yoga

Intentional Seeing–Openning the Eye-Mind Connection

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The act of consciously using your visual focus for increasing awareness in nature is one of my core practices. There is great power in training the mind to both choose what one looks at, and how to use what one seees. For example if I choose to keep my focus on the sky without breaking my attention I have a experience that is informed by the continuous unbroken and constant fluidity of the clouds or perhps the vast unbroken field of blue if a cloudless day. I can then choose how I want to relate to this visual experience. If the sky is a very complex cloudscape I might choose to look at the complexity in a very detailed fashion, focusing on the dynamic variations found within the cloud field. Following the edge of one cloud and how it flows seemlessly into what feels like another cloud, slowly getting lost in the layerd billowing flow. This type of looking often leads to a sense of awe and wonder at the profound creativilty expressed in the formation of clouds.

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If the sky was an cloudless blue sky I might choose to relax my attention and let my eye-mind rest in the open empty field. The later encourages very soft open mind  that is excelllent for releasing the hyper focus tension filled mind many of us operate out of for many hours a day.

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Both methods can lead to very profound mind state and are supportive of self-discovery and opening the creative channels.

Learning to control one’s visual attention is one way to train the mind as a type of meditation. Similar to focusing on the breath, you can always return to focusing the mind on a particular visual point of attention.

Beautiful Cold & Rainy Monday 12.17.2012

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Today was cold, raw and icy. I only got outside for a few moments to capture some of the qualities this rainy day offered as I drove from place to place. Just enough to remind me to stay connected and relish the diversity of our New England weather. See post from a week ago, Dropping Deep in Hadley 12.10.2012, where the rain and fog created similar conditions.

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The color of the grass covered in frosty ice felt strangely luminous.

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The dark light, strong winds and falling rain reminded me of the raw power of December weather.

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The gray light is tough but I do love it!

Sky Mirroring in Hadley 12.13.2012

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Miday along the Connecticut River

Midday along the Connecticut River.

The deep translucent blue of the sky reflected in the river offered a great opportunity to meditate and experience clear light throughout my body. Also meditated on the way the sky above is also the water below. Confounding the natural logic of earth below and sky above is always a mental treat.

Dropping Deep in the Hadley Fog 12.10.2012

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Discovered that the rain held off much of the day and revealed some wonderful surprises in the luminescent fog, from colors to the quality of light over the farm fields.

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The brilliance of the yellow-brown grasses let me know that this was a special day for getting outside.

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I was stunned by the mirror-like calm of the water. Reminding me of the mirror-like nature of my soul to reflect beauty.

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Letting my energy yield into the earth, the depth of connection showed no sign of an end, only the invitation to listen to the deep vibration as primal communion.

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The land dropped away as I felt an opening into the embodied light of the foggy sky.

Facilitated Walks

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Promoting feelings of joy, ecstasy, and greater connection with nature, the core of my work uses guided or facilitated walks. Similar to the instructions found in a yoga or meditation class, I gently guide your attention to particular aspects of the landscape, especially the sky, helping you keep a focused awareness with an emphasis on maintaining unbroken concentration. My guidance assists you to stay present and develop ever greater capacities of concentration, so you can have a more refined and powerful awareness of both of your inner and outer world.

Facilitated walks are quite powerful even for people who have struggled with other relaxation methods. You have to experience a facilitated walk to fully understand its power.

Below is a sample facilitation using a late afternoon cloudless blue sky:

“Let your eyes relax and your gaze soften. Stay present to the blue sky, let you mind rest in the luminous blue. Notice any mild or strong resistance to being totally absorbed in the blue. Give yourself permission to move past any resistance that you noticed. Invite the blue into your heart. With each breath let it penetrate you more and more. Open to the radical emptiness of this infinite blue field. Hold presence in the emptiness, resist any boredom that might be arising and continue to stay present, letting the azure purity wash you clean. Let your heart-mind become as luminous and clear as this azure blue sky.”

Self Care and the Dilemma of Chasing vs Searching

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I was talking with a friend the other day and he used one of his favorite phrases, “chasing the great American nightmare.” I happened to be reading about the spiritual process of searching after the Beloved and the notion of spiritual certitude. I began to realize that we often confuse searching for truth, meaning, and happiness with chasing the dreams that almost always fail to satisfy. Most material ambitions are at best based on deep compassion for improving the state of the world, or perhaps the desire to improve the opportunities for yourself and family, but far too often are an unsubstantial mania for the latest and greatest.

Our corporate consumer society puts more and more demands upon us and often leaves little time to consider one’s own well-being. How many professionals I meet who do not have a sense of trusting they can truly take care of themselves, physically but especially spiritually. I feel that we have confused chasing for searching. My work in nature starts with the simple notion of moving out of the state of chasing for a while. Put simply, I want you to stop chasing and simply become present and aware. From a place of awareness and presence, awakening of your inner self can begin to have the space to come back to life and clarify the quality of search.

 

Harmonizing with the Four Elements

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FIRE, AIR, WATER, EARTH

I use the four elements as a rough guide to creating a balanced awareness, both in nature as well as within.

So, for example, the experience of the sun acquaints me with the nature of FIRE, the sky with AIR, the ocean, lakes, rivers and rain with WATER, and the land, trees, and flowers with the EARTH.

Through developing conscious awareness of these four qualities while out in nature I believe we can find the balance of well-being within.

I generally work from the EARTH element into the FIRE Element and back to the EARTH element. I try to create a balance of natural energies, ending in awareness at the EARTH level, which is the plane of action.

These four elements I work with come out of ancient knowledge and were refined and reconsidered in the writings of the Báb and Bahá’u’láh, the two manifestations of the Bahai movement.

Know that the first tokens that emanated from the pre-existent Cause in the worlds of creation are the four elements: fire, air, water and earth…. Then, the natures (ustuqusát) of the four appeared:  heat, moisture, cold and dryness—those same qualities that you both know. When the elements interacted and joined with one another, two pillars became evident for each one:  for fire, heat and dryness, and likewise for the remaining three in accordance with these rules, as ye are aware.

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According to Aristotle in his On Generation and Corruption:

  • Fire is primarily hot and secondarily dry.
  • Air is primarily wet and secondarily hot.
  • Water is primarily cold and secondarily wet.
  • Earth is primarily dry and secondarily cold.

My interest is mostly as a metaphor for the different aspects of experience in nature, as well as seeing time as a continuous cycle of change and development.

Relating to the process of time, the calendar year can be seen as a cycle moving through these aspects.