2011.10.20 _ 49

Today I worked with Lucinda's comment yesterday, letting centeredness expand within. I realized that the word centeredness points to being centered as the result of a centering move, so the two motions of centering and expanding started to play off each other, falling in step with my breath. Interestingly, on the inbreath I felt the centering, even though my lungs expanded, while on the outbreath I felt the expanding, expanding of my breath out into the world, even though my lungs contracted. While sitting and walking with these counterpoint motions, I felt an increasing balance.

Feeling space ... a house with many rooms. Some so open, sunshine pouring through, welcoming, circulating... breeze from one side not withheld from the other. A few locked rooms too... knocking and knocking. Some rooms just dark but open, 'walk through but don't linger.' Sometimes restful, to sit in the dark anyway, quiet as a mouse. #occupy edited 00:33, 21 Oct 2011

Interesting pema, during the meditation at the beginning of my class on wednesday we were guided trough a very similar thinking, standing, breathing deeply, filling our lungs from top to bottom, expanding the front and back of our chest, expanding each cell of our body, exhaling squeezing in reverse into the room and expanding ourselves into the space that surround us. Was talking about this in my PaB session with Paradise and Lucinda.

http://wiki.playasbeing.org/Chat_Logs/2011/10/2011.10.19_19%3a00_-_offering_oneself_to_the_void

Still thrilling to the poem shared by Calvino in today's Ways of Knowing session. Well worthy of today's entire recliner sit - and a lifetime more:

"The Apology" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery,
But 'tis figured in the flowers,
Was never secret history,
But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song. edited 01:48, 21 Oct 2011

::: Writing is an art
::: Of elegant clarity
::: Through complexity

I, too, was moved by poetry today - Pila's poem contributed in the WoK meeting. He said it seems to convey the essence of meditation:

A halo of light surrounds the world of the law.
We forget one another, quiet and pure, altogether powerful and empty.
The emptiness is irradiated by the light of the heart and of heaven.
The water of the sea is smooth and mirrors the moon in its surface.
The clouds disappear in blue space; the mountains shine clear.
Consciousness reverts to contemplation; the moon-disk rests alone.
Empty Infinity
from Richard Wilhelm's translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower

I will try and imagine as I sit, within the the fearful emptiness, of being "irradiated by the light of the heart and of heaven."
Light filling the void as I breathe in; opening myself for more as I breathe out, edited 06:04, 21 Oct 2011

Two strong girls mirror strength....
Swinging fiercely,they meet today in the middle of the monkey bars, face to face.
They stop and look...
Smiling, they remember when they first met and how much they love each other.
Then they drop... edited 06:16, 21 Oct 2011

Last night I watched the CBC news, which started with Gaddafi's death (killing). Something very extreme in many dimensions of that event and its presentation. I remembered to "watch the space between you and the screen", #occupying that charnel ground.