Meditation: Body and Spirit (19:21 min.)

---

As we relax and awaken through our physical body, we discover the formless dimension of awareness or spirit that permeates all of life. This meditation includes a poem from Mary Oliver.

Poem (the spirit likes to dress up)

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is –

so it enters us –
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

Mary Oliver, Dream Work

The post Meditation: Body and Spirit (19:21 min.) appeared first on Tara Brach.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8196908 https://www.tarabrach.com/meditation-body-spirit/