Hari Om

Taking our time to breathe, to bring our awareness into our body, and to settle our mind is no small thing. It is not about “being healed”. I’m not even sure what healed means. Does it mean no more wound? No more scar? No more memory of pain that our training wants to avoid? Who knows? I certainly don’t want to wait to be happy, or to love, or to be in love until I am “healed”. I want to be all of those things right now, in this messy, confused, forgetful body.

I don’t want to keep functioning as if I am broken.

If I want to stop pretending “I am okay”; I have to stop believing “I am fucked up”.

We can actually be okay in all of our neuroses. We can have all of the joy, the splendor, the wow and amazement of life right now!

All in Love,

Michael

Hari Om

We have been here all along. This old road. I think we forget that. I think we forget that we are not “new” or “old” but “always”. When we are enter into the conflicts within and without, we can feel so isolated, or so aligned, depending on how we can open our hearts in that moment.

When I am in my wounding, everything hurts. When I am in my healing, everything is medicine.

It is from this place that we can see, in any moment, how our heart is opening or closing. All along, though, we are on that road we have always been on, and eventually it will bring us right back around. This means we are working along a lineage of all of the love and the pain that we ever have had. We cannot bury the past, because it is our history. The difference is the past happened then, and our history is always coming through us.

bell hooks brings us into what that looks like in the place from which she comes.

Appalachian Elegy 15. bell hooks pink and white oleander not native to Appalachian ground still here lies years and years of poison rebel flags heritage and hate in the war to fight hunger and ongoing loss there are no sides there is only the angry mind of hurt bringing death too soon destroying all our dreams of union

Thanks, again, bell hooks for that wonderful breath of grief and love and memory.

We also heard from Padraig O Tuama:

Men in a war Padraig O Tuama Men in a war prefer the talk of politics than of pain.

In many ways, we are all in this war we have agreed to inside of our heart and minds, I think. And when we are embroiled in that war, it is the weapons of pretext and emotional dysregulation that we use the most.

And finally, we have a great love popem from Ellen Bass, a prayer.

Prayer Ellen Bass Once I wore a dress liquid as vodka. My lover watched me ascend from the subway like I was an underground spring breaking through. I want to stop wanting to be wanted like that. I’m tired of the song the rain sings in June, the earth, her ornate crown of trees spiking up from her loamy head. There are things I wanted, like everyone. But to this angel of wishes I’ve worshiped so long, I ask now to admit the world as it is.

Ah, yes! The best of prayer. To learn to really truly love the world as it is.

All In Love,

Michael

Hari Om

First, this video and audio is poorly synced. I would fix it but it seems to come in and out throughout the video, making that difficult. You may want to listen to the podcast audio instead of the video, today.

Today’s sit was encouraged by Angela to contemplate on the why it is we seem to seek external validation, but have such a difficult time finding internal resources for these very feelings. It is very interesting how we are all interdependant and at the same time have all of these feeling sna dunderstandings within, if we can access them. Perhaps this is where our interdependance comes from. Perhaps we are not meant to be able to do this alone, but acutally do require one another to see what we cannot seem to see in our selves. That said, the problem, if ther eis ever such a thing, is believing the voices of love when we hear them. That is very different.

To be able to believe something from outside of us, we must be willing to challenge the belief that is within us. To do this, we must use awareness practices to zoom out and see the multitude of who we are at any moment.

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet.

We are much larger than we believe ourselves to be, and contain so much more than we can see at any moment.

Drifting Mary Oliver I was enjoying everything: the rain, the path wherever it was taking me, the earth roots beginning to stir. I didn’t intend to start thinking about God, it just happened. How God, or the gods, are invisible, quite understandable But holiness is visible, entirely. It’s wonderful to walk along like that, thought not the usual intention to reach an answer but merely drifting. Like clouds that only seem weightless. but of course are not. Are really important. I mean, terribly important. Not decoration by any means. By next week the violets will be blooming. Anyway, this was my delicious walk in the rain. What was it actually about? Think about what it is that music is trying to say. It was something like that.

Like clouds that only seem weightless. But of course are not. Thanks Mary Oliver!

I decided after spending so much time on this topic today to hold off on Appalachian Elegy for today. I want to give it proper space each mornign, so we will revisit on Monday.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity by Donating Here.

