So last week.
Um.
.
.
On Thursday.
Dee began her talk.
With an excerpt from this poem.
By Galway Canal.
Will offer it again for your consideration.
The bud stands for all things.
Even for those things that don't flower,
For everything flowers from within.
Of self-blessing.
Though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing of its beauty,
Of its loveliness.
To put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell retell it in words and in touch.
It is lovely.
Until it flowers again.
From within.
Of self-blessing.
And there's something in this passage.
That is so tender.
Because how often do we forget?
Our own loveliness.
And I'm not talking about loveliness as beauty.
I don't mean that we're wonderful because we've done something in this world that's impressive.
Or achieve something remarkable.
I mean the inherent loveliness of being alive.
The loveliness of a human heart that can break.
And the loveliness of someone who continues to love even after being hurt?
We all experience loss and illness.
Rejection,
Aging.
We all have said the wrong thing.
We have all hurt somebody at some point or somebody has hurt us.
And what happens?
And it's slow.
And perhaps we don't even notice it happens,
We begin to withdraw our love.
We begin to believe that something in us has kind of become unworthy.
And so we stand at a distance from ourselves.
We become our own harshest observer.
And then Quesnel,
The poet,
Offers us this extraordinary image.
Sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness,
To put a hand on its brow and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely.
And these words.
They point us to.
The practice of Metta.
Of loving kindness.
Not by convincing ourselves that we're special or inflating this idea of self.
But gently reteaching this heart that it doesn't need to earn the right to be held with kindness.
In this way,
Meta-practice is kind of remembering.
A remembering of something that was here before we learned to measure ourselves against others,
Before we learned to compare ourselves,
Before we learned that love could be conditional.
We weren't born to believe that some part of us was worthy and some part of us wasn't worthy.
We weren't born to stand apart from ourselves and evaluate and judge our own experience.
But over time we learned,
Right?
We absorbed messages and we learned to separate ourselves from what was painful and imperfect.
And we learned to believe that perhaps we had to become someone else before we could be held with tenderness.
So the practice of metta is not really about creating love where none existed.
It's more about remembering.
Remembering our original belongings.
Remembering that beneath all of the conditioning that taught us to divide ourselves,
To love this and to reject that or to welcome this and to push away that.
That it is still possible to open.
I think that's what Galway Kinnell is pointing towards when he writes that everything flowers.
From within.
Of self-blessing.
Because we forget.
Sometimes life teaches us to forget our own loveliness.
That this kind of hurting,
Imperfection,
Frightened,
Beautiful human being belongs and we don't have to earn a place in our own heart.
We forget that.
Recently.
A member of our Dharma community,
Joe.
He shared with me that he proposed to his beloved.
And it was so joyful for me to hear how he set it up at the beach and his friend was kind of covertly taking pictures.
And then Joe shared with me the pictures of him down on one knee,
Beaming up to his love.
And that gesture.
Of getting down on one knee.
There's something so vulnerable and tender about that.
In that moment.
Someone lowers themselves before another and in essence offers their heart.
So when we kneel,
We lower ourselves.
We come closer to the ground.
And we soften the posture of standing over something.
And we relinquish for a moment the need to be in control.
I think that's why kneeling has appeared throughout human history.
In so many expressions of devotion and prayer and reverence and love.
So.
When I saw this image of my friend,
Holding out.
His hand to his beloved.
I began to wonder what it would mean to turn that gesture inward.
What would it mean to get down on one knee,
Not before another person?
But before our own life.
Not before some idealized version of ourself.
But before the person We are today.
Not the person that we hope to be someday,
But the very human being that we are.
What if,
When we're struggling,
Instead of standing over ourselves with judgment,
Trying to correct or improve what's happening,
We could just kneel down beside ourselves.
We can take a knee.
Beside ourselves.
In my experience with this Metta practice.
In some way,
It's been this gesture.
You know,
A kind of a willingness to come close to myself and to offer care.
As many of you know,
Part of my path has included not only meditation practice,
But also the psychological process of turning towards the younger part of myself.
The child who was alone and afraid.
Who felt broken and didn't belong.
And before coming to this practice,
Those parts?
I kind of buried in alcohol and sex and having outrageous experiences.
And then when I.
.
.
I became sober.
And meditation was my practice and my way.
I related to those parts of myself by kind of trying to outgrow them.
To become someone stronger and more capable.
As though the goal of healing was to leave that child behind and become someone else.
But over time.
And with the help of therapy and a lot of practice.
I began to understand that healing was not about abandoning that child.
It was about turning towards her.
And perhaps this is where the image of kneeling becomes so meaningful to me.
Because the image of the adult that I am now kneeling and getting down on one knee in front of that younger self.
That younger version that did not trust adults.
That younger version that couldn't stop crying that had her arms folded at her chest in protection.
I couldn't stand over her.
I couldn't tell her to stop crying or.
.
.
Tell her to explain herself.
I just had to get down on one knee at her level.
This girl who was curled up in the corner.
And was trying to hide.
That girl was me.
I had to get close enough to see her and to say,
I see you.
I'm here with you now,
And I will not abandon you.
And maybe that's one of the greatest invitations of this practice.
Not to transcend the parts of ourselves that are wounded.
Or try to attempt to meditate them away.
But to bring them home.
To allow all these parts of ourselves to belong.
To become the one who no longer turns away,
The one who says and stays,
The one who kneels down.
With a hand outstretched,
Come and take my hand,
And we can do this together.
So that is how.
Metta practice.
Began for this body.
This mind.
This child.
This adult.
So thank you for watching.
Your attention.
And consideration.
Maybe this gesture of getting down on one knee.
Speaks to you.
