The Online Gatherings has taken the summer span to practice a little bit more. At the same time, we have been remembering some of the highlights that emerged in our midst through our Winter/Spring explorations. Each week I’ve shared one such summary with the community. We now have twelve in all and this exercise is feeling complete.

Honouring this sense, I gave what you might call a ‘summary of the summaries’ during this week’s get togethers. Here it is for your enjoyment:

The basic nature is central to all we do in the Online Gatherings. This innate wellspring of knowing, tenderness, and communication guides both our practice and path.

It guides the former through the absorptive draw of somatic mindfulness. When we slow down and surrender to it, the inherent pull of this moment allows us to settle into the fullness of this embodied instant. This fullness is inclusive of three ‘layers’:
• the nirmanakaya, aka: the apparently bounded personal body, or trunk of our being;
• the sambhogakaya, aka: the subtle, energetic relational body, or roots of our being;
• the dharmakaya, aka: the layer of embodiment that includes the totality of time and space, or the earth and sky of our being.

Through our interactions with one another – comments, questions, insights, emails, texts, and more – the basic wisdom of this community has repeatedly suggested the sambhogakaya is especially important in our engagement with compassion practices such as maitri.

Following the guidance of this communicativeness, we have adapted our basic practice. Once we realize some measure of settling into this embodied moment, we give slight attentional emphasis to the energetic layer of being. We let somatic mindfulness draw us into the roots of relatedness as they become increasingly subtle – eventually as refined as the mycelial filaments joining forests together.

Resting in this network, we receive the others – seen and unseen, known and unknown, living and past, human and other than human – as they arise in experience. This arising may appear as thoughts, energies, presences, memories, images, colours, tones, emotions, and more. However they arise, we receive, we welcome.