the offering

I've been enjoying poems from Gregory Orr's 2009 collection, "How Beautiful the Beloved." There is simplicity and deep resonance of losing oneself in the grace of love at the same time yearning to hold what will inevitably be lost. Everything is impermanent.

"All those years
I had only to say
Yes.

    But I couldn't.

Finally, I said Maybe,
But even then 
I was filled with dread.

I wanted to step carefully.
I didn't want to leap.

What if the beloved
Didn't catch me?
What if the world
Disappeared beneath my feet?"

As a teenager I was put in the position of making the family meals, and I've held that role fairly continuously throughout my adult life. I don't remember thinking of food as a token of love, and in those early years it was a heavy load on top of my schoolwork, my awakening political awareness and the swirl of emotional troubles between my parents. As a wife and mother I came to feel the job of feeding as a deeply nurturing one.

"So many were given only
A dream of love,
So many given a glimpse,
And that from such a distance.

Who am I to be ungrateful
Who saw the beloved
Face-to-face?"

One month ago my husband and I essentially became vegan, eating no meat, no dairy, no processed grains, sweeteners with the addition of eschewing all cooked and most uncooked oil. (For more on this, see my related blog eat2thrive.blogspot.com.)

"Surrender everything. Give up
All that's precious --
That way you won't be tempted
To bicker with yourself
Over scraps you still control.

Besides, who knows the depth
Of her pity? Who knows
How far down
He can reach with his love?"

Food has become transformed into a vast array of beautiful blessings. Each fruit, vegetable, bag of grain, bowl of soup, pot with simmering leeks, plate with the stain of beets, crunch of jicama and scent of lime or garlic brings such gratitude and pleasure.

We spend way too much time imagining ourselves to be lacking something, avoiding something. This pretending to be incomplete and unworthy stands directly in the way of living our fullest life in this moment as we actually are.

Again from Greg Orr:
"How beautiful
The beloved.

Whether garbed
In mortal tatters,
Or in her dress
Of everlastingness --

Moon broken
On the water,
Or moon
Still whole
In the night sky."

Anticipation

The plans have changed.
The weather shifted.
The gift did not arrive.
There was no solitary time to organize.
This didn't come out as hoped.

And yet, here it is, another morning.
Sky the color of reflected snow.
Enough water for a shower, and tea.

The guests are still sleeping.
The morning chores are done.
The gift is the moment.
Not waiting any more.

These tools remain accessible.

Where there is meaning, there is silence.


Sounds causing waves of reaction, interaction, conditions.

Words sink in so deep, all I hear is the space over them.

That rolling movie of my mind remains projecting on the wall of the skull, a light show.

The feeling of warm hand on thigh completes my form.

Exhales join the inhales in the air around me, no questions asked or answered.

Even the music of my heart runs into itself like water into water, indivisible.

This open to being, being opens,  understanding without tricks and illusions.

The candle flame consumed in continuous transformation.

Being Able to Feel

Building and Earthquake

How easy it is for a dream to construct

both building and earthquake.

Also the nine flights of wooden stairs in the dark,

and the trembling horse, its hard breathing

loud in the sudden after-silence and starlight.

This time the dream allows the building to stand.

Something it takes the dreamer a long time to notice,

who thought that the fear was the meaning

when being able to feel the fear was the meaning.

Jane Hirschfield, from "COME, THIEF" Poems, 2011

The practice is not one of dilution nor erasure. It is not curative nor corrective. Let's call it a practice of immersion and illumination. I find this is where life becomes a reflection of truth and broadens to let in all the possibilities.

It is particularly poignant to me that Hirshfield uses the framework of a dream here. I've been struck by how vividly dreams hold the mind and provide experiences even while we sleep. This is such a lovely way of noticing that the mind creates all of our experiences, even the illusions that we rely upon so deeply in order to go on about our lives.

The dream opens slowly to the dreamer, as witness to the mind's story. This, too, is a most remarkable moment when we see ourselves seeing, and are able to feel ourselves feeling.  

In my yoga teacher training at Kripalu we delved into the idea of meditation in motion that yoga offers. More than the placement of this foot there, or drawing a line in the mind from point A to point B; more than losing track of thoughts or feeling the rush of endorphins that bring happiness and loss of memory about the pain we walked in with, yoga is that space in which we can take "a long time to notice." It is the being itself that has meaning, not lost in the reactive, but able to take it all in.

