Salutations and Meditations

I arise before dawn and yearn to go down to the river because there are always so many lessons for me there. As I shared with a friend earlier this week, in the midst of so much unsettling, the river is teaching me to go with the flow...

The morning starts out foggy, but quickly becomes muggy and I prepare for the joyous moments to come by delving into meditation...

My student arrives on her 60th birthday. She wants to begin her day and birthday celebration with a practice. I share with her my plans for her today - it is a practice that a dear friend shared with me a few years ago - that another dear friend in turn shared with her...I pass on the beauty of this practice that has now been passed on to many...

It is a practice done in silence...

Today is a day for giving thanks, for remembering, and for going deep within. I practice with her to offer my own support, but I also offer my own prayers - for my nephew on his birthday - and another friend turning 74 - while she dedicates her practice to her parents, whom I am sure are smiling on the Other Side...

We listen to endless variations of "OM Namah Shivayas" as we begin to dance through a variation of 60 sun salutations - each one dedicated to one year of her life...

I count them off softly so she does not have to keep track - she is thus fully free to immerse herself in every moment that unfolds into the next one - bathed in the memories elicited by each one of her years - revisited with each individual round of the salutations...

We reach the half way point - and I spot her in three magnificent handstands in the middle of the room...

And then the flow continues, mindfully and gracefully through 30 more years...

We end in the same silence pregnant with memories and feelings that carried us through the practice, with a restorative pose and a long savasana...

My student and friend leaves, deeply touched, saying she will always remember the beauty of this experience...

Minutes later, another friend and brother in my meditation lineage arrives, and together we go deep into meditation for an hour...

We begin with the reading of the day, and finding it so delicious and so precious, I re-read it, more slowly, and reverently:

"One moon dispels the darkness of the heavens.
Similarly, one soul who is trained to know God,
a soul in whom there is true devotion
and sincere seeking and intensity,
will dispel the spiritual darkness of others,
wherever he [or she] may go."

We conclude and sit joyously in the shared blessing of our Kriya Yoga meditation practice.

I give thanks for the many openings and blessings of the the last four days, having been embraced by the very arms of God, and for being given the gift and the experience of many moons to dispel the darkness in my soul during one very memorable week...

As Julian of Norwich, the 14th century English mystic so beautifully wrote, and as a dear friend has often reminded me:

"All shall be well,
and all shall be well!
And all manner of things shall be well."

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