Mystic At the Movies #4: Everything Everywhere All at Once: On googly eyes inside of bagels.

With the unprecedented success that Everything Everywhere All At Once experienced  at the Oscars last week, it’s a better time than ever to continue our deep dive into the mystic, spiritual and philosophical underpinnings of the film.  I suspect that this exploration will be quite understandable even if a person didn’t read our installments.  However, if you haven’t seen the movie, that’s a different matter.  Spoilers abound and the writing below will probably seem rather nonsensical if you haven’t yet seen the movie.

Our focus today is probably a good example of just how strange this all seems without the context of the film:

  Today, in Mystic at the Movies we’ll look at googly eyes and bagels.

These two items are part of a wider pattern of emphasizing circularity within the film.  For example, circular mirrors are used as  portal for people to see events across the different universes.  This occurs in the film’s opening shot, where we see a shot of Waylond, Evelyn, and Joy laughing together in familial bliss.  Given that the film ends with the three title characters coming to a deep understanding with eachother, and that a person would be hard pressed to find a time when all three of these characters truly enjoyed each other before that climax, there could even be another aspect of circling back around on display here.  I don’t think it’s too speculative to suggest that the opening shot is a bridge linking the end back to the beginning, and suggesting that time itself is circular. (The possibility of eternal recurrence, that only the forms change while a deeper reality remains untouched beneath, is a major article of mystic faith and a theme that recurs so consistently in the film, it merits quite specific treatment.  We’ll circle back to this topic at the next installment of Mystic at the Movies.)

  We also see a circular-mirror portal happen when Waylond-Prime is speaking to Evelyn in the IRS office, hoping to get her attention.  The laundromat that the family runs also possesses row after row of washing machines, where the circular portal-like windows, representative of  of their livelihood are put on display in some of the earliest shots of the film.   Circular cookies pop up in a couple scenes in the movie.  The first is circular cookies are given by Waymond to Dierdre; the second is held up to Martial-Arts Evelyn by her teacher.

After being gifted the cookies, Deirdre is quite intentional in circling the cost of the karaoke machine on the receipt. It’s easy to miss the fact that later,  the placement of this receipt on one pile or another, comes to be the fundamental decision which splits Evelyn’s reality into a number of alternate paths. 

When one of the Evelyn’s resulting from this divergence ends up dead, Jobu declares that this version of Evelyn wasn’t the one she was looking for after all.  She returns to the other Evelyns existing from thai divergence, who’d placed the receipt on different piles, to continue the search for her mother.  

  From the circular shape of symbols like Yin and Yang (which was initially a Buddhist representation of a Taoist concept) to the reccurent, cyclical nature of concepts like reincarnation, to the importance of silence and nothingness which might be symbolized by an oval ‘0’, to the fact that the shape is named in the mystic-friendly schema known as spiral dynamics, the importance of the overall shape in mysticism and spirituality can hardly be denied.    

Within the film, there are two different types of circles that have a special importance.  These are googly-eyes and bagels.  Visually speaking, the bagel and the googly eyes have some things in common.  The outer perimeter of each is a circle, of course.  But there is an inner circle for each as well.  The inner circle of the bagel is, of course, where the bagel stops.  

This is not to say that googly eyes and bagels are treated exactly the same.  Initially, they even appear to be opposites.  Googly eyes begin as Waymond’s gift.   But these do not belong to just any Waymond.  The googly eyes, for example, are never used by the serious and heroic Waymond Prime.  

It’s worth sticking with this observation.  Waymond prime embodies all the characteristics we’d normally ascribe to a hero.  But this version of Waymond doesn’t actually do much.   For all his bravery, knowledge, and gear, he does little more than set the plot in motion and provide opportunities for exposition, catching the audience up with the nature of reality and the way everything works in the world of the film.  

Meanwhile, the version of Waymond who occupies the main universe of the film is not particularly knowledgeable, brave, or competent.  His tendency to affix googly eyes to objects seem to do little more than annoy Evelyn at first.   We come to find that this duality between the two versions of Waymond, like so many other dualities presented by the film, is not what it appears to be.

This version of Waymond is passionate about the power of love.  He seeks to keep the peace, to comfort the hurting and wounded.  The googly eyes seem intimately connected to representing this loving world view.  Everlyn places one on her forehead and then seems able to embody the lessons she has learned from her husband.  This single act is in many important ways a climax for the whole drama, despite the fact it comes surprisingly early in the narrative.  After this basic act, we find that Evelyn is able to integrate her own feistiness with Waymond’s loving approach.  The duality between even love and war falls away when she brings together her approach with his.  Before moving onto the bagel, it’s worth looking at this moment, when Evelyn puts the googly eye on her forehead.

Eyes are, of course, organs of sight.  The idea that a person might have an extra eye suggests that they can see things in a new way.  But in fact, there is a spiritual significance to this act.  The idea that a person might have be able to see spiritual truths by opening an eye above and between the two physical eyes belongs to Hinduism.  The idea of that third eye is clearly evoked at that moment.  

Simultaneously, the eyes also represent a way of viewing all the universe as alive.  The placement of googly eyes on an inanimate object cause it to become an anthropomorphic, cartoon version of itself.  There is a juvenile strangeness to this, undoubtedly.  But there is something more.

