Meeting #21: June 9, 2020
Meeting Theme: Can it really be this simple? Breathe. Focus. Allow your body to feel. Can we truly experience “emptying”? Can we simply be present without judgment? Without an agenda? How does life feel when I do that? How does it feel when I can’t? Or won’t?
Today’s Quotes:
Enough
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.
David Whyte
Oh Friend
Oh friend,
Had I known you are in the breeze
I would have walked more.
Had I known you are in the stillness of now
I would have sat more.
Had I known you are everywhere in everything
I would have lived more.
Had I known you are eternal
I would have died more.
by Amir H. Imani, Therapist and Mindfulness Teacher
Gently Guided Meditation: Breath/Body/Mind awareness with practice of Resonant/Coherent Breathing and a brief Yoga Breathing
Meeting Recording:
Meeting #22: June 11, 2020
Meeting Theme: Before there is a thought, there is a sense experience. This is true of the infant; this is true of the adult as well. The mind creates language to process the sense experience; sense experiences trigger mental events. Do we become disconnected from the world of the senses at times with language? In our mindfulness practices, we train our minds to notice sense experience in a “pre-verbal way;” that is, to notice the sense experience without the mediation of language. But then language arises anyway! Now we notice the language arising, and as that language disappears we return to the primacy of the sense experience. And thus the mind becomes more present and more accepting.
Today’s Quotes:
How language is webbed in the senses. Out of sand-blazed brilliance into quirky minds such as his, into touch, taste and fragrance. He thought he’d linger just a bit longer, let the bath take total hold, ease and alleviate, before he put on clothes and entered the complex boxes where people do their living.
Nothing fits the body so well as water.
— Don DeLillo from his novel Underworld
You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.
— Bruce Lee, interviewed by Pierre Berton
Gently Guided Meditation: Breath/Body/Mind awareness
Meeting Recording:
James M. Walsh Pastoral Counseling 