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ENTERING
Overview: Arrive & Settle....Gather & Begin
When we descend into darkness, our habitual ways of seeing-perceiving “go dark." This opens opportunities for growing a broader and more nuanced spectrum of sensory capacities through which we can perceive, explore, relate, and REST...even as we are in the midst of the unknown.
In previous weeks, we've explored ranges of sensing-perceiving-being (relationships to gravity and space, haptic touch, inside and out, panoramic-peripheral-focal views of sight-sound-sensing, etc). Enter the darkness with the support and nourishment of these practices. Intentionally engaging the darkness/unknown in these ways primes us beyond the biology of survival and into the generative richness of creative potential and transformation.
Remember Week 3's Tending to the Biology of Survival & Wellbeing? It is fully natural that when we experience a loss of our abilities to engage life in ways that are familiar, at least part of our response will be to shrink back, close off, feel anxious/afraid, etc. These are all biological intelligences at play to help us slow down, pay attention, and choose wisely. This is healthy! ...and we don't stop here.
The immense beauty and opportunity here is that we can exercise our capacities for holding multiple experiences simultaneously...and allow all of it to guide us through (I am scared, yet I approach with tender attention. My courage carries my fear. I take one more step. I rest. I begin again).
Instead of resisting the inward curling-in/contraction response, I follow it. As I follow the contraction, the furling-inwards, I enter into a deeper intimacy with the process (and myself through the process!). I take my time; I listen slowly through all senses; I perceive with my heart. And then -- as many of you have already experienced -- there is a point at which furling-in guides me into an inner-unfurling, an expansiveness so vast that I become wonder.
Wonder opens, enlivens, engages our creativity and presence with what Is, even as we can never fully name it. The more I intentionally meet myself in the darkness, the more I grow my responsiveness with-and-in Mystery. Meet the mystery with your whole being! Nourish and be nourished by this place.
Watch your life change....
TO KNOW THE DARK
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
~ Wendell Berry
Orienting through Heart -- active somatic practice, creating more space for Heart
Round One: At any point in this process, if you feel tension -- allow yourself to soften and breathe a little slower/fuller. You are also welcome to rest anytime...and then begin again when ready!
* Easy spine, touch bones of fingers to bone of sternum. Rest here in ground meeting ground.
* Extend other arm out to the side, softening to widen. Breathe into your sides, feeling the breath extend to and beyond your fingertips. Remain here in the active presence of breath, softening, extending into and through space.
* Drift your arm back until you feel your shoulder blade tucking into your back, nestling in the space behind your heart-center.
* Pause here and breathe before extending back out to the side, this time your shoulder blade sliding from your back and outwards as if it could slide right towards your fingertips.
* Explore moving your arm back, nestling your shoulder blade into your back, and then expanding outwards several times.
* Return to the side for a breath or two and then Float your arm forwards, this time feeling as if your heart center is nestled deep inside your chest. Notice the connection from Heart through arms and out through your hand.
* Soften to extend further. Explore this drifting from center/side to front and back again.
* Finally, return to center/side one more time for a few easy breaths and maybe a further widening of breath and breadth.
* Relax your arm and notice the shifts in your experience; notice the differences in one side compared to the other.
REPEAT TO THE OTHER SIDE.
Round Two:
* Easy spine, extend both arms out to the sides. Imagine that they are one connected swath of fabric (instead of two sides divided by a middle).
* "Floss" this long ribbon of arms through the center of your chest, back and forth. Soften in your chest and discover the fluidity of the slide from side to side.
* Return to center and then follow the same sequence & cues as above (sides, back, sides, front, sides, REST).
Round Three:
* Easy spine, extend both arms out to the sides as before, this time with palms upturned. Soften to widen. Feel the connection of your Heart to your palms, palms to your heart.
* Fold your shoulder blades into your back, then bend your elbows, and bring your hands to center -- allow them to rest on your sternum. Pause to acknowledge you've arrived at the center.
* Unfold your hands, arms, open to the sides into full expansion. Pause with palms upturned. Heart offering through palms, palms receiving to bring back to Heart.