There are a number of routes that mystical traditions take to arrive in a place where they are able to affirm that everything is alive.  Whether someone like Richard Rohr is affirming the power of a panentheistic worldview though talk of a universal Christ, or a Celtic Christian is showing us to a thin place where the line between the natural and the supernatural is nearly impossible to discern, or Hildegard of Bingen is writing about the greening, mystics follow Waymonds example in longing to see that everything is alive.

If we really sit with the image that everything is alive, we come to see that this means a list of everything that could be listed is alive.  Even when one thing is contained within another, both of them are alive.  So if everything is alive then the wheels of my car are alive.  But simultaneously, my entire car is also a single entity, and it is also alive.

If the chair I am sitting on is a single living entity, then so too is the room the chair is sitting in.  If this single room is a single entity, then the entire building is a alive, and is a single entity as well.  The entire Earth is alive.  The solar system is alive.  The entire galaxy is a single living entity.  So too is the entire created cosmos.  

In an odd way, the conviction that everything is alive is intimately connected to the mystical idea that everything is one.  The googly eyes, at some profound level, bring us back to the awareness that we are God, and that we, as God, knowing Everything.  

Contrast this with the bagel.  For all the similarities in shape and prevalence, there are several significant differences.  If the googly eyes are associated with Waymond, then the bagel with everything is associated with Jobu.  If the googley eyes are associated with the idea that everything is alive then the bagel is associated with the idea that Nothing really matters.

One of the few times that the writer-directors have gone on the record about some of these spiritual themes in this film is their association between the bagel and nihilism.  It is unusual in the course of things to consider the idea that something which contains everything, might be a stand-in for the possibility of the ultimate value of nothingness.  

EEAAO is a film which frequently gives the most token attempt at logical explanation.  Nowhere is this more on display around the meaning of the bagel and why it symbolizes nihilism.  Early in the film, Waymond-prime references the idea that nothing is the way it is supposed to be and they need someone to stand up to Jobu’s ‘perverse shroud of chaos.’  A few minutes later, a version of Dierdre who already has a circle drawn on her forehead staples a piece of paper (which closely resembled the previously mentioned receipt) with another clear circle on it.  For reasons that are not immediately clear, the captioning– and presumably the script– identifies this figure as ‘Bagel Dierdre.’

Within a few minutes of Bagel Deirdre, we are introduced to Jobu Topeki.  Though she does great violence to the police attempting to arrest them, she ends up wanting merely to show the nature of the bagel her mother.  The nature of the bagel is that when you look at everything that has come together there, you find that nothing matters.  

One aspect of this might be that Joy, and eventually Everlyn, come to see all of the identities they have ever had in the multiverse, and eventually both of them seem to coming to grips with the realities that none of them are worth anything; none of them are above any of the others.  All of them are as absurd as the denizens of the universe where people have hot dog fingers, or the universe where a chef hides a raccoon under his hat.  But no one ever makes this connection explicit.  Regardless of what it means within the movies world and logic, it certainly evokes some elements of mysticism.

The book of ecclesiastes features a narrator who seems to be living in this kind of universe, when he says “Everything is meaningless.  What has been will be again.  What has been done will be done again.  There is nothing new under the sun.  With much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.” This leaves the implication that with infinite wisdom comes infinite sorrow; with infinite knowledge comes infinite grief.

Half a world away, traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism would venerate nothingness for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes, it would seem that the importance of this quality they are calling nothingness is that it transcends anything we have a category for.  The Christian Mystic tradition would eventually come to identify what has been called the via negativia and the apophatic with that which can not be defined.  St. John of the Cross would describe a dark night of the soul.   Centuries later, mystic Don Juan would tell Carlos Casteneda that everything a wise man does is folly because nothing matters.

A common thread of all these traditions is a belief in some sort of divine union.  The strange paradox that arises when a person becomes one with that which is   transcendent, is that they suddenly they find that the whole reality that they have ever known is suddenly rendered moot and irrelevant.  There is an entire other level to this dynamic.  There is a way in which the here and now finds itself strangely elevated.  But this is an exploration best saved for another time.

We might envision a googly eye sitting within the hole at the center of a bagel.  We might see that the two arise together– nihilism at the heart of panentheism, a nothing-emptiness sits in the middle of contemplation, Despair hides away at the heart of liberation.

If the bagel and googly eyes aren’t strictly identical, each of them certainly implies, entails, and depends on the other. 

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New Year Meditation: Finding a Still Point

Background: For many of us, there will be two sources of stress and pressure. There will be two drives that we here in the upcoming days.

One pressure will be to end the year on a bang. It’s your last oppurtunity to party like it’s 2022. Indulge yourself. Go wild. Cram all the experiences you can into this little tiny window of time.

A second pressure will be to be turn your attention backwards. Reflect. Assess. Set those goals for the new year– resolve to do better, to be better, stronger. More able.

There is nothing wrong with either of these urges. But we have lived out there almost contradictory demands every New Year’s Eve. Perhaps it is time for you to try something new. The good news is that you have been getting ready for this for your whole life. You have built up the requisite skills with your breath itself.

