I returned home a 5 day silent meditation retreat Thursday evening… If I had to sum up what I learned this week it is
1. That everything changes
2. That holiness/God dwells in unexpected places.
3. That the process of naming an experience allows us to see the continuous changing nature of life…
4. Seeing the flow of these change moment to moment can open us to feeling more ease and less anxiety in our lives.
In this morning’s parasha, Jacob is has set out on a journey…he is plagued by anxiety…leaving behind the life he as known…leaving behind his very angry brother…his loving but deceiving mother and his ailing father. On his travels he receives a powerful teaching that comes in the form of a dream…he sees angels/messengers rising up and returning back down a ladder…his awareness of the nature of change is beginning. …Geness 28:16 says “Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘surely the Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it!’ This is very early on in a lifetime of learning to pay attention…and it takes him a long, long time to really embody this. But he is beginning his journey. He is recognizing holiness in the very place in which he is standing. He is inhabiting a seemingly ordinary place in the desert. Indeed…sometimes it takes a powerful dream…or experience to wake us up to the holiness of a particular moment in our lives…to recognize that holiness, that God is present even in seemingly ordinary, perhaps unlikely places. So this addresses the first part of what I learned at the retreat.
We won’t be together practicing yoga and meditation next week…but the parasha next week is really powerful and connected to the rest of what I want to teach today and the focus of the Shabbaton that the 3rd –sixth grade students are here to experience today…so I’m going to fast forward us a little bit.
In next week’s parasha Vayishilach we will read that after Jacob’s experience of wrestling with the “man” his name is changed to Yisrael. Finally after 22 years living with his 4 wives and many children…22 years of living with the anxiety of a belief that his own brother wants to kill him he has time alone…time to experience some silence perhaps (away from all those noisy animals and kids and wives-kind of like a silent meditation retreat) in the silence, he gains true clarity by seeing what is present in his mind…indeed by wrestling with the man…metaphor perhaps for wrestling with his mind state, his consciousness becomes more expansive…tradition teaches that at this point he becomes more complete as a human being…when he truly sees what is present in his mind…and feels sensation powerfully in his body (remember how his leg is injured in the wrestling?) he is finally able to understand the fullness of reality…his name changes…he changes…and he is able to finally have peace with his brother and with himself.
So the process of awareness… of meditation and yoga are just that…a process…it’s something we do in an ongoing way in order to cultivate clarity. God willing as we practice we begin to notice more ease…that’s not to say that the “goal” here is to have a peaceful practice every time…that would be unrealistic and impossible…our minds are busy…out bodies are busy…what we are doing here is learning how to pay attention to what is happening in the moment. Noticing how that moment shifts and now something new has come into our awareness…there is fluidity…we are not stuck with a painful thought or sensation…it comes…it goes…we name an experience….comfortable…pleasant…unpleasant…tense…relaxed…anger…sadness…joy…whatever the experience is we name it…we watch it shift…we rename it…and gradually life becomes a little less scary…even in it’s unpredictability, we can predict that whatever is happening, no matter how painful…it won’t stay that way forever…there will be relief…some kind of relief if we sit through it long enough…if we hold the pose for just a little while longer…we will come to some kind of rest again.
So as we practice together today…notice the changing nature of your experience…pleasant…unpleasant…really unpleasant…not so bad…just stay with the experience and be a witness…as always if stories arise and take you out of the “moment” and backward or forward in time…once you see that that has happened…allow your breath to be an anchor that you can reach out to…that tethers you back again to the present. Be compassionate with yourself…name the experience without judging whether or not you are “doing it right”…trust me…you can’t do this wrong.
1. That everything changes
2. That holiness/God dwells in unexpected places.
3. That the process of naming an experience allows us to see the continuous changing nature of life…
4. Seeing the flow of these change moment to moment can open us to feeling more ease and less anxiety in our lives.
In this morning’s parasha, Jacob is has set out on a journey…he is plagued by anxiety…leaving behind the life he as known…leaving behind his very angry brother…his loving but deceiving mother and his ailing father. On his travels he receives a powerful teaching that comes in the form of a dream…he sees angels/messengers rising up and returning back down a ladder…his awareness of the nature of change is beginning. …Geness 28:16 says “Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, ‘surely the Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it!’ This is very early on in a lifetime of learning to pay attention…and it takes him a long, long time to really embody this. But he is beginning his journey. He is recognizing holiness in the very place in which he is standing. He is inhabiting a seemingly ordinary place in the desert. Indeed…sometimes it takes a powerful dream…or experience to wake us up to the holiness of a particular moment in our lives…to recognize that holiness, that God is present even in seemingly ordinary, perhaps unlikely places. So this addresses the first part of what I learned at the retreat.
We won’t be together practicing yoga and meditation next week…but the parasha next week is really powerful and connected to the rest of what I want to teach today and the focus of the Shabbaton that the 3rd –sixth grade students are here to experience today…so I’m going to fast forward us a little bit.
In next week’s parasha Vayishilach we will read that after Jacob’s experience of wrestling with the “man” his name is changed to Yisrael. Finally after 22 years living with his 4 wives and many children…22 years of living with the anxiety of a belief that his own brother wants to kill him he has time alone…time to experience some silence perhaps (away from all those noisy animals and kids and wives-kind of like a silent meditation retreat) in the silence, he gains true clarity by seeing what is present in his mind…indeed by wrestling with the man…metaphor perhaps for wrestling with his mind state, his consciousness becomes more expansive…tradition teaches that at this point he becomes more complete as a human being…when he truly sees what is present in his mind…and feels sensation powerfully in his body (remember how his leg is injured in the wrestling?) he is finally able to understand the fullness of reality…his name changes…he changes…and he is able to finally have peace with his brother and with himself.
So the process of awareness… of meditation and yoga are just that…a process…it’s something we do in an ongoing way in order to cultivate clarity. God willing as we practice we begin to notice more ease…that’s not to say that the “goal” here is to have a peaceful practice every time…that would be unrealistic and impossible…our minds are busy…out bodies are busy…what we are doing here is learning how to pay attention to what is happening in the moment. Noticing how that moment shifts and now something new has come into our awareness…there is fluidity…we are not stuck with a painful thought or sensation…it comes…it goes…we name an experience….comfortable…pleasant…unpleasant…tense…relaxed…anger…sadness…joy…whatever the experience is we name it…we watch it shift…we rename it…and gradually life becomes a little less scary…even in it’s unpredictability, we can predict that whatever is happening, no matter how painful…it won’t stay that way forever…there will be relief…some kind of relief if we sit through it long enough…if we hold the pose for just a little while longer…we will come to some kind of rest again.
So as we practice together today…notice the changing nature of your experience…pleasant…unpleasant…really unpleasant…not so bad…just stay with the experience and be a witness…as always if stories arise and take you out of the “moment” and backward or forward in time…once you see that that has happened…allow your breath to be an anchor that you can reach out to…that tethers you back again to the present. Be compassionate with yourself…name the experience without judging whether or not you are “doing it right”…trust me…you can’t do this wrong.
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