Rumi "Two Wings"

Observe the qualities of expansion and contraction
in the fingers of your hand:
surely after the closing of the fist comes the opening.
If the fingers were always closed or always open,
the owner would be crippled.
Your movement is governed by these two qualities:
they are as necessary to you
as two wings are to a bird.

from the Mathnawi III, 3762-66
edited by Kabir & Camille Helminski

Consider the Pearl, A Meditation

Swaying between the pulling tides of hope and fear,
we balance.
Our weight on the earth,
sitting bones softening deep into the support beneath
the spine, spacious and rising into the endless sky.

Allowing the jaw to loosen, even
the muscles in the shins go slack.
We balance the weight of the head
over the beating heart.

Consider yourself a pearl lost in the grass.
You sitting here.
Your skin a container for your inhale,
your shape ever changing.

Consider the pearl lost in the grass.
Like the dew drop resting on a leaf,
its membrane like a skin,
its clarity and translucence, ever reflecting.

We balance between hope and fear,
between the earth
and the endless sky.
Between the pearl's luminous solidity
and iridescent illusion of the dew.

Some Words of Rabindranath Tagore

Sent (on April 29) by Ruth Waddell (my aunt) to Josh Holland (my father) in condolence for the death (on April 27)of Anabel Holland (my mother), read when received by Josh (in hospital) on May 5th by Sarah Meredith (me).

Read at his graveside by me on May 8, 2011


Peace, my heart, let the time for the parting be sweet,
Let it not be a death but completeness.
Let love melt into a memory and pain into songs.
Let the flight through the sky end in the folding of the wings over the nest.
Let the last touch of your hands be gentle like the flower of the night.
Stand still, O Beautiful End, for a moment, and say your last words in silence.
I bow to you and hold up my lamp to light you on your way.


I know that this life, missing its ripeness in love, is not altogether lost.
I know that the flowers that fade in the dawn,
the streams that strayed in the desert, are not altogether lost.
I know that whatever lags behind in this life laden with slowness is not altogether lost.
I know that my dreams that are still unfulfilled, and my melodies still unstruck,
are clinging to some lute strings of thine, and they are not altogether lost.

The Beginning and End of Meaning

Every moment hangs like a water droplet from the edge of the leaf.
Luminous, tenuous, distorting and beautiful beyond all words.
Why rush through the living and the dying?
Why push the moments into cubicles of attachment?

This is pain.
That pulling, wrenching feeling of wanting something other than what is.
That darkening tenderest of reaching for that which is not so.
That sharp claustrophobic grasping to get beyond the already piled and defined.

Oh it is an odd and disorienting feeling to let this droplet be.
Letting the droplet be detailed -- only as an illusion that it is separate from the air, the water and the elements that define it in the mind as a droplet.

Imagine you are the surface of the sea.
Experience this.
The rain. The air.
The spray. The currents.
The waves, the deepest fault lines.
Non beginning, non end.
Experience being.

What if all we could ever hope to be is exactly what we are in this moment?

This is joy.
Feeling open to the gentle movements of breath.
Sitting in silent vast spaces where mothers birth and mothers die.
The sounds are the echo of inhales and exhales.

Month of March.
This transitional instant,
when I can feel the beginning and end in the mountain mist.
The swelling buds, the frozen mud.
The hot fire and hustling wind.

Taking down the wall between joy and pain,
the droplet becomes the sea.
And I am but the interstice
between air and earth for a moment.

Absorbing What I Already Know

Cutting the grass again
Only this time it is in answer
To my need to be engaged
Doing something
Moving with only my energy
And the lay of the land to guide me.
Walking in a loop
Preferring to find all my corners rounded
following the circles of my thoughts.
Around and around they cycle back
Making an extended
Concentric web
Of love
Around Emmett
Our 4-year old cat.

Yup, going blind
All the way and fast
Says the doc.
Not quite there yet, though.
Still seeing about 20 percent of light in one eye
Or so he thinks.
Following sound and smell
Gently maneuvering with whiskers
Brushing the sides and edges of things
Cold wet nose touches my leg gently
Before he rubs his full side body.
Emmett purrs in his never-very-loud voice
Just to be in the same space
Where I am sitting on my yoga mat.

What is it to be a cat with no eyes
Yet can still catch a fly – if it moves.
Must be the sound that tips him off.
Since he was very young he descended gradually
Paws reaching for what might be there below him
Though did not stop climbing onto desks
Or up into trees
Or on top of refrigerators.
Lately he has given up the refrigerator.
His world darkens, or does it just become gray?
The doc couldn’t say.

Mourning for a life he will not have
My husband reminds me
That Emmett gets the life he gets
Just like we do.
And he does have us
Here and now
Weaving this web of love
In every space in which he finds himself
Giving him as much freedom as he can bear.
Today we agreed to let him continue going outside
Only in daylight and when we are near.
Besides he can go in and out by himself
With our neat swinging door
Until he can’t.
And that day may come too.