The Practice:

1. Release your worries and concerns at this time. Sit as straight as you comfortably can.
2. Breathe naturally.
3. As best you can, without bringing any concious change to your breath, notice it: notice it with curiosity, interest and gentleness.
4. You might first notice that there are two obvious parts of the breath- an inhale and an exhale. Notice each of these.
5. Notice how it feels in the mouth, nose, throat, esophagus, and lungs. Feel the breath where it comes in around your nose or lips; feel it where it leaves the body. Note the temperature and volume.
6. When you are ready, see that there are more than just those two parts to the breath. There is a pair of transition times too. A time of emptiness before the inhale, a time of emptiness before the exhale.
7. Compassionately study these pause-times, these empty-times. If you wish, experiment with extending these out by briefly holding the breath. A count of 4 will do.
8. Try to become a scholar of your breath, the world wide expert. Note how each of the breaths has so many things in common with the nearly endless progression of breaths that have come before and will come after.
9. Note how this breath– this very one right now– is different from the breaths which come before, and after. There are some tiny ways that this very brief is unique in your entire life. Go looking for this precious differences.
10. Continue to hold each breath up to your most careful examination for how they are connected and how they are wholly unique. Continue to notice the inhale, the pause, the exhale, the pause.
11. Inhale the things you know that you need during this time of meditation. Exhale the expectations that others have on you for this time of transition. (These expectations might come in the form of parties, or resolutions and goals for the upcoming year.) Continue with this until you are ready for to do the work you hear from your own self it is time to do.
12. When you are ready, identify that there are things which came into your life this year. Inhale, as a recognition to the good and the bad that entered your life this year.
13. Recognize that there are things which left your life this year. When you exhale, breathe out in recognition of that which is no longer yours this year.
14. Continue to breathe in that which you gained and that which you lost this year.
15. Now, view the breath differently. Let the inhale be your past, and the exhale be your future. This precious moment right now is the pause in between.
16. Let your hopes be the inhale, and your fears be the exhale. The reality you live is the pause between.
17. Let the things you cannot change be your inhale; let the things you can change be your exhale. Let the wisdom to know the difference be the pause in between.
18. Let this year be an inhalation. Let the coming year be your exhalation. Breathe as many breaths as you need to feel this transition in your body.
19. Remind yourself of the pause between the inhale and exhale, even as you continue for the year which is ending and exhale for the year which is beginning, see that this place you are now is the quiet, liminal space between the two.
20. Rest in that quiet space between.
21. Release this practice when you are ready. Recognize that you can return to it for any time of transition.

Practice 77: A Body Scan for Physical Discomfort

Note: Physical pain is unavoidable. Please adress the causes of physical distress where and when you can. Managing pain while allowing the cause of the discomfort to go untreated is not a wise plan.

Background: Body Scan’s deserve the great acclaim they recieve. They are outstanding mindfulness practices. Today’s variation of a body scan handles the idea of what to do with places we find discomfort in a somewhat unusual manner. The idea in this practice is to clearly define the boundary of where the sorness begins in end. This careful analysis, this three dimensional mind-map of precisely where the pain begins and ends does a few different things.

First, this careful focus recognizes clearly and specifically the part of ourselves that is hurting. We have a tendency to want to shut down, close off, and even deny the existence of our hurting places. Carefully studying the parameters of our pain helps to welcome the injured body part back into the body, and helps us realize, often, that the pain is not quite as bad as we had made it out to be.

Secondly, it helps to focus our attention. One of the things that mindfulness practices do for us is build up a sort-of mental muscle, an ability to turn our attention to notice very precise details. This practice gives us some experience with just that.

Finally, mentally mapping the hurting areas of our body helps us to find the area around the injury that actually feels healthy and strong. The act of spreading this lack of painfulness is something I find incredibly powerful. Imagining the sensation of not-hurting spreading into the inpated area really does turn down the pain for me. I hope it does for you, too.

The Practice

1. Release your worries for this time.
2. Turn your attention to the tips of your toes. Become aware of them.
3. Breathe deeply and very slowly and precisely, bring your attention across your feet.
4. Be on the look out for areas that are tender, tense, or sore.
5. Bring your attention up through your ankles and into the shins.
6. Make a mental note of anywhere you notice that seems to be hurting. We’ll be returning to these points later.
7. Draw your perceptions up through the knees and thighs.
8. Make sure you’re aware of the whole depth and width of these body parts.
9. Notice your lap, pelvis, hips and buttocks.
10. Continue to be on the watch for soreness as you bring your awareness into the lower belly and back.
11. Bring attention to the belly and mid-back, and the chest and shoulders.
12. Apply your awareness to the finger tips.
13. Continuing those deep breaths, bring your awareness up through the lengths of the fingers; across the palm, and around the back of the hand.
14. Now become aware of your wrists, and forearms. Remind yourself here, to note those places which feel tight and sore. We’ll be returning to one or more of those spots shortly.
15. Notice the elbow and upper arms, now bring up your attention through the chest and shoulders. Continue the long, calming breaths.
16. Bring your attention to the neck, all the way around, bring the attention up to the jaw line, the place where the skull meets the spine.
17. Become aware of the chin, lips, cheeks; look for those tense, warm, sore places as you become aware of the nose, eye sockets, and forhead. Finally, become aware of your scalp and hairline.
18. Take three breaths. Remind yourself of the places you noted that were sore and tense. Choose one of these places.
19. Now, study this area with gentle curiosity. Make note, first, of the quality of the sensations of the pain itself. Is there any movement or change? How would you describe it?
20. Continuing to breathe calmly, now, study the parameters of the spot that feels different. Make yourself an expert in it’s size and topography. Note the shape and volume, the surface area and the realms within. Is the pain consistent all the way through?
21. Take three more deep breaths.
22. Now, bring your attention to the space that is around this soreness. Turn your attention to the area just outside of the pain. Find the boundary between hurting and not hurting. In your minds eye, see it as an envelope, or wrapping paper. Fulling engulfing the sort spot within you.
23. Take three more deep breaths.
24. Now, let the non envelope infilitrate the hurt place within you. Let the healthy spot which is not uncomfortable enfold and take over the pain; stretch it through and let it penetrate all the way to the core of the place that hurts within you.
25. Many people find these places of soreness diminish or erase themselves entirely. Sit as long as you like, luxuriating in the reduction of pain. If you wish, begin this process again on some other part of your body.

