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But our reflex to leave our body is that we start living in a very small identity of a self
that owns a body but it's living in the mind and is
not really experiencing full aliveness; we don't get to see those beautiful flowers
and feel or sense tenderly our hearts with others
and to be really able to sense the reality of the moment in a direct way - we're just not here.
So learning to inhabit is the way back and, as we inhabit,
we begin to sense what we've been missing,
this open-heartedness; as Hafez says, he says: "Please stay near to me
and Hafez will spin you into love"... Stay near.
Often when I teach about working with
pain and unpleasantness, I talk about a kind of 8-year period where I was
chronically ill and it was a spiraling down - I have
loose connective tissue, it's a disease or a genetic disorder
- and so it leads to easily injuring myself and for about eight years
it was just getting worse and worse and I was losing mobility and it was very challenging...
And it was out of that period of working with the pain
and the illness that I wrote the book True Refuge, which really
was what I was discovering about how to be in the midst of
that kind of discomfort emotionally and physically
and find some real peace and freedom.
And one of my main discoveries, which I've shared and which was really
important to me was similar to the women I described - the dancers -
I'd go through these bouts where I'd be in a lot of structural pain
and I'd have a lot of fear about what I was not going to be able to do
and I'd get caught in a very small sense of a fearful self and a trying to fix it
tightening against what was in the future - just a very small, not-okay self...
And the practice became: "Okay how much can I really open in this moment
and let what's here be here? How much can I say 'this belongs'? "
Just like any wave in the ocean, it's part of the ocean.
And what I found was the more I could say 'this belongs', the more I was occupying the space of the ocean.
Every time there was a wave of fear, "this belongs" - okay, there's a little more space.
I wasn't the fearful self, I was occupying a much more
open space of tenderness relating to the fear.
It's not whether or not pain arises; it's how we relate.
Loving presence arises when we can say "this belongs".
This is Anne Morrow Lindbergh, she says:
"Go with the pain, let it take you, open your palms and your body to the pain.
It comes in waves like a tide and you must be open as a vessel lying on the beach
letting it fill you up and then retreating, leaving you empty and clear
with a deep breath - it has to be as deep as the pain -
one reaches a kind of inner freedom from the pain as if
as though the pain were not yours but your body's;
the spirit lays the body on the altar."
"With a deep breath - that has to be as deep as the pain -
one reaches a kind of inner freedom from pain
as though the pain were not yours but your body's,
the spirit lays the body on the altar."
So this is one of the gifts; I'm gonna name two gifts of embodiment, and one of them is
that through opening to the waves and saying "this belongs", we sense that ocean-ness
we sense that spirit, that loving presence that is vast.
But I wanna name one more gift, as part of closing, which is
one of the sufferings of leaving our bodies is we
lose communication, we can't really listen to the wisdom of our body...
So we really don't know how to take care of ourselves
and we're not so attuned energetically to others
and can't respond as well to our world.
And so, one of the gifts of coming back to the garden,
sensing ourselves as the garden, sensing all of us as the garden, is that we
come into a very living, energetic
and intelligent relationship with this world.
And I think you can hear that in this poem
you can hear how this comes alive in us when we start coming
into awareness of our body and you might close your eyes and just listen
it's called: "A felt sense prayer".
"I am the pain in your head, the knot in your stomach,
the unspoken grief in your smile.
I am your high blood sugar, your elevated blood pressure
your fear of challenge, your lack of trust.
I'm your hot flashes, your fragile low back, your agitation and your fatigue.
You tend to disown me, suppress me,
ignore me, inflate me, coddle me, condemn me.
You usually want me to go away immediately, to disappear - just slip back into obscurity.
More times than not I am only the most recent notes of a long symphony, the most
evident branches of roots that have been challenged for seasons.
So I implore you:
I am a messenger with good news, as disturbing as I can be at times.
I'm wanting to guide you back to those tender places in yourself, the place where you can
hold yourself with compassion and honesty.
I may ask you to alter your diet, get more sleep,
exercise regularly, breathe more consciously;
I might encourage you to see a vaster reality and worry less about
the day-to-day fluctuations of life.
I may ask you to explore the bounds and wounds of your relationships
I am your friend, not your enemy.
I have no desire to bring pain and suffering into your life
I'm simply tugging at your sleeve,
too long immune to gentle nudges.
I desire for you to allow me to speak to you in a way that
enlivens your higher instincts for self-care.
You are a being so vast,
so complex with amazing capacities
for self-regulation and healing;
let me be one of the harbingers that leads you to the mysterious core of your being
where insight and wisdom are naturally available
when called upon with a sincere heart.
Let me be one of the harbingers that leads you to the mysterious core of your being
where insight and wisdom are naturally available
when called upon with a sincere heart."
You might keep your eyes closed as we end together.
Really we're exploring how to
decondition this habit of leaving, how to learn to stay.
How to return to the garden by inhabiting our body.
How to become the whole garden, really this whole-beingness
and to know it requires a flexibility and approach
that there are times that out of compassion when pain is strong we redirect our attention
and many other times that we choose, we invite ourselves right back here.
It's as author or poet Jane Hooper says: "Please come home. Please come home.
Find the place where your feet know where to walk and follow your own trail home.
Please come home. Please come home into your own body, your own vessel, your own earth,
please come home into each and every cell and fully
into the space that surrounds you."
And so for these last few moments, to invite yourself home, fully
with interest, with care
you might let your awareness pour into your hands and just fill your hands with aliveness
feel the tingling and vibrating there
relaxing the arms, letting the awareness spread through the arms
so you feel the volume and the length of your arms
feel your feet filled with awareness, tingling and vibrating
feel the length and volume of your legs
fill them with awareness
and softening the belly, let the awareness spread so you inhabit
your torso
feel the face tingling, the eyes soft
inhabiting this whole body
and if there's somewhere in your body that is asking for attention
whether it's unpleasantness
see if you can breathe with it
and just feel it as a constellation of sensations
perhaps soften around it feel the space around it
and feel right to the center of it
noticing what changes
still breathing still aware of this whole body as a field of sensation
you might sense the space around you, the space in the room
and sense how the aliveness and space inside the body
and outside the body are like continuous space
filled with aliveness
how porous the boundaries of the body
sensing this dynamic presence
the space of aliveness that's your home
please come home
please come home into your own body, your own vessel, your own earth
please come home into each and every cell
and fully into the space that surrounds you."
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