Acknowledging Our Humanity

Yeah,

Just go ahead and get comfy in your spot if you're not already and you can always rearrange yourself as we are connecting here in the next bit of time.

And once again,

Just connecting to your sitting,

Your simple actual factual sittingness of this moment,

However your body is arranged.

However your hands are here,

All the way down to however your feet are here and everything in between.

And letting that breath be here as is comfortable for you as well,

That inhalation and exhalation.

And if it feels right for you with the exhalation to really let yourself release whatever wants to be released and let gravity hold you.

The force of gravity is already holding all of us.

The chair is kind of the stand in for that,

But we are all supported by this field of gravity.

None of us have to worry about floating to the ceiling,

For example.

So with that exhalation,

Our bodies fall back down toward the chair,

Toward the earth.

And that is just a gravitational movement.

The inhalation moves the body up a little bit and the exhalation releases the body down a little bit.

And we can play with that consciously.

We can even exaggerate it for fun.

Or we can just watch the mechanism,

The breathing mechanism as it moves through that ebb and flow.

And we'll just watch that rising up and releasing down for a few cycles of breath here.

As you're noticing this movement,

Again,

The thoughts are going to come and go.

That's really normal for a human to have thoughts come and go.

Just notice the thoughts,

They will come and go just like the breath comes and goes.

So you can notice the thoughts,

The images,

Not trying to change them or turn them off.

That would be like trying to turn off the breath.

It's just not what a human being does.

We just think and we breathe and all that kind of stuff all happens.

And we can invite ourselves to just notice that the normalcy of that,

So to speak.

In the space of the body,

You may be noticing lots of different things,

Even contrasting things.

So maybe heat and coolness are both here.

For me,

I notice heat in certain areas and I notice my toes are cold or cool.

So there's the heat and the coolness in my experience that are simultaneous,

Not heat or cool,

But both.

And you may have variations of temperatures and hardness and softnesses,

Some openness and some tightness,

All sorts of variations.

And to just notice as you notice those.

It is very normal for a human body to tighten,

To grip,

To hold.

In fact,

If a human body didn't do that at all,

We would just be gush on the floor.

Our bodies have to have those engagements in order to be sitting upright or for muscles to work in conjunction with each other or so forth and so on.

So those holdings and tightenings and grippings,

They're a normal part of our human beingness.

And yeah,

Sometimes we hold habitually or without needing to.

And so as we slow down,

We might notice holdings or tightenings in our jaws or in our bellies or in our thighs,

All sorts of places.

And we can just very curiously check in to see if some of these holdings are okay to soften in this moment without an agenda.

And if there are holdings or tightenings that need to be here,

It's to say,

Yeah,

You need to be here.

I don't know why necessarily,

But you get to be as you are.

And for those spaces that loosen,

Yeah,

They get to be here as they are.

Which leads me into the reading for today,

Which is by Jesse Macio Vega Frey.

And I hope I've not mispronounced his name too much,

Jesse Macio Vega Frey.

And he writes,

Fear and craving and hatred and clinging are deep emotional protections against the unknown that enabled us to survive over millions of years of evolution.

And while we need to see how they hold us back and learn how to overcome them individually and collectively,

We shouldn't pathologize them.

We actually need to respect them.

So we notice our own emotional states,

Our own fears or whatever is here in this moment,

Our own clingings that are here in this moment.

And we invite ourselves to be aware that they have had utility in our life.

We may understand that in a way and we may not,

But we may just assume that is true for this moment,

They have served purpose.

And we can learn to get to know those spaces and we can also learn to respect them in their own way.

So in this moment,

I was trying that on as a lens to see through,

Not pathologizing ourselves.

And instead acknowledging that where we are in this moment has decades of years beforehand that have brought us to this moment and those clingings and those fears and whatnots have come due to circumstances,

Not of our choosing.

And so rather than pathologize them,

We honor or acknowledge them in some kind of way,

Very gently.

And just breathing with that here,

We'll just rest with that for a moment or two,

The innocence of our humanity.

And the breath coming in and out through our sitting bodies.

Nothing to figure out in this moment,

Just to notice the breath that's already happening and the sitting that is already happening and connecting to the simplest expressions of the breath and the sitting.

Let's hear our breath for a moment.

For a moment,

We're Xu A sitting breathing body.

And very gently coming back to the body.

I want to talk to these words that Jaseo Vega-Frey wrote.

Fear and craving and hatred and clinging are deep emotional protections against the unknown that enabled us to survive over millions of years of evolution.

And while we need to see how they hold us back and learn how to overcome them individually and collectively,

We shouldn't pathologize them.

We actually need to respect them.

And just breathing that invitation in and noticing for yourself how in some ways that may be easy and other ways that may be hard and in some ways that may seem impossible.

And whatever,

However that is for you to honor that as well.

To acknowledge that we live in a culture that does typically pathologize aspects of our humanity and we ourselves have learned to do that.

In our own narratives with ourselves.

And that is something that we have learned from our culture.

And to just acknowledge that as gently as you can for yourselves.

And if it feels possible in this moment.

To return back to the breath.

To include the sitting.

And into the actual factualness of their experiences of those of the sitting this of the breathing,

This,

That is already happening.

Regardless of any thoughts of right,

Wrong,

Good or bad.

There is sitting and breathing.

We invite our attention to notice the factualness of it,

Of those experiences.

Beyond the right,

Wrong,

Good and bad there is the factualness of hard and soft and cool and warm and so forth.

Of inhalation and exhalation.

And invite our attention to notice those factual actuals of this moment.

The breath coming in and out.

The feet being where they are.

The legs being where they are.

The hands and the arms being where they are based on your context.

The sit bones and the spine just based on your context of what they're connecting with in this moment in the actual factual.

And the breath that is coming in and out of the body.

And then just taking a moment as well to notice the space around you.

The nostrils draw in air from the space around you.

Or the mouth,

However you're breathing.

It's that air,

That oxygen comes from the space around you.

So just noticing that space that is holding you,

That you reside within.

Like the chair as an unconditional support and the space around you is also unconditional.

It has no terms for you.

It is just here.

And our bodies move within this space.

Move with this space.

And we can participate with this space.

And staying with,

Again,

Inviting your attention to stay with the actualness,

The actual factualness of the sitting and breathing as the eyes gently open.

So there's still the feet wherever they are and there's still the hands wherever they are and the spine and the rest of the sitting breathing body is still here,

Just as it was before.

Now the eyes are open so the attention may be including different data.

Just noticing what you notice.

And when you're ready,

Gently coming back to the screen.