Welcome to Dissolve, the thematic architecture holding our next 10-day cycle together.

It’s a doozy :)

This time in 40 Early Mornings can feel a lot like spring itself.

Bright signs of growth and hope (green shoots of crocuses and daffodils and vaccine numbers going up everyday!), mixed with bleak, grey, cold, dark reminders that life is both (literally, as March leaves many parts of our country like a lion with blizzards and snow and we see a rise in headlines that make our hearts hurt). 

How do we hold both? 

Spring does this well. Us, not always so much. 

How do we hold both, especially on the days and nights when the dark takes over. 

Farmer and poet Wendell Berry states the predicament so simply and so eloquently –

“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be…”

The real-life version of restlessness feels less poetic. 

Two nights ago I woke up around 3am and COULD. NOT. GO. BACK. TO. SLEEP.

This happens to me from time to time (ahem, A LOT of the time in the early pandemic months and now, again). 

When thoughts and worries compound into stress and anxiety and my mind keeps me up, up, and up. 

(I’m sure I’m the only one, right? ;)

A definition of yoga that I love is from the Yoga Sutras, one of the ancient, philosophical texts we study in yoga, and it's instructive here: : 

“Yogas chitta vritti nirodha.”

Sanskrit for something like this: 

“Yoga is the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind stuff.” 

Which is exactly what the practices in our next 10-day cycle, Dissolve, begin to offer us. 

Not a quick-and-easy “solution.” Not a complete panacea. Not a go-back-to-sleep guarantee. Certainly not a way to hold back the waves of despair of this world. 

But a start. 

A start to create just enough space between the “stuff” of the mind, to perhaps get enough good sleep, in order to get up again to do the good work we came here to do. 

I hear you. We’re all tired. And there’s so much work left to do.

So let’s start simply with today’s meditation.

It’s one of the MOST powerful practices I know to work with the storylines that our full spectrum of emotions can lead us too (aka what it feels like to be human). We’ll come back to this one again and again to loosen the grip around our stories and hopefully create some bright spots between the fluctuations of our minds or the headlines.

LEAVE A COMMENT IF YOU HAVE GET A CHANCE TO PRACTICE TODAY’s MEDITATION – what resonated with you? or… what aren’t you buying about this practice ;) ? whatever your initial response or reaction to it is, I’d love for you to share!

Welcome to this rich, fertile, challenging 10 days of 40 EM :) I’m right here with you! 

Cath 

P.S.. you can listen to the audio conversation for Dissolve, in the archives. I’ve also uploaded my favorite yoga practice to embody this concept of letting go. It’s a POWERFUL one and if / when you decide to practice, I suggest clearing out a clear space of 2 hours for yourself to take some time after to integrate and be. All of it right this way.

P.S.S. Full Wendell Berry poem here.