This practice will accompany an upcoming episode of the Snipe hunting Podcast. Click here to see the youtube video featuring Snipe Hunting and mystical poetry with video and musical accompaniement.

Exercise 76: Resting in Peace

Background: In mourning the loss of the lovely Thich Nhat Hanh, I came across the following facebook post: “As Elizabeth rests in peace, I become a man of Peace. As Thay rests in Peace, I become a man of Peace. As Desmond Tutu rests in Peace, I become a man of Peace. As Jesus is the Prince of Peace, I become in Christ, a man of Peace. Let Peace walk before me. Let Peace come behind me, on the right and on the left, above and below, let there be Peace on Earth this night, and let it begin with me.”

The writer of those words is Bob Holmes. The Elizabeth mentioned at the beginning is the beloved wife who died one year ago. He also goes by the identifier “Contemplative Monk” on social media I was deeply moved by his way of expressing these ideas. It suggests to me that we might borrow some of the peace that our loved ones are resting in, that we might draw from it. I also connect with the idea that one of the ways are loved ones live on is through the ways their lives and deaths shape and challenge us.

In the process of asking Bob for his permission to use this as a template for a spiritual practice, I’ve got to know him a little better. I’ve always really enjoyed his content. It was exciting to know that there’s a good man behind the great thoughts. You ought to check it out here.

This practice will ask you to generate a mental (or physical) list of people who have died that impacted you. It might be someone you know. It might be someone famous. It could be ancestor, a historical or religious figure. Please show healthy discretion around engaging this practice. Faithing death is an important task that most of us recieve very little preperation for. I encourage you to challenge yourself, some, but beware of being too ambitious with trying to contend with deaths that are too new and raw in this way.

The Practice.

1. Release your concenrns and worries for this time.
2. Take three deep inhalations and exhalations.
3. Spend some time bringing to mind the people close to you that have died. If you’re likely to forget names after thinking about them, it might be wise to right some down. Don’t rush this process.
4. Inhale. Exhale.
5. With your next inhale think, “As ____________ rests in peace….”
6. exhale and think “I become a person of peace.”
7. Repeat steps 4 through 7 either with the same person or the next person on your list.
8. Sit with whatever feelings or sensations are with you right now. It might be feelings that considering the death of these people brings up. It might be feelings about death. It might be feelings of peace. It might be something else. It might be nothing at all. Consider releasing these feelings with your exhalations. Or discussing them with God. Or simply naming them and holding them close to your heart.

Sample #1 from ‘God Breathed.’

To order ‘God Breathed’ Click here. To find out about order, preordering, and get an excluisve offer for participating in a zoom-based exploration of the practices from the book, click here.

Chapter 6

I was given a small, almost silly gift.  It was a small magenta and orange porcelain possum with an opening in his back for a tiny plant.  Though I love nature I had never been responsible for a plant before.

For those first couple days the plant felt like any other little trinket that might clutter my desk.  But then I  noticed that its little leaves were a little browner, a little more brittle than they had been when I received the plant.  For a moment, my ambivalence turned to annoyance.  I would have to water it.  I didn’t have to water my stapler, or the mug which held my pencils.  This wasn’t just any little dust collector; this was going to take some work.  

Then I got worried.  I  found myself wondering just how much water I was supposed to give it.  And how often.  And what would happen if I got it wrong.  I am usually a pretty relaxed human being.  Suddenly I was tense.  People who were supposed to know about these things were frustratingly vague.  I followed their vague instructions as precisely as I could.  Have you ever tried to be precise about vagueness?  It doesn’t really work.

But it seemed like things went ok.  I don’t think I was imagining it when it seemed so much greener the next day.  That was around the time I name my plant.  Frank, it turns out, is the plant’s name.  Yes, I know that is silly.  No, I am not kidding though.  My plant’s name is Frank.

People talk a lot about the idea that you should never name something you’d like to be rid of.  That’s worth noting here.  It’s part of the testament of the power of a name.  If God’s name is the inhale and the exhale then in the act of identifying this is so, we grow closer to God.  Just like you don’t want to name that stray if you wish to not be heart broken if he leaves, so too we grow bonded to God as we realize that we have been saying God’s name all along.  So too, did I grow bonded to Frank once I realized that was the plant’s name.

Previously, we explored the idea that God identified Godself to Noah with some words that are sometimes rendered as ‘I am.’   The strangeness of the answer implies an almost-rebuke; God, it seems, is not the sort of being who has a normal name.  Later in the bible one of the interesting dynamics to follow, as Jesus faces off with demons is the importance of names.  Jesus often asks demons their names.  They sometimes seem to think the fact that Jesus doesn’t know those names means he has no power over them.  They sometimes mock and taunt Jesus with the fact that they know Jesus’ name.  

