Bringing curiosity to whatever happens:

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

-Frederick Buechner

Drawing from a sharing from Byron Katie about doing the dishes, we look at learning to love whatever we need “to do.” We can use this to skillfully navigate the joys, the sorrows, the challenges and the mundane in a way that life becomes a practice of care.

This is an opportunity to practice being receptive to your own being.

Koshin Paley Ellison:  Being receptive is essentially being open to learning from everything. Some people hear this and are frightened. Others hear it and are excited … But true receptivity is a lot harder than it seems. And yet, if you can stay open to the lessons that are the most difficult to grasp, you can learn to swim, not drown, in the ocean of life.

This sharing draws from Sheryl Chard’s practice, Constellation of Belonging, from grateful.org

You belong. Everywhere. Yes, you—with all your history, anxiety, pain. Yes, everywhere—in every culture, community and circumstance, you belong in this body. You belong in this very moment. You belong in this breath…and in this one. You have always belonged.    -Sebene Selassie

 That we belong is a given fact.  -Br David Steindl-Rast

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.  -Carl Sagan

Independence is a political term, not a scientific one.  -Evolutionary Biologist, Lynn Margolis

In this sit, we open to exploring all of what’s here in this moment, not just the often very small story of “who we are vs who should be…”

This session explores how a meditation on a “triggering” children’s movie helped me see how the compassion in the term “compassion fatigue” is probably not compassion at all…

Please note: slight distortion from 00:00-03:00 and briefly around 15:00

We can learn to use a practice of skillful pendulation in our sitting practice, and in the whole our life as a means of grounding with challenge. This is a practice of flowing with a natural movement of coming and going, contraction and release, breathing in and breathing out, tides moving in and out, day moving to night and back to day, movement of seasons, and the up and down of bird wings.

Rumi, translator-Coleman Banks

The Essential Rumi:

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.

If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.

Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding,

the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

This sharing explores the congruency between refuge in the Dharma and modern behavioral medicine, particularly drawing from Judson Brewer’s gears model for habit change.

If you want more information on Judson Brewer, please see this Ted Talk.

Revisiting the poem, “What It Is“ is an opportunity to explore even deeper opening into what is here with compassion and wisdom.