Harvest Moon

This morning after working with several private clients I took a gorgeous walk along the Hudson River in Hamilton Heights. The riverbank this morning, like most weekday mornings uptown, was sparsely  populated. I did see several sets of discrete witches making offerings to the water – and then I remembered that tonight must be the Harvest Moon. God she’s gorgeous tonight. Have you looked at the moon yet?

My Facebook Wall is a veritible smorgasbord of discontent the past few days. Occupy Wall Street has me and so many others very deeply considering all of the many, many things that are wrong in our world. That’s why when I saw the witches this morning I took a breath of relief and had sit by the river and began to write down all the things that are so GOOD in my world. The things I want to harvest as nourishment for my future. The seeds I want to pull out and save for re-planting.

At the top of my list was my meditation practice. As the Shiva Sutra says, “The world’s of yoga are astonishing.” Nothing has been more astonishing to me than the worlds that have opened up for me as I’ve turned my attention inward over the years. My first proper meditation instruction came during a college course about the Religions of India. It was an early morning class and my attendance was spotty and I did a meditation workshop for bonus points. What a boon that professor gave me. I’ve had so many brilliant teachers over the years – another set reflections to harvest tonight.

When I picked up my son from school today I offered to start teaching meditation to his class. I was nervous. Would Ms Familia (every child’s first teacher should be named so well) think I was a freak? But no, I was received with so much enthusiasm and love. I don’t have the slightest idea what this is gonna look like – whenever I invite Jasper to close his eyes and have a “grace break” with me on the daybed he often says, “When I close my eyes there’s just too much color and music in there!” I think little kids are first taught to meditate with their eye open for just this reason. I’ll find out soon. And I’m excited to enter the worlds of meditation with brand new beginner’s eyes. Here’s a script I found for kids that I think would be valuable practice for all human walking on our planet to start cultivating. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the beautiful folks at Learning Meditation for making this resource available to us. And may this new seed become visionary nourishment.