Names are important things.  Perhaps there is something about particularity in all this.  A related Buddhist concept is sometimes translated as thisness and thusness.  If I think of it as ‘plant.’  It is just the same as thousands of other plants sitting in a tacky little planter.  When I give it the specific name ‘Frank.’ now I notice the ways that Frank is different from all those other plants; he has four leaves clumped together here; she has a tendril circling around a portion of the ceramic there.  There is a yellow-ish spot at that place.

It might seem like this doesn’t quite apply to God.  After all, most of us don’t believe that there is a whole bunch of Gods to choose from.  It doesn’t seem like giving God the name ‘Yahweh’ separates God from a bunch of others.

However, it’s a little more complicated than that.  

I have lots of ideas of Gods in my head.  I’m not like an ancient Greek, really.  It’s not the case that I think a bunch of Gods exist, and this one is in charge of this thing, and that God is in charge of that thing.  But…. there is still a pantheon in my mind.

There is the idea of an angry bearded fellow in my brain.  He has been smiting folks left and right.  There is the idea of a primal force at the start of the universe who watches impassively.  He is wearing a white robe.  There is nebulous shadow figure, beyond all my words and descriptions, transcendent of everything.

The one I name YWVH has some things in common with each of those.  But not everything.  This God is as close as my breath; moreover, this God’s name is my breath itself.  The very nature of the action tells me some things about this God; this God is necessary for my life.  This God is mysterious but intimate with me.  This God’s name is unsayable, and yet it is always said.

Have you ever breathed with somebody?  Really breathed with them?

Sometimes, when I am having trouble sleeping, I tune into the rhythm of my wife’s breath.  I will try and time it just so, matching her inhales and her exhales.  When I do this, sometimes I can drift right off to sleep.  

Have you ever had someone talk you through a meditation?  When someone says ‘inhale…. Exhale’ it is hard for  to resist.  And so frustrating when their guidance isn’t at a pace that we find natural.  There is something so soothing about coordinating the timing of our breaths with others.

This next practice invites the practitioner to first breathe with those around us.  We then find ourselves breathing in relation to plants.  Gradually, the practitioner widens the scope of their mind’s eye, picturing the self in a larger and larger web of interactions.

I find that something happens to me as I picture scenes like this.  There’s a sort of parallel with watching a certain type of shot in the film.  It’s almost a visual cliche; usually the last shot in the movie.  It might start as a close-up shot, but then it pulls back, further and further, and with distance  we lose the details on the things that were just a moment ago so clear.  We lose the specifics of the individuals and see the whole neighborhood, pull up through the clouds, see the outlines of the  continent, and eventually even pan back and away from the planet itself.  

Because we are finite and limited, as we see the full outlines of the big picture, we lose the particular details we were able to entertain.  When we see the curves of planet Earth, we no longer witness the particular details of the tableau where we began.  We can’t see the specific people or scene where the shot began.  

We can take a wider view of nearly anything.  It doesn’t even have to be visual.  I can start by focusing on the work day of a particular person.  While I’m focused on this, I might want to  know about this person’s schedule, job description, and performance.  But I could take a wider look.  I could focus on how this person’s job interfaces with the organization he works for.  I could wonder about how the organization fits into the wider community where it is head quartered.  I could wonder about how the community functions within the wider society, and how the various societies interact with each other.

It’s easy to see the individual as the most relevant level of organization.  I can understand why most of the shots in a movie or designed to follow along specific people.    I suspect that this is because where we naturally identify with our consciousness, and therefore our sense of control.  I am composed of cells, and the cells make up tissues, and the tissues make up organs, and the organs make up organ systems.  The organ systems make up my individual self.  And my self is a part of a family.  And my family is part of a community.  And my community is part of a nation.  And the nation is part of a planet, and the planet is part of a solar system.

This description could continue onward, in either direction.  But I suppose you are taking my point.  The individual is just one level of description.  Because my consciousness is more or less in control of my own individual self it’s easy to see this as the natural level of importance.

A camera, or a visualization which lands somewhere else is an important reminder that there are elements which make up the individual that I identify with.  They are important reminders that this individual is a constituent of wider systems.  This is an important thing to focus on, a reminder.  In our practice below, we reinforce our experience of our connections with all the living things.

In the description below, I have tried to take on particular scenario of where a person might be, in relation to others.  It so happens that I live on the second floor of a 3-floor apartment building.  If you live in a substantially different area, it might make sense to alter the ways in which you are widening your awareness.  The main thing is that we begin by picturing ourselves and gradually widen our perspective to include an increasing number of people.  

Before the prior practice, we explored the idea that even if the visualization is not literally specifically true, there is still value to it.  As we explored our interconnections with the plant, we overlooked the fact that plant’s don’t literally exhale constantly.

For today’s practice we’ll engage in a similar act of symbolic visualization.  Of course, at any given time a person might be inhaling or exhaling.  At this exact moment, probably half the people you know are doing one.  Perhaps half the people you know are doing the other.  As stated previously, sometimes a person might coordinate the timing of their breaths with someone they are with. 

In the practice today, we’ll imagine that we are exhaling and inhaling with other people.  Literally, of course, this is probably not true.  But on a symbolic level, it helps us to remember.