Hari Om

Today, I asked a loved one if there was something I could consider focusing my contemplation on today. She said forgiveness.

It is something I could talk for hours about! There is so much in my life and in my practice that are deeply grown in the fertile soils of forgiveness. I find it to be such an expression of love for myself, and an opening to be with myself when I can move beyond forgiveness being only letting someone off the hook. It is much more than this. It is falling in love, it is growing in intimacy, it is being in communion with another, and with your own body and history and beliefs and healing. It is so very rich.

Some would say that it is not a necessity for healing, but I am not sure how it could not be the essence of healing. It is NOT the cure for our feelings of separation, but it is a barrier to us ever being able to truly confront those feelings. And, it isn’t truly about anyone but you.

Then we get to today’s offering cfrom Appalachian Elegy, and I am once again astounded at the poignancy of the poem today.

Appalachian Elegy 14. bell hooks hard rain softens harder ground from solid rock to mud so thick feet go under making every step dirge and trial even as joy surfaces at last today we plant we hope

Hard rain…softens harder ground.

Yep, bell hooks, forgiveness. Thank you poet!

Tell us about something you learned to forgive and how that changed your life. Leave us a comment and get the conversation going.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity by donating here.

Hari Om

The practice might begin with “everything is leaving. I, too, am leaving. I am arriving. I am leaving. I am the expansion and the contraction.”

Now, that is some nice, flowery language, and probably would serve just fine if I were to leave it at that. I, however, want to make this more present for me.

My elbow hurts.

It throbs and barks at me with the tiniest of movements, and I am unsure of which movement will trigger the pain from moment to moment. I am feeling pain, and with that is the invitation to suffering. Oh, poor me, why me, stupid me, I am not what I was, I am becoming weak, fragile, and slow. There you go, my famous Suffering Sauce recipe. Or, I can recognize that this too is changing, and this body is getting older, and with that comes limits that I sometimes push, and sometimes defy, and sometimes am forcibly pulled back into place with a great thump!

This morning, I feel the thump like a Zen stick to my back. “Remember your breath!”

Okay, thank you; breathing in, breathing out.

We are far simpler than we would like to think. We have been trained to think that complicated is superior. Fully in-depth programs with mathematical diets, astrological exercise routines, and organic crystal insertions are on the 72-fold path to a better you. Really, though: we breathe, we think, we feel, we decide, we believe, we fail, we move on. This practice is one of returning. The ebb and flow, expansion and contraction of life bring us to and from and back to where we begin, again and again and again.

Appalachian Elegy 13. bell hooks wingspan wide death covers all prey and predator turkey buzzards overhead at the bottom of the hill no eternity beckons just ongoing decay a deep smothering emptiness profound prolonged lamentation birds cry high

Profound prolonged lamentation. WOW! Thanks bell hooks. This is it. This is the sound, maybe, of all creation. A wailing of loss. Since the moment of the separation of all matter into an ever-expanding galaxy of rapidly departing bodies, we are wailing an aum of loss.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

We are wailing our lives into creation. Join the ancient chorus.

All In Love,

Michael

Generate Generosity here

Hari Om

Today’s sit meets shame and guilt as something other than roadblocks and failures. We are to look deeper into what it is that served us in the past with these emotional expressions, and to understand how we may be not in right relationship with them now. This is not a tip or trick to escape these experiences, rather a way forward to hold yourself with these experiences. Sit with it.

Today’s poem from bell hooks reminds us that sometimes that which nourishes us does not have what we need to heal.

Appalachian Elegy 12. bell hooks mud sliding down wet can do this make danger fall upon us turn the pure in heart away no water for holy cleansing no water for drying thirst just black death smothering earth soot after fire

Try to find your way into this discomfort, this smothering, oppressive fear, and you will find yourself in there.

Thanks for listening to today’s practice. You are invited to join this conversation by either commenting below or sending me a personal message. journeyhomemeditation@gmail.com

All In Love,

Michael

Hari Om

I will be very brief in this description. I’m holding the pieces of my broken heart. Each one, a jigsaw cut piece, fitting somewhere that I cannot find. This is the grief. To sit with this. This is the love. To sit with this.

This is the grief. To sit with this. This is the love. To sit with this.

All in love,

MichaelAll in love,

Michael

Feel free to send encouraging words to these students to my email: michael@kcahs.org