Silence of the heart

Dear Friends, Here are the questions from Monday night.

Tell me a way your superego reacts to the practice of worship
Worship involves learning to listen and feel into silence or stillness, especially in the heart. Ego/superego blocks us, distracts us. Doubts, unworthiness, confusion, beliefs based on our history or experience of church.  Ego and superego resist vulnerability. It wants an operating manual and it wants things fixed.
What is stillness in the heart. It is a kind of emptiness, a lack of reactivity, an openness that allows a space of receptivity and sensitivity. First we may feel deadness, numbness , emotional turmoil, dissociation into the head, distraction. Or we may feel drawn into the stillness and discover the desire of the heart to worship.  Inevitably we will have to contend with the grasping, avoiding, deadening nature of our emotional heart. It is territory we have to traverse with patience and compassion. This  clarifying or purifying of the heart transforms it  from being a center of emotions into the organ of sensitivity and receptivity that is capable of knowing the silence.
Explore what opens you into silence/stillness  in the heart and what blocks that opening? What does your heart feel like right now?

We will be holding our Contemplative Worship Service this coming Monday, February 3rd from 7.30-9.00pm. 

You may begin to notice hopes and expectations arise.Perhaps you had a lovely time during our previous service. You may notice fantasies about how you want it go next time. You may notice expectations. Welcome to the grasping emotional heart! This is almost inevitable. No worship service is the same. Practicing presence allows us to return to our experience in the now, noticing all the grasping, all the judgements, sensing ourselves into our feet and belly. By allowing and by holding our experience we can rest. This is the doorway. 

Or perhaps you had a miserable time and you believe that you will always be cut off. This too is a grasping. We are grasping at our fixed self, convinced that we know what will happen and beset by the attacks of the superego. It is important to recognize the superego and push it away. We may also have to untangle many beliefs and ideas we hold about worship. These beliefs come from what we learned as a children. But they also include deep seated confusions about the languaging of worship. What does God, Lord mean? Are we worthy of being blessed, of being the beloved of the beloved?

By the way the author of the longer reading was Rumi.

Looks like we may warm up a bit. Don't fall, stay warm. Hope to see you next Monday

worship service

Here is the Monday night service and some notes about contemplative worship.

Contemplative worship.
Worship comes from the old English O.E."condition of being worthy, honor, renown,”  and sciepe, and -scip "state, condition of being," "to create, ordain, appoint." Worship is to lift up what is worthy.
Contemplation: The Latin word contemplatio was used to translate the Greek word θεωρία (theoria). In a religious sense, contemplation is usually a type of prayer or meditation.
Practicing Presence is the gentle focus on the embodied now. Sensing the arms and legs, sensing the belly and breath deepens the  grounded embodiment. Sensing in the heart allows us to become closer, more intimate with this moment of nowness. Sensing in the mind allows an opening into deep stillness and clarity. The practice of presence is simply opening to being awake and aware now.
Silence is not the absence of thoughts. Silence is the nature of presence.
Distraction and resistance are to be expected. Simply gently return to sensing in the body.

Contemplative Worship Service
Opening with 3 bells

Acclamation

Listen deep within yourself
To hear the voice of God
Who shepherds us and leads us forth in life.
Let not our hearts be hardened or grow closed,
As many did when the waters failed
And bitterness became their food.

Chant.
Bless  the Lord, my soul
And bless God's holy name.
Bless The Lord my soul,
Who leads me into life.

Prayer
Oh God of peace, Oh presence of peace, you have taught us that in returning and rest we shall be met, in quietness and  in confidence shall be our strength; by the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God.

Grounding meditation

Chant.
Bless  the Lord, my soul
And bless God's holy name.
Bless The Lord my soul,
Who leads me I to life.

A short reading
The soul becomes so quiet in ecstasy, so quiet. Love speaks in silence, not in the heights of passion.
Central remembrance

Central chant 
Be still and know that I am God  (x6  Bell)
Be still and know that I am (x6 Bell)
Be still and know (x6 Bell) 
Be still  (x6 Bell)
Be (x6 Bell)

Silence
 (5-10mins)

Longer reading
 Make everything in you an atom of your sensing being. And you will hear, you will sense at every moment what presence is whispering to you, just to you and for you, without any need for my words or anyone else's. You are--we all are-- the beloved of the beloved one, and in every moment, whether you hear it or not, the beloved one is whispering to you exactly what it is you need to  feel  and know. Who can explain such a mystery? It simply is. Listen and sense and you will discover in every passing moment. Listen and feel and your whole life will become a conversation in thought and act between you and the  divine presence, directly, wordlessly, now and always. It was to enjoy this conversation that you and I were created.             
Quiet reflections in threes  Read three times. Explore what draws you. 
Brief sharing in the large circle

Central chant
Be still and know that I am God  (x6  Bell)
Be still and know that I am (x6 Bell)
Be still and know (x6 Bell) 
Be still  (x6 Bell)
Be (x6 Bell)

The Silence
10-15  mins
Returning to the world

Listen deep within yourself
To hear the voice of God
Who shepherds us and leads us forth in life.
Let not our hearts be hardened or grow closed,
As many did when the waters failed
And bitterness became their food.

