MaryBeth ingram
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Thereza – much appreciate how you ‘locate’ your chosen lineage on either side of you. Usually it’s only a mental placement for me but I see how placing these chosen ones on my right and on my left could make them very present with me during meditation. Thank you!
I set up a meditation sacred space awhile ago (like several years!) but frankly, mostly what I do is walk by it. It’s got some wonderful, special mementos that remind me of my lineage. Lineage – and yet, till wondering what that is for me – yes, ancestors with all their complicated histories, but what isn’t lineage if I consider all that ever was a part of what is whether I directly have known it or not. I’ve never met 98% of my ancestors so why would I need to meet anyone or anything that’s been in existence to consider it lineage. Susan referred to ‘the essential me’ that here – was here, will be here, when my physical existence is gone. There’s a great read, Caesar’s Last Breath which unfolded so much for me about existence – the reality that every atom and molecule that makes me was here before they formed me and will return to their natural states after me – maybe to be made into someone, something new? Ah, so much. In any case, I’ve now sat at my sacred meditation space twice!
Hello from Westerville Ohio, just north of Columbus Ohio. I’m here to keep learning and deepening my practice and understanding of Buddhism. Cradle Christian, raised American Baptist (the liberal wing), then United Methodist, then ELCA, then Episcopalian and started attending a local Sangha a little over 2 years ago. Institutional religion has become false to me, the concept of God is no longer working – “God” is a ready linguistic placeholder. I do feel a life-force exists before birth and after death that I cannot explain but it seems that something bigger than me/us is in motion and we are invited into that flow if we choose. Even if we don’t, that flow still, well, flows. It isn’t a person, a being, but an insistence … I love how John Caputo defines “God” – not existing but insisting.
I have found Susan’s teaching very grounding and openhearted.