November 4, 2014 Aaron's guided meditation on finding spaciousness and ease in the midst of tumult

November 4, 2014 Tuesday Evening, Classon finding that which is centered even in tumult.

Aaron: Good evening. My love to you. If she has no voice, (Barbara is very hoarse from a week of leading the Geneva retreat)  I have no voice. We do what we can.

We've talked a lot about the simultaneity of ultimate and relative, working on the mundane level and also simultaneously touching deep into the ultimate, and how that stabilizes you. Let's begin with a simple exercise and then go into a guided meditation and visualization.

I want you all to be trees–an apple tree, an oak tree, a pine tree. Arms up, let yourself be trees.(pauses are not noted unless very long but there were frequent pauses).You're in the forest so sometimes the branches may hit the tree next to you. The trees have no problem brushing their neighbors. We are on the edge of a storm, big black clouds rolling in. The wind begins to blow. Feel it in the body. You're welcome to stand up if you wish to do so. You can move back into the corners of the room and make more space for yourself.

Wind is blowing harder and harder. The day grows black, devoid of sunlight. Heavy clouds. Pelting rain, and wind, wind that wants to suck you up from the earth and blow you away. Feel the wind first in your upper body and arms, moving, moving. Now as the wind really threatens your existence, really wants to uproot you, breathe energy down through the crown chakra, down into the base chakra and down through the legs into the ground. Ground yourself deeply. Feel the roots going down and down and down.

The wind is blowing just as hard. Be aware of how the deepening roots create stability so that the top is able to move in the wind and not feel threatened by it. Go as deep as you need to. Bring awareness momentarily to the deepening of the roots. But once you feel stable, bring the attention up into the upper body and arms, swaying in the wind, moving. Each time you feel at all unstable, shift the attention down into the earth, down into the base chakra, down into the feet. At this point you may feel it more helpful to stand up, but it's okay to sit if you prefer.

Now the wind is blowing you almost horizontal to the ground. Fierce gusts. Feel the roots being pulled from the ground, and bring energy in. Extend the roots, ground, until the point that the fierce gusts are almost playful and enjoyable.

(long pause)

And gradually, the storm subsides. The wind lessens. The sky becomes a bit lighter. The trunk and branches begin to quiet themselves. Coming to a stillness. And you may sit down.

Breathing, breathing in and breathing out. Back here in this center, in this room with your friends. Just breathing and present.

Now we're going to use this exercise as the base for another experience. First, just two or three minutes of quiet sitting. Know when you are breathing in. Know when you are breathing out. Be aware of the texture of the breath, fine or coarse, long or short. Feel the breath in the body. As you breathe out, send energy down through your feet into the floor, into the earth. As you breathe in, let the energy come up more into the upper chakras. So with each exhale, grounding. Just present in this body.

(long pause)

We're floating on a beautiful sea in a lovely sailing boat, gentle swells rising and falling. A boat with an easy movement. It is a beautiful evening with a full moon and stars. The air not hot but soft, comfortable. Feeling deeply at ease. A dharma boat; most sails are furled for the night and all of you are sitting on the deck and meditating together.

Through the day you had all been scuba diving, going down into the depths with your tanks and lanterns to see some very beautiful formations on the bottom far below. You are all experienced scuba divers feeling comfort in the water. Your diving is out of the ship lanes, but sometimes in the distance you see ships passing, big cruise ships, freighters, and other such. Just watching. The swells rising and falling gently. The soft breeze on your face. The stars brilliant, filling the heavens above you.

You see a distant ship; it looks like a cruise ship, that has wandered out of the ship lanes. It's not heading toward you, there will not be a collision, but it's moving in an erratic path, and closer to you than most of the ships. So you simply watch. Perhaps the captain is taking his passengers to some different island than the usual. There's no concern, just watching the ship that is suddenly much closer than the others.

Breathing in and breathing out. Breathing in and breathing out. And now they are close enough that you can actually see the people on the balconies and on the decks. Approaching and moving past... There is no sign of any alarm. Just an explorer off the beaten path, perhaps.

As they come to the closest point in their passing to you, suddenly a loud explosion rocks the night, and the ship bursts out with fire at different points–bow, stern, mid-ships-- as if something right in the core of the ship had exploded, perhaps the engine room. Now you can see the people running back and forth, screaming. They're trying to get lifeboats in the water. People are simply jumping off the blazing decks. Screams fill the air.

You have many small rafts with small electric motors that you have used to propel yourself here and there in your diving explorations. Climb into your rafts, one or two of you in each. Put on your diving equipment in case you have need to go underwater. And so you motor out toward the people who are even without lifejackets, screaming in the water, "Save me! Save me!"

You had not noticed, but in this half hour of disaster the sky has become covered with clouds and wind has blown up. Now that you're in your small boats, you feel the current picking up and the whitecaps in the water. Be aware of the urgency. These people are drowning. Your craft is quite large, your main boat. Very few of you are aboard it. You could really hold hundreds of people there, but you are too far for them to swim to you.

As in our prior meditation with the wind whipping the trees, feel the wind blowing against you, the whitecaps. The tension, your own inner wind of tension. "Need to save these people. How can I help? What can I do?" The urgency. There is no one else close.

Moving in and picking up people, as you can, from the water. Helping them aboard your small launch. One or two at a time is fine, but when you have a dozen, they will turn you over. Needing to back away from them. Feeling the tension, the urgency. If you get caught in the ego, "I must save them," caught up fully in the mundane realm urgency, do you lose your grounding?

The waves are getting bigger. You may need to back off from this disaster and just sit quietly in your boat for a minute or two, grounding yourself before you can approach again. You may even choose to put on your scuba equipment and lower yourself down out of the now-violent waves and into the still depths beyond. Grounding yourself there. Down there, there's no urgency, no disaster except in your own mind. There are no screams for help. But you understand that you cannot stay there.

