This morning I am beaming with gratitude for all the beautiful inquirers who flew on airplanes, rode bikes, drove cars and arrived here in northeast Seattle to question our thinking for the weekend of YOI (Year of Inquiry) Groups.
We’re gathering together, to do this work. Investigating our suffering in life.
You’re doing it too.
We are all IN this together, no matter where you are located in place and time as you are reading this. As you go about your day or evening.
The poem for our weekend is the powerful Checkmate by the beloved Jalaluddin Rumi. I’ve read it twice, and will read it again.
It begins “Borrow the Beloved’s eyes…”
Inviting us to see through the eyes of reality, through the eyes of these other sweet people, through eyes that are beyond stressful beliefs, but including those stressful beliefs.
Everything welcome.
And who would you be without that stressful, sad, worried, nervous, angry thought?
What a strange, fabulous question….
If it’s hard to imagine being without stressful thoughts, don’t worry. The spark is alive in you to investigate….you know you can!
“If you can’t do this work yourself, don’t worry. You don’t even have to make a decision one way or another. The Friend, who knows a lot more than you do, will bring difficulties, and grief and sickness, as medicine, as happiness, as the essence of the moment when you’re beaten, when you hear Checkmate, and can finally say, with Hallaj’s voice, I trust you to kill me.” ~ Rumi
Much Love, Grace