Practice 6) Breathing With Other People

1.  Release your concerns and worries for this time.  
2. Take three deep breaths.
3. Take a moment to consider where the nearest person to you is.
4. Imagine that single person, breathing.
5. With your next inhale, imagine that the two of you are inhaling together.
6. With your next exhale, imagine that the two of you are exhaling together.  
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for as long as you would like.  Try to experience this breath that you are breathing together; don’t settle for the abstraction of breathing together in general.  Dwell inside this breath, right now, with them.  It is a unique thing.  
8. In your mind’s eye, widen your perspective.  Come to picture the entire floor that you are occupying  Consider first all the other people animals present.  Breathe at least three full breaths with them.
9. Now, think about the plant life within this area.  Imagine the ways that the plants breathe opposite the animals, each supplying the other with what they need.  Breathe at least three full breaths.
10. Widen the picture in your mind, again.  Perhaps now, you will consider the living things within the building you occupy.  Breathe three breaths with all the animals and plants.
11. Imagine the block you are living on: All the people and animals and plants in the buildings, all the people and animals and plants in between the buildings.
12. Widen the range of your imagination this one last time.  Take in as a wide a vantage as you can, holding in your mind all the living things in this part of your town or city.  Love this interconnected web of beings as best as you can.
13. Now, quickly!  Bring your mind back to just your own self, your body sitting in meditation.  See yourself.  But still connected.  Still part of that web.

To read a second passage from this book, click here.

Exercise 73: Whole Body Mystical Awakening

Background: Today marks something new for the Faith-ing Project. This the first spiritual practice on the site which I am merely reposting. None of this description came from me. My hope for 2021 is that this becomes an increasingly frequent practice here. A first step for a contemplative is to take a brisk jog through the sorts of practices that are out there. But I hope that you have the oppurtunity to take a deeper dive into traditions, practices, and communities. I am beginning with this practice because I have deeply benefited from Intergral Christian Newtork‘s WeSpace Groups, Sunday Services, and free standing meditations. I think you will too.

This meditation was written by Paul Smith. You can find his excellent ‘Intergral Chistianity: The Spirit’s Call to Evolve’ on Amazon.

This practice can take from a few minutes to an hour or more. You can do one part or several, or all of it. I (Paul) often take about twenty minutes to do it all.

Set your intention to open to the four goals of Whole-Body Mystical Awakening:

(1) expanded heart consciousness,
(2) mystical oneness,
(3) the spiritual beings present with you,
(4)  windows of spiritual knowing.

1.      Start with your Heart. 

Move your awareness from your head to your heart. This is not being aware of your heart but being aware from your heart. To help, you can tap on your head, then tap on down your temple, jaw, neck, and chest. Continue tapping on your chest until you sense you have moved to your heart space. You can also place your hands on your heart which can increase the energy there. Your heart space includes your chest, back, arms, and hands. You may also think of someone you love to help activate the love flowing from your heart.

Deep in your heart center is an inexhaustible flow of love which is always there, ready to radiate outward. You may feel warmth flowing from your heart and bliss flooding your being.

2.     Treat your Feet

Move your attention to your feet, making sure your feet are planted firmly on the floor. You may want to stamp your feet or wiggle your toes to help your consciousness move there. Think of roots growing from your feet deep into the earth, anchoring you in your body and your body to the earth, even the whole material cosmos itself.  Draw up energy from this grounding and centering that comes these spiritual roots which connect you with the transcendent oneness of all divine material reality.

3.     Chummy with your Tummy.

Draw that grounding energy on up to your gut, your spiritual womb. Residing here is our intuitive self, with the ability to understand or know something without conscious reasoning.

This is the home of your core self, your divine identity, which is accessed not by conceptualizing or thinking, but by intuition and sensation. Rest in your spiritual womb by simply being. Be aware of anything that emerges from this area of deep spiritual knowing.

Jesus said from here flows living water or the awakened consciousness of our divine identity (John 7:37-38). The gut deepens into transcendence as we experience not only our own divine identity, but that this identity is the one divine identity of all.

4.     Spread to your Head. 

On the way up to your head, pause in your heart space to soak in your heart’s radiating love. Then move up into your head space. You may notice your mind is unusually calm as your carrying the grounding energy of your feet and womb and the radiant love of your heart with you into you head space. Rest in the cleared stillness there are long as you wish. If you wish, you can move up out of your head space, spreading into the vast, spaciousness there. This is the transcendence of pure consciousness that is the mystical realm of the infinite divine.

5.      Impart your Heart

Move back down into your heart space, this time becoming aware of the spiritual presences that are with you. This can be the motherly-fatherly presence of God, the Living Jesus, and other spiritual companions such as Mary or other saintly presences who are there to comfort, encourage, and strengthen you. Let them hold you and touch your heart. You can sense their presence, converse with them, and receive from them.

Then let your heart flow out to others that come to your mind, sending the energy field of love out to them as healing, light, and blessing. Finally, let your heart expand to transcendent awareness as it enlarges and moves to hold all sentient beings in its blissful, loving embrace

6.     Devotion in Motion

Finish with devotion in motion by reaching down to your feet with both hands and feel the energy move up through your body like a flowing geyser until your hands are raised high in the air. You are a geyser of love and healing shooting up through and from you. It flows out to the world and universe becoming a part of the Kosmic groove you and others are cutting in fabric of the cosmos, co-creating with God new pathways to the continuing evolution of creation.

AND RIVERS OF LIVING WATER SHALL FLOW FROM THEIR INNER SELF.   — JESUS

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Body Centers of Spiritual Knowing

Whole Body Awakening

The deep feelings of the HEART are retrieved through our awareness moving into the heart center with the chest, arms, and hands in contact with one another.