I'd like you each to find the balance that works for you. Moving into this still depth, really beautiful down there, grounding yourself. Breathing in space. Breathing out tension. Breathing in ease. Breathing out tension. Find the loving awareness heart that knows when it is ready to ascend again; can come up to the surface, climb into your empty motor launch, and begin to enter this disaster zone again. Picking up this person and that one. Helping people board your small boat. Taking them back to your big boat.

Going back in. Patches of fire on the water, the waves wild now, so that the fire itself seems to be tossed in the air. More and  more urgent screaming. The part of you that says, "I MUST stay here. I MUST deal with this. I MUST help." And the part that finally says, "I need some space. I can do more if I can come into a quietness again."

Pulling back. Slipping into the water and down, down. No more fire, no screams. Your headlamp illuminates a beautiful scene of coral and fish. Everything else is happening far above you. Breathing in ease. Breathing out tension. Breathing in space. Breathing out tension. And when you are ready, knowing this human is ready to ascend again, to participate, to help in whatever ways I can, from a place of love, not a place of fear.

Coming up to the surface again, back into your boat. Off go the scuba tanks. And back in you go to the disaster area. I'm going to be quiet now for about five minutes and let you move back and forth and see what prompts you to move away. I want you to find the place of love, of kindness, that knows, "I need to take a break. That is the kindness to myself and the best for all of us." And then the place of love that comes back up to the surface, not with fear, "People are dying and I'm not there," but rather, "Okay, I'm ready to take this on again." Really no "I" is ready–love is ready to take this on again.

For each of you, the point of moving back and the point of returning will differ. I want you to explore and see when those decisions can be made from the loving heart of awareness, and how that feels. I'll be quiet now for about five minutes.

(sitting; long pause)

Can you feel the possibility with 200 people screaming around you in the water to just approach one or two or three, just right here, and be fully with them, rescue them, pull them out of the water, without your mind jumping to the other 200? If you're not with these two or three, you're not going to be able to help the other 200. We cannot abandon the other 200. We know they are there. But presence is here in this moment. This is all there is. These are brought to safety. And then you go out and find another two or three.

Two hundred at once, it's just the ego saying, "I can do this. I should be able to do this." Can you feel how it's driven by fear? Just this one, just that one. And if the fear level picks up, backing off. Going down, deep down, to the place of quiet and staying there until you're back in a centered place, ready to emerge again.

Now this challenge is drawing to a close. Other ships have come to support the rescue. The storm has died down and the sea is quieting again. All who could be pulled from the sea and rescued have been rescued. It is time to come back to your own boat. All the people you rescued have been taken off that sailboat onto a much larger craft. It's just you again.

Stowing your small boats, putting away your scuba equipment. Moving away from this scene. The moon is out again. All sitting together on the deck. Breathing in and breathing out.

(sitting)

This kind of extreme is a rarity in any human life. But your everyday life is filled with urgent situations, and sometimes two areas of urgency at once, which may be as simple as the baby crying and the pot boiling over. Feeling the franticness.

I invite you to open your eyes. I'm going to release the body to Barbara and invite you as those travelers on your own big sailboat, sitting on the deck, to share your responses to the situation, what you may have learned and how it may apply to everyday life. How might your vipassana practice help you in such a situation? How about metta and resting in the open heart? What helps you to stay grounded and thus available? I'll end here and return the body to Barbara.

(Barbara reincorporates)

About 45 minutes of sharing, not recorded. Many people were deeply moved by this experience and found it applicable to daily life.

Barbara: Please take this exercise, this meditation, with you. See how you can use what you experienced in your everyday life, first to choose to come back to the place of center. We have to want to do that. Some of us thrive on "Ohhh!" and we have to say, "I don't want that craziness." Come back. What am I getting out of keeping that agitation and craziness going? Can I come back? What invites me to come back?

And watch it, not in the crises, but in the small situations, because there's more time to learn in the small situations than the crises. The strength of the energy will come up more in the crises. But little things, like the moment when you're carrying a pot of soup and you drop it on the kitchen floor. It's not a big crisis, but "Oh!" Tension comes up. It's a mess. I'm angry. Okay, my family will be fed still. The mess will get cleaned up. Can I just come back to center?

Or even smaller things. Getting dressed and the button pops off. Just watching the agitation that comes, the ego that wants to control, wants everything to go smooth. The deeper self that knows, "Eh, it's okay. It's just a button." It's just a bowl of soup. It's just a major surgery(one of the group who works in medicine has shared about his experiences of crisis during surgeries and staying centered)! Obviously there's a lot more responsibility toward the surgery than the button. But one is trained.

We're all trained to live our lives with love. We all have that capacity. So simply try to watch that during these two weeks. We did not have time tonight to talk about, Aaron did the meditation putting the roots down, but also how we can work with sound and energy and other things to help us put the roots down. I'd like to do more of that in the next class. Maybe something like the sound bath that you (Amy) did. Let's explore how we can use sound and energy to help us remember to put the roots down and actually put the roots down. And I invite Dan to bring in whatever tools he wants to for that too.

Dan: There's a game we can play that, when we sit, it's the easiest possible way, perhaps, to find grounding and centeredness. But if we change that up, we don't have to be out in our mundane life in a crisis situation. What if it were just a little bit different? Can we still stay grounded? Can we keep the stillness with a little bit of movement, a change of posture? We'll try something like that next time.

Barbara: Some of you were in the class last semester when we brought in those big rubber balls and we had people sitting on them and trying to find a center of balance on them.

Please keep up the vipassana practice and journaling, and reflect on this guided meditation a sit touches your daily life.

8:32pm, time to end. Good night, all. We'll see you in two weeks.

(session ends)