In Savasana sometimes I offer images
To students whose eyes are closed
But whose minds are open.
Perhaps for Emmett I can do the same.
At times when he is in his car box
I bring up images of the grass where we are going
Of the way the light filters through the leaves
Of the sounds and smells from the porch
And he purrs from the back seat.
My practice will be with eyes closed this evening.
Feeling my own feet on earth
Finding my heart beating,
Listening for my breath.

Cherishing this opportunity
To offer all there is of love
What changed today was in the mind
The heart has been here all along
Watching
Wondering
Making sounds
To guide the blind.

How Do I Change?

Working through the amazing experiences of shoulder stand with my legs in lotus. How did this happen? Not as though I set the goal, but somehow after many things led up to Ardha Baddha Padma Paschimatanasana (half lotus legs forward fold, bound to folded toe), which is a place I have not gone before, I sat in lotus feeling the stability of the world above and below me. So I rocked back and hung there, breathing, gently holding my legs just as though I was sitting on the sky, and then stretching my core and and opening the groin muscles just enough to begin straightening my lotus knees to the sky too. I rolled back down to sit. Crossed my lotus the other way and went back up. Breathing up and down my spine. Gentle flexing of thighs and hips, no where I had to go, just breathing. Hard to say... right side up, up side down...sitting or what exactly? It just didn't matter.

I've been humming spontaneously all morning since then. Came in off my mat and wrote this, thinking about 21.5.800 and all the people blogging and writing and doing yoga in search of some transformation.


Change is simply
taking on the challenges of being
openly,
without the barriers of attachment
to the story I have told myself.
Gradually I become more aware,
and in that awareness there is
more of me.
Have I changed,
or found myself
as I have always been,
full of possibilities,
continuous, without end?

In this way
loss becomes a part
of gain,
sorrow becomes a part
of joy,
and the dualities
begin to dissolve
that make this now
and that then.
Or to put it another way,
there is nothing else
but this.

Resistance only works for a while,
and if I am patient,
I can breathe into that
to the place that lets go
into everything.

Being Some Nobody

It is lovely to be nobody.

Breathing in the coolness of the evening.
Scanning the horizon as the sun sinks below the hill.
Wiping the mud from my shoes.
Turning my gaze in the direction of the calling bird.
Feeling the smoothness of the yogurt against my throat.
Stretching the muscles in the arch of my foot.
Watching the man I love kneeling on his kneepads planting onions.
Listening to the slow constancy of the creek down the way.
Straining to distinguish the sounds of the owls in the night.
Cuddling the fuzziness and heat of the cat in the dark.
Giving up all hope of finishing a task on this day.
Finding the soft resistance of the mattress below my hip bone.
Cherishing the depth of my own breath.

It is lovely to be nobody.

This might be the morning I rise in the dark to see the moon shine.
This might be the day I begin with savasana at sunrise.
This might be the day I plant the rest of the onions.
Perhaps there is more than this.
Perhaps there is no more than this.
No matter where I am, I am just here.
No matter who I am, I am just nobody.
How lovely! Free to be, entirely free.

Energy Rising

Get up and be.
Take myself there, even if I feel the resistance.
Acknowledge the backwards pull and seek the source.
Is it fear? Is it lack of faith? Is it judgment?
Can I tolerate that I have no other moment than this one?
Let that change everything.

Sometimes I think, "one day I will do this or that, this way or that way..."
That is thinking.
Now I understand that if I intend to do it, that is an intention.
If I do it, I do it.
If I do not do it, I do not do it.
Now is now.
Giving myself this is the gift of my own life.

Perhaps it is giving myself the time to do yoga.
Perhaps it is sitting and not doing any asana.
Perhaps it is ensuring that I keep my words, perhaps that I let all my words go.
Perhaps it is drinking the wine, perhaps it is not drinking the wine.
Eat the meat, do not eat the meat.
Watch the sun rise, watch the sun set.
Keep my eyes closed. Open my eyes.
Everything in the mind is in the mind.
Is the body in the mind?
Is the breath in the body?

I make choices. I choose to live this moment.
Do I put off breathing? I breathe in, I breathe out.
Sweep myself up in the energy of breath.
Let myself rest in the peace of breath.

Spring

Drawing deep from the well, melted snow
Warming from the inside out, earth's core
Softening on the outside, sun's heat

The engine of the world is eternal
Human stories woven like a lace doily
Feet gently printing in the sands of time
Indentations slowly erased by the wind

Plant the peas
Observe the details
Find the center of the world
in the unfurling of your own breath