Closing chant
My peace I give you,
My peace I give you,
Trouble not your heart.
My peace I give you
My peace I give you,
Be not afraid.

Closing bell 3 times.  

contemplative worship

Dear Friends,

 Joe and I are excited by a new direction that is emerging out of our three years of the practice of presence. We feel a call to create a contemplative worship space. As with everything this space will emerge over time. We will be listening, experimenting and with time a form will emerge that will support worship deeply rooted in silence, chanting, readings and the practice ofpresence. We will dip into this every other week. Everyone is welcome. You do not need to attend the other sessions of the practice of presence, although they will certainly support this new opening.

Our ongoing group will resume on January 6th. We will be exploring what it means to worship, what blocks the heart in its natural longing to praise and celebrate our deepest love. You are welcome to join us.

Our first session of contemplative worship will be held on January 13th 2014 at 7.30pm at ECI. All our welcome.

We wish you all a very happy new year. Alison and Joe

Summary of Fall retreat and First Monday night session

Retreat:

 Session 1 Friday night: practice of presence, the Embodied now

Journal: What blocks you from being with your living embodied experience. 5

Tell me a way you leave the present moment? 

Tell me a way you sense your embodiment now?

Explore what you include or exclude in your sense of the embodied now. Do you select what to focus on? Do you ignore what you think is not appropriate in your experience to speak about. what do you grasp onto? 

Session 2:  Resistance, doubt and superego

Tell me a way you judged yourself since you woke up this morning. 

How do you feel when you judge yourself. 

Explore how your superego manifests. Is it loud, frightening and shaming. Does it whisper. what does it say. Do you recognize the voice.

Why do we believe and listen to this voice? Who hears this voice (child) how do we react to this voice. We get defensive, rationalize, make excuses,. We go on the attack mode. We collapse bodily

Tell me a way you believe into the superego

Tell me a way you child react’s to the superego

Explore in your circle how being attacked by the superego affects your ability to be present. 

Session 3  The alchemy of welcoming and holding. 

Open inquiry. By staying present explore what is arising for  you during this retreat so far.  Check in with your body. 

Journal: explore your resistance to practicing presence, meditating at home.

Tell me what you are experiencing now.

Explore your embodied experience. Notice how you leave your felt experience into your mind, into judging. What happens if you return and include your embodiment.  

Monday Night Sessions:

Monday 30th. Depth or surface.

Tell me a way you stay on the surface of your experience.

Tell me a way you allow yourself to go deeper. 

Explore what you are bringing into this session ? From your life, from the retreat? Notice if you are staying on the surface? Are you going deeper in the feelings, sensations  in the body? What happens when you and sense yourself for a moment.

Closing-- for now

Dear Friends.

 We ended this season of sessions on Monday. We spent our time together reviewing our work together. We focused on the following questions:

How has the practice of presence entered your life? Do you see some kind of personal thread emerging over the months we have been meeting? What is most difficult about the practice of presence? Did you feel like giving up? Why did you come back?How What supports your practice of presence? Where would like this to go in the fall?

Some of you were unable to attend. I suggest that you review the questions for yourselves. If there is something you would like to share with Joe or myself please send us an email.

We have been holding these sessions for two years. It has been an effortless outflow and inflow. Without your participation none of this would have been possible. Presence is cultivated when people gather sincerely, openly and with longing for depth and realness. This circle of presence is more real, deeper and robust (strange word!) than two years ago. And it appears that transformation is afoot. 

I know that there are a number of you "out there" who have been reading the emails and who have not joined our circle or may have discontinued for some reason. We would be interested to hear from you. How do the emails support your own journey? Are there reasons you discontinued that you would like to share with Joe and I. 

It is important for us to take a break for now. We need some time to let this settle and gestate over the summer.

It is our intention to resume our circle in the fall. We will be opening the group up at that time for newcomers. 

I am so grateful for this opportunity to be with you. I hope you have a fruitful summer and remember to come back to your embodied sense of your experience. That is the doorway.

Warmly and in peace, Alison

Vulnerability and Courage

Dear Friends, This Monday we met a few hours after the horrible bombing in Boston. The tragedy was fresh in our hearts.

