Greetings friends,
Our Monday noon insight meditation sangha will meet again for the 94th time online. Still here. Still plugging in together. It’s kinda crazy when you look closely at it. No one saw this coming, we could not have guessed that we would be gathering together while in our homes. It just isn’t intuitive. Doesn’t seem like it would work. Seems like a pretty bad idea.
We certainly were wrong. It looks like we have learned something here. We experienced how the world, evolving as it does in mysterious, unpredictable ways, ways that sometimes, on some days seem hard, unpleasant, maybe even repulsive, can be endured due to our skill of ADAPTATION. We are built this way. We forget how we can alter our course quickly when needed, turn around when we hit the wall and head for the open fields, sit through a horrific inner storm or a natural disaster or terrible heartbreaking news, wait for the tears to finish flowing or the frustration to die down inside, for the breath to become slow and ease-filled and for the sun to return to the sky. We can do this. We can. And sometimes, some days we find joy in this adaptation; the beauty of solitude, of the quiet, of the keen connection to our mother earth and to all of nature, including all of us who share this planet. On other days we found the delight in connecting online with people we would never have had a chance to meet from across the planet. WOW.
On Monday, with all of you who can plug in together at noon, I would like to share with you another reading from The Wakeful Body by Willa Blythe Baker. This reading is about our capacity to recognize and cultivate the “Loving Witness” in regards to our mind, to get in touch with the “venerable old sage” within. It’s that part of us that knows that we can do this.