Our body energy field is accessed with our awareness sinking down to our legs and FEET, grounding and drawing energy up from the earth.

Our intuition and core identity are accessed with our awareness resting in our gut and contact with our hands on our lower abdomen or SPIRITUAL WOMB.

The impressions, images, and words that come to the MIND are accessed through contact with the head and forehead.

These physical areas are entryways into the depths of being present and their associated ways of spiritual knowing.

For ICN’s audio file recording of this practice, click here.

Practice 72: Oneness on a Winter Night

Background: Today’s practice is a visualization which builds on some on oneness practices. For examples of more oneness practices, click here and here.

It will be helpful, before practicing to bring to have choosen a small group of people whom you feel very safe and comfortable around.

The Practice:

1. Find a relaxing pose. If you can comfortably manage it, feet flat on the floot and spine upright are ideal.
2. Release your worries, stresses and concerns with your next exhales.
3. Inhale all the way down into your hips.
4. Exhale feeling your belly draw closer to your spine.
5. Close your eyes.
6. See yourself– and your friends– in a clearing on a cold winter’s night. Your breath comes out in clouds and a light dusting of snow covers the ground. You are dressed warmly, comfortably. There is a single towering pine tree in the center of the clearing. The outskirts of the clearing is defined by smaller trees and shrubbery. It is a ways beyond you. The moon is so bright! It illuminates the clouds which a gentle wind keeps slowly creeping across the sky.
7. Form a circle around that central tree. Take your friends hands. Someone squeezes, and that squeeze comes around the circuit like a pulse. See yourselves and your friends. Their are smiles here.
8. As you breathe, breathe with your friends. Feel the way you are inhaling together. Feel the cold, invigorating you in the quiet. Feel the way you are exhaling together. This is a connection.
9. Connect for a while, just this. Feeling the closeness on the winter night. Seeing your breath.
10. Now, connect to the great tree in the middle. Your exhales are the trees inhales. Perhaps the cloud from someone’s breath even lands on a pine needle. there is a symmetry here. Breathing with your friends.
11. Give most of the time you have remaining to this connection. When you are ready, gently squeeze the hands on your left and your right.

Discovering the Essence: How to Build a Spiritual Practice is coming in November. Click the link for a free preview and more information.

Exercise 71: Find your hope

Background: Today’s practice is deeply inspired by Resmaa Menakem’s ‘My Grandmother’s Hands.‘  I am including it here because  this important book is something that everyone should be reading right now.  It is explores questions of race, white supremacy, and trauma by exploring where these things live in our bodies.  It is not easy work for an old white guy like me; but it is important work.  Contemplatives and those who love spiritual practice might find this approach to be a powerful one.  Each chapter features practices like this one.

To be honest, I am a little hesitant about sharing this practice here.  I think that this practice could have lots of positives not related to exploring racial trauma and white body supremacy.  And this is my concern: I would not want to co-opt and distract from this important work.  I am also aware and sensetive to the issues around white people stealing the work of black people without approprite credit and attibution.  The best I know how to do in this regard it to state again, emphatically, that regardless of your background or history Resmaa Menakem’s excellent ‘My Grandmother’s Hands’ should be on your reading list.

The Practice

1.  Place your feet flat on the floor.  Wiggle your toes.
2. Become aware of your skin.  Note where it is sitting under cloth and where it is exposed to the air.  Feel the textures and the temperatures, the moisture and movement of air.
3. Note where you are sitting.  Feel the pull of gravity pulling you down and the support of your chair, cushion, or floor supporting you upward.  Note the softness or hardness of the places where you are back, butt, and legs touch whatever you are sitting on.
4. Can you sense hope in your body?  Where is that hope living right now, at this moment?  Does it move or change with your breath?  Is there excitement living with your hope?  Anxiety?
5. What specific desires come with finding this hope in your body: what is it that you are hoping for?  Healing?   Success?  Do you have hopes around racial trauma and moving past the hurts you have recieved or the hurt your actions have caused?
6. Can you find any fear in your body?  Where is it?  Does it move or spread?  Does it feel growing and alive or dead and cut off?  Sit with your fear, for a moment.
7. Explore the specifics of this fear to the extent that it is safe, wise, and kind to yourself to do so.  What is it that you are afraid of?  Does this fear imply anything about your relationship to future events?
8.   Hold the hope and the fear.  Experience them both fully in your body.  Take your time with this step.  This is a microcosm for the experience of what it is to be human.
9. Return to checking in with your body.  Notice the way your breath feels.  If you would like to continue but need a moment, take that moment, and then take another.  You can return to a focus on your body by checking in with your sensory experiences that are happening now: listen, for example, for three sounds in your environment.  Look around and name for things.  Take a deep breath and smell the air.  Inquire into your taste buds and see if there is a taste in your mouth.
10. If you would like to continue, you can hold search for and hold other dualities.  Begin by choosing one item from the pairings listed below; (or, of course choose something not listed.)  Some pairings you might try: love/apathy; acceptance/anxiety; like/ dislike; joy/sorrow; admiration/disdain.
11. To the extent you can, find where that first element lives in your body.
12. Explore how it feels and moves within.
13.  Identify some of the  specific ways that this might pop up in your life.
14. Find the opposite in your body.
15. Explore how the opposite feels and moves within.
16.  Identify some of the specific ways that this might pop up in your life.
17. Spend a moment just holding the both of these oppposites together.
18.  If you wish, hold this pair as you return to an earlier pair, such as hope and fear.

