Embedded Files
Orienting to HOME, II
Overview:
Arrive & Settle...Gather & Begin
Entering In: Orienting to Home, on this light-filling side of the year
Reviewing the timeline of themes that bring us to right here and now within EIF.
The first true opening of the season is the one within ourselves that said YES -- whether it was an easy yes, an unsure yes, a partially resistant yes, a curious yes, an All-In Yes....Thank you for being here.
11/2, ORIENTING to HOME, I
11/9, SENSING-MOVING from HEART
11/16, LET GO ~ LET BE ~ LET COME: intro
11/23, BREATHING-BEING WITH, I
11/30, REFLECTING & REFLEXING, I
12/7 REFLECTING & REFLEXING, II
12/14 ENTERING the HEART of MYSTERY
12/21 STILL POINT (Winter Solstice focus)
12/28, BREATHING WITH, II
1/4 ORIENTING to HOME, II
(and next week's 1/11 closing session of LET GO ~ LET BE ~ LET COME)
Today's ORIENTING TO HOME is a new opening, a new yes -- first and foremost to ourselves and this amazing body through which we explore, express, receive, and love.
Deepening, I: Considering how self-leaving invites self-returning...
Self-leaving, whether large or in a thousand tiny ways, is common in the human experience. And herein also lies the great gift and invitation: self-returning. Self-returning provides fresh perspective, an opportunity to shed the constraints of previous stories/perceptions, and to re-enter one's heart and self newly, to begin again (and again and again!)...Embody the intimacy of coming home.
POEM:
Poem: Initiation Song from the Finders Lodge by Ursula K. Le Guin
Exploration: Explore your body as if you've just arrived inside this form -- no prior stories, no cultural preconceptions/definitions. Turn up all of your senses. Tune yourself towards discovery and wonderment. Let this be organic and experiential. Whenever you witness your mind replaying a well-worn gaze, perspective, or story, relax-release and return to yourself newly.
Additional Prompts: change direction & gravitational relationships; zoom close in and spend intimate time with one small detail; your tail moves in many directions-- be guided; taste the air -- let it move you...
Journal/Take Note & REST
Special note: In EIF we spend time allowing our thoughts-words-habitual perceptions to shapeshift, dissolve, fall apart...in the interest of touching something deeper within ourselves and the living world. And eventually, as we find our way to words again, we might then speak from a place that is fresh, authentic, and true -- one that might sound into the depths of another and call forth their own depths. This take practice! and is threaded throughout EIF as a way to prime our conscious embodiment towards relating to-with-and-from the heart of life.
Deepening, II:
Exploration: new shapes of relating
Spend several minutes with each of the following --
embody these shapes so well that you could easily share it with a close friend for them to replicate
shape of belonging, held close in
shape of offering something of yourself to another (remember the first week when we named a quality of ourselves that's easy to call upon? maybe this has a shape...)
shape of receiving (one that is unique to you, like a specially made key in the shape of something only you know -- the kind of key you'd give to your bestie)
REST-ing shape of yourself as we gather together towards closing...
POEM: House of Belonging by David Whyte (below)
Closing & Moving into the week: Reminder that next Sunday is an extended session, like a super mini-retreat! I'll open the room at 7:15 Eastern (plan to arrive early, please), and we'll begin promptly at 7:30. Our closing mini-retreat session will conclude at 8:45 pmE. Jeni will send an email a few days prior so that you can begin to prepare...Thank you for your tender, generous selves. See you soon!
ALL LANDSCAPES
ALL LANDSCAPES
Return to yourself again and again...use all your senses;
Be always coming home.
Please stay tuned for an email to prep towards Sunday's closing...
I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that
thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.
But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought
it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,
it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,
it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.
And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,
this is the gray day
someone close
to you could die.
This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next
and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,
the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.
This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.
This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.
There is no house
like the house of belonging.
~ David Whyte*
*Click the poem title above for a more easily readable view of the poem, which also includes a link to DW reciting it -- it's lovely to receive in his voice and cadence. Enjoy!
Thank you for your Presence here.
Thank you for your Presence here.
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