I'll close with a poem from Mary Oliver.
I worried a lot.
Will the garden grow?
Will the rivers flow in the right direction?
Will the earth turn as it was taught?
And if not,
How shall I correct it?
Was I right?
Was I wrong?
Will I be forgiven?
Can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing?
Even the sparrows can do it.
And I am,
Well,
Hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading?
Or am I just imagining it?
Am I going to get rheumatism?
Lockjaw?
Dementia?
Finally,
I saw that worry had come to nothing and gave it up and took my old body and went outside into the morning and sang.
So this week we're talking about letting go in the simplest of ways.
So when we sit down to meditate for our 30-minute period,
There's a renunciation of many of the common things that we do.
Certainly we put aside our concern with our breakfast,
Our food.
We put away our concern with sort of our social relationships for a time.
We set down our relationship with other people.
You might have thoughts,
But the things,
You know,
We're not actively involved in those thoughts.
You've put aside the use of money and you've put aside entertainment,
The roles that you live in and live by.
You might have all kinds of roles and self-imagined ideas about yourself that are important to you,
Identities that are important to you.
And we put them aside,
You know,
For this time.
Those roles,
The image that you want to live by,
How you see yourself,
You just put it to the side.
And in this way,
We are learning to let go and simplify the mind.
And it's quite phenomenal to get the mind very still and peaceful,
To have a sense of well-being that's not dependent on any of these things in the world that we worry about.
You know,
The things of the world that we depend on for our well-being,
The usual things that we're preoccupied by.
So my hope is that some of you have started to feel the benefits of what is really sort of this radical simplicity.
We hear about radical acceptance,
But we don't often hear about radical simplicity.
So that's more my shtick,
Keeping it really simple.
Where our desires and our aversions and our resentments,
We put them aside.
We let them be in a really simple way.
So today's meditation,
I offered a very simple instruction to set yourself at ease,
To relax,
And then notice whatever happens that takes you away from that ease.
And the idea being,
If you notice really carefully what takes you away from your ease,
That somehow you'll you'll find it again in a variety of ways.
You know,
Maybe you'll notice that whatever takes you away from being at ease in the body in this moment isn't worth it.
It isn't worth losing your ease over your preoccupations and concerns.
That's just the habit of the same old worry that grabs the mind.
It's not worth losing your ease for.
So maybe you're you're just willing to let go of it and then come back to yourself,
To this easy place.
So the idea of setting yourself at ease,
It really points to this capacity that we all have to experience peace in the moment when we choose again and again to set the mind at ease.
And we're successful even for a moment,
Even for like two breaths before the worry picks up where it left off.
In those two minutes,
Those two breaths,
A deep well-being can start to grow in the heart.
Seeing all the ways that we're pulled off of this easiness and just letting them be so that we can actually have a higher quality of aliveness just now,
Just now.
A higher quality of being just here.
So as we move towards the discussion this morning where we can share and be together in community,
It may be useful to talk about and to share what you're caring,
What takes you off your ease,
Bringing some situation to your mind.
And also,
What's your part in it?
Your reaction?
You know,
Oftentimes what sets the mind or takes the mind away has a quality,
A reaction to it.
It could be anger or there's a neediness or there's a self-centered or self-righteous position that you're taking.
There's some judgment or jealousy.
Like,
What is your part in what's taking you off your ease?
If there's one thing that I've learned about letting go,
It's that we can't be told to do it,
But yet we know it in the body.
We feel it.
So it's much more intuitive.
There's loss and there's change and it's all of us.
And when we experience letting go,
There's a felt sense that moves through us,
Allowing us to actually see with our hearts that are not in the habit of reactivity.
It's possible to let go with ease.
So I invite you to spend this next period of time before we meet again with this topic of letting go.
Start to notice in your direct experience what you gain,
What you gain when you let go.
How do you benefit when you release,
Renounce?
How does the world better benefit from your renunciation,
Your giving up?
So this is the week's reflection and I thank you so much for your kind attention and consideration.
