LEE KLINGER LESSER
Newsletter - June, 2011
Women Veterans at Tassajara on 5-day retreat
Start where we are, opening a path of healing...
I have just returned from a powerful and vital five-day retreat at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center with women Veterans. This is the first retreat we have held for women veterans through Honoring the Path of the Warrior, a project I helped to create three years ago that shares tools of Sensory Awareness, mindfulness and meditation with veterans, under the fiscal sponsorship of the San Francisco Zen Center.
The Tassajara valley and community welcomed us, and helped to hold a deep space for healing and connection. The circle that we created was filled with love and caring. Thank you to all of the people who helped to make this possible!
A recurring theme during the retreat was "Start where you are", based on Pema Chodron's book and on the essential practice of being present. We discovered a labyrinth that had been temporarily set up on the outskirts of Tassajara. We walked this labyrinth together in silence, winding our way in and out towards the Center, and in and out from the Center. Veterans took turns sounding the mindfulness bell, inviting us to pause wherever we were until the sound disappeared. Often when we thought we were close to the center, we discovered we actually had to go far out again and then return. Our lives are like this, continuing spirals on a path of change, one step at a time.
One of my favorite poems by Antonio Machado includes two lines that help me recognize the importance of each step, the importance of starting where we are: "Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace camino al andar." "Traveller, there is no path. The path is created as you walk it." Nine months ago, I was sitting under the stars with a friend at another retreat for Veterans. We felt the need for a retreat specifically for women vets. And thus the idea, the intention took root. The gestation lasted nine months and then the retreat was born. It came, as we all do, from some tiny coming together of life force. Little by little it was nurtured through the unknown, through the labyrinth that spirals in and out from the Center, until it was birthed. Now new sprouts are opening into new intentions.
Prayer flags made at Tassajara by women Vets.
It is a powerful process to honor a vision, to recognize an intention that requires energy and attention, one tiny step at a time through unknown territory. To hold it deep in the womb of our own hearts and to follow what is needed to see it be born. To pause with the question over and over again: "What does this moment ask of me?" and to live the response.
Each moment offers a fresh possibility. Sensory Awareness practice is a foundation for me. An anchor that grounds me into ever-new connection with whatever is happening and whatever it demands. It helps me be present in freedom rather than in constriction. It helps me adjust to what is needed rather than living behind a tightness that is no real protection. One of my favorite quotes by Charlotte Selver, my Sensory Awareness teacher, talks about this: "There is no room any more for holding back or being lukewarm or protecting against something which may not at all exist now. And in case we actually need to protect ourselves now, we can do it openly. We can protect ourselves in freedom instead of carrying all this constriction which pretends to protect us."
It was an honor to be with the group of courageous women I spent the last week with at Tassajara: coming together to support each other to be deeply present to what is being asked of them now in their lives, to cultivate the skills and tools to face painful situations and not be consumed by them. To find joy and laughter and the open possibilities that each moment does truly bring when we don't get in the way.
I invite you to join me in my upcoming workshops and classes. I look forward to meeting any of you along the way, as we create the path together.
Lee Klinger Lesser