* Repeat this Folding and Unfolding several times, turning up your sensitivity to the pathway, the process.
* Finally, rest with your hands at your sternum.
Round Four:
* With your hands resting at your sternum & your sternum meeting and resting with your hands, turn your gaze inwards.
* Allow your inner gaze to descend into the bottom of your Heart. Perhaps you'll see another version of yourself resting there.
* Remain here, breathing-being with your attention resting in your Heart.
* When it's time to return your gaze to the space around you, do so from the rested-ground of your Heart. In other words, see-perceive from your Heart outwards into the room. Notice how this may be different from your habitual forms of seeing.
Journaling (write, draw, move) "Darkness/going-dark/descending" --
Sharing Darkness -- So many rich images and qualities -- Thank you!
Crypt, death
The void will be what you bring in
My total willingness to not know is the mirror to my knowing.
Quiet, warm and cozy, introspection, hermiting
Searching
Returning, remembering, going inward to expand
Hollow
Spiral, loops
Down like roots
🌪️
Trees dormant. Dreaming, Art. Love for the dead
Eyes widen in the dark. wonder
🕳️
Darkness can outline with different senses what I only see with my eyes in the light
Rest. Receptive
🌚
Calmness, tranquility
Paradox of heavy and light, here and not here
Before the dream seed opens
Dive In -- choose one of the above and enter in through a less familiar/unknown path of exploration
Write/draw/move: Place yourself in a different relationship with whatever is your go-to; get upside-down-backwards to familiar/comfortable so as to penetrate into something new.
Ideas: Explore while under a blanket, go upside-down, move backwards, write/draw with non-dominant hand.
POEM: One Heart by Li Young Lee
ONE HEART
Look at the birds. Even flying
is born
out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open
at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.
~ Li Young Lee
Descend -- choose a new approach than what you chose previously
(different relationship to gravity than before, allow yourself to make explore sound - make new sounds, write and let your words fall apart/disintegrate/become scribble or unfamiliar shapes)
POEM: Prayer by Sophie Strand
PRAYER
No, I've not fallen in love. I've branched and split in love. I've been planted. Anastomosed in love. Greened and yellowed and reddened. I've clouded and misted
and descended. I've rooted, gone liquid, gone rot in love. I've not fallen. I've been numerous in love. Hyphal lace through peat. Rootlets hugging ammonites. Handful of samaras flung from sycamore.
I've not been myself. I've not fallen. I've been buried in love. And someday-- prickle of spore on a water molecule in love -- I will be lifted.
~ Sophie Strand
Deepen -- choose a shape, feel your body enter into that shape, settle into the shape, rest inside the shape....eventually that resting may give rise to a new shape, follow into the next...
REST
POEM: Upon Entering the Forest by Tom Hirons
(Read, first as originally written; then, second, in the first person. Read through any lens that calls to you)
Closing -- Shape of Heart/Gratitude as we part ways -- Thank you. Wonder-Full week to you!
UPON ENTERING THE FOREST
A man goes into the forest and says
I know you/I miss you/I was
once here with you
and he listens to the singing
and the way the ground beats
and crackles and hums
and if he can bear it
he allows his heartbreak out
the black pearl of his loneliness
he's carried all his life
The thin world will soon call him back but
for a moment he might crack open
and hear the forest roar.
His life will never be the same
He cannot go back to sleep
The pearl in his chest becomes a fire.
~ Tom Hirons
OL
OL
Notice what the natural world is showing you about descent. Bodily enter in.
Invite your intention to join you and be shaped by the path of descent, the path of less-into-un-known...
IL
IL
Descend into your heart.
Stay awhile.
Soften as you release notions of knowing.
Layer by layer, descend deeper.
Enter into the heart of HEART.
REST.
Remain rooted here, even as you return into the next moment...and the next...of daily life.
DL
DL
What happens when you move through your day with(in) qualities of mystery?
What do you notice in your body? What do you notice about time?
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRESENCE HERE
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRESENCE HERE
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