 

Exercise 70: Naming (best as a contemplative walk)

Background-   this practice could be connected with a wide array of inspirations.

• Mindfulness and many other Buddhist practice speak about the importance of noting the specifics of the situation we find ourselves in as noted by our senses. Sometimes this is described as noting the ‘thisness and thusness’ of where we find ourselves.
• In the book of Genesis, Adam was given the task of naming things in the Garden of Eden.
• Francis is known to have described the living and nonliving things around him with familial titles: for example ‘sister moon’ and ‘brother sun.’

 

This practice is ideally done as a contemplative walk.  A good contemplative walk carries a tension within it.  Of course safety is ultimately important.  Therefore, diverting some attention to an awareness of how to get home and ensuring that we don’t walk into an unsafe situation are very important.  Walking into an unsafe situation might be failing to look both ways before we cross a street.  It also might be making sure we don’t wander into neighborhood that is unsafe for us.

However, being too planful takes some of the power out of a contemplative practice.  I believe in something larger than us that will guide our steps when we are willing to cede control of our destination.  Even if I am wrong on that, it is clear that being too strategic and logical ends up giving over a certain measure of headspace over to the logical, planning side of our brain.  As a result, we end up not being as fully contemplative as we might have hoped for.

If a walk does not make sense for you right now, much of this practice can be applied to a more sedentary approach.   A practitioner might find value in applying this practice to a place they think they know very well.  It can be surprising the things we discover when we look at familiar surroundings with fresh eyes.  Alternatively, Finding a seat with unfamiliar surroundings can also bring new discoveries.

Before beginning the practice description, I would like to own and name the reality that this practice can feel a bit silly.  The internal monologue would look rather amusing if viewed out of context.  I believe that a little silliness if quite a powerful thing.  Most of us (including me) are entirely too grim and somber about our spiritual practice.

The Practice

1.  Begin a walk with a cultivated sense of purposelessness.

2.  Identify something in your field of vision.  Greet and name it.  (e.g. ‘hello tree with yellow leaves on the north side.’  or ‘Hi, fire hydrant with a rusty chain.’)  work at noticing and naming in a way that identifies the uniqueness of this one particular thing you are seeing.

3.  Note, name, and greet the next thing in your field of vision as you continue your walk.  The goal is to produce a nearly nonstop litany of the things you encounter.  If someone were to hear your thoughts, it might almost sound like a guided tour of the walk.

4.  As you continue the walk, see if you can apply it to sounds or smells.

5.  You can similarly greet feelings, thoughts and memories as they come up for you.

 

Exercise 69: Box Breathing

Background for 69A: Box breathing is a mindfullness practice.  It begins by identifying 4 points:  the inhale, the pause after the inhale, the exhale, and the pause after the exhale.  Practioners are invited to imagine a box and circle their attention around each side with each of the four parts of the breath.

Mindfulness offers up many tools.   I find these tools very useful in enhancing my experiences of other types of spiritual practice.  One of the most basic principles of mindfulness is to anchor ourselves in this present moment  with the information the 5 senses provide.  One of the challenges with this sensory data is to receive it in  a manner which is as concept-free as possible.

Thus, in mindfulness, it is  good start to notice the feeling of the breeze on my hand.  It is better to disengage my knowledge that it is a breeze and to simply tune in to the feeling on my hand.  It is even better than that to release my concept knowledge that I have a hand: the goal is to simply experience that sensation as something that is occuring.

It is powerful to attend to the breath for as long as we are able.  Perhaps that is just for a part of the inhale.  Perhaps we are able to stay fully in our breath for all 4 “sides” of the “box.”

Two versions of this practice are presented here.  It is worth being reflective on how the two different prescriptions for breath-lengths leave you feeling.

Practice 69A

1.  Place the feet flat on the floor.  Find your breath.
2. Inhale for a count of four.
3. Pause for a count of four.
4. Exhale for a count of four.  
5. Pause for a count of four.
6. Repeat steps 2-5.  This time, stay with the breath for as long as you can.  
7. Repeat steps 2-5, imagining that each 4-count takes a finger to the end of a side of a box.  As you move on to the next corner of the box, you have entered a new part of the breath.
8. Continue this 4-part 4 -count, either staying in the breath or imagining the box.  Note how this leaves you feeling.  After this reflection, you may wish to move on to practice 69B.

Background to 69B

It might be helpful to recall the shape of a trapezoid from your last geometry class.   

For this practice, it’s helpful to envision a box of the shape shown above.  We could imagine that this box had legs of 3 feet.  We could imagine the smaller, upper base was 4 feet, and we could imagine that the lower, longer base was 5 feet.

Practice 69B:

1.  Place the feet flat on the floor.  Find your breath.
2. Inhale for a count of four.
3. Pause for a count of  three.
4. Exhale for a count of  five.  
5. Pause for a count of three.
6. Repeat steps 2-5.  This time, stay with the breath for as long as you can.  
7. Repeat steps 2-5, imagining that each breath part covers the time it takes a finger to the end of a side of a box.  As you move on to the next corner of the box, you have entered a new part of the breath.
8. Continue this pattern, either staying in the breath or imagining the box.  Note how this leaves you feeling.  This is your practice.  Please consider changing the lengths for a duration which is more comfortable.  One important thing is the regularity: choosing numbers and sticking with them.  Another important thing is the mere presence to the breath and attention to how that feels in the rest of the body.