We focused on vulnerability and courage. As we open up, hide less we feel vulnerable. As we taste presence we can sometimes confuse this with the normal and real vulnerability of childhood. We are profoundly vulnerable as children. We cannot survive without the care and protection of our parents. We are slow to develop both physically and cognitively. And along the way we need the attuned support and holding of our parents, later our schools and larger community. And most us have experienced times when the support was far from attuned and sometimes non-existent. So we all developed ways to cope and to hide our vulnerability. The ego in a sense is a complex layering of protection around the pure openness of our souls. The superego develops as a way to insure that we don’t get too close to our vulnerability. It tells us that we are weak, stupid, girly if we are vulnerable and sensitive. We also associate vulnerability with being powerless, victimized, and abused. All these experiences and layers of self protection make staying with the openness and true vulnerability of living presence quite difficult. We instinctively associate it with the real defenselessness of the child.

Despite all the defensive pulls to hardening up, to hiding, to numbing our vulnerability, there seems to be deep sense of longing for the possibility of being ever so close to our own experience and to others. We long to feel close, to relax and to simply be. This letting go is our vulnerability, our openness settling, relaxing. 

We explored two questions: Tell me a way you react to vulnerability? And tell me a way you experience the preciousness of your vulnerability.

Our defense mechanisms are the ego’s way of trying to protect us from being, hurt, humiliated, betrayed. If we are to open to living presence we need a kind of boldness, a kind of courage that supports us.  Courage is a juicy, loving, strong heart that can meet threats, and take on superego attacks head on. Gradually as we come to love our precious vulnerability, our precious openness-- the doorway to our depths, to living presence-- we cannot help but let the bold heart bubble up to protect us. Ego defenses try to protect us, but they always disconnect us from our living presence. Courage, this bold face of living presence protects, defends the truth, but does not cut us off. How can it? It is living presence.

Question: Explore your courage to protect your living presence. What does it take to stay faithful to what is most precious to you. 

Correction: Thanks to Ruth, we are meeting on Monday 22nd for our last session. (Not 21st as I mistakenly emailed you a few days ago!)

Sunshine today. Spring is really here. Hope to see you on Monday. Warmly, Alison

Beauty and Image

Dear friends, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a common expression. But who is the beholder? During our last time together we explored how the superego defines beauty and becomes the beholder. It has all kinds of standards, all kinds of rules, judgements that we take in from our parents and the larger culture. And when beauty is reduced to an image, to appearance it begins to feel dull, flat, stiff, lifeless. Beauty becomes about the surface of things and people. 

We discovered that when we approach beauty in the present moment it comes alive. We are touched by beauty, we feel depth. It enlivens us, it inspires us. And most importantly it opens us to love. Sometimes it is hard to know whether we love what is beautiful or what is beautiful becomes what we love. Beauty evokes the heart.

When we are touched by beauty almost invariably we will cling to it, try to replicate it and consume it over and over. What was fresh, immediate becomes lifeless, flat like an image. There is an immediacy to beauty; it lives in the now, and it is the exquisite face of our own presence. Presence is the source of beauty. It is reflected all around us. So naturally we assume its source is out there. But when we are cut off from our own presence, beauty becomes an idol. Something we worship, but which is completely disconnected from the ground of being. We see horrid caricatures of this everywhere in our image obsessed culture. I keep seeing Joan Rivers' face as I write this. Scary and such a violent distortion of beauty.

Aging is perhaps one of the greatest challenges. Where does beauty go when our faces fall off, and we bulge this way or that? It goes for sure. We are not helped by the superego and its harsh condemnation or our merciless culture. This loss is the portal to what we discover when we turn inward, feel, touch and know what lives us more and more directly. When our sight dims, our hearing goes, our brains become foggy,  there is loss, no doubt. One way of thinking about aging is that we are being weaned- hopefully slowly- from our perceptual capacities so that the door of the inner landscape of presence can open.  Helen Luke in her book Old Age writes about this beautifully.

And what about the tyranny of beauty in adolescence and adulthood? Whether we are male or female, young or old, beautiful or not, this is a tortuous landscape of suffering, judgement, self hatred and struggle.

Beauty is so precious, so vulnerable that we may recoil from expressing it. We hide it away and most importantly we don’t let ourselves recognize that we are this beauty. It is perhaps safe to know and feel the beauty of what we love "out there".  But can we know ourselves as a soul, as living beauty. We got a taste of this on Monday night.

Each of us brought an object, a photo, flowers, something  personally beautiful. We shared this with each other. There was such sincerity, tenderness, preciousness, and love in the air. And yes beauty

Questions: Tell me a way the superego judges beauty? Tell me a way beauty becomes an image? How does beauty as an image, or as appearance feel? Share your feelings about the object you brought. Focus on your felt experience in the moment.

There will be no Spirit Singing this month. Instead during our Earth Day church service on Sunday April 21st, at 10.30am Kath and Sam will be leading Spirit Singing. I will also be leading a meditation during this service.You are all welcome. We will be holding two more practicing presence on Monday April 15th and 22nd. 

Hope to see you soon. Alison