Dear Beloved Cloud Refuge,
Cloud Refuge hosts a Year to Live practice on the first Thursday of each month, @ 7pm. Christopher Ash will guide our reflections. Sue Armstrong will be support. Please contact Christopher – christopher at wholebodymindfulness dot com – if you need the Zoom link. There’s a suggestion for the current month’s practice at the end of this welcome message. If you are concerned that you’re starting late, don’t be. You can start anytime, because the conversations are (mostly) sufficiently independent.
We are using Stephen Levine’s book as a framework for the practice. And those contemplative practices at the end of this welcome message are taken from Stephen Levine’s A Year to Live book. The Group Practice is not a linear following of the book, but Stephen poses some probing questions and things to do, linked to different chapters (39 in all, most only a few pages long).
So, in preparation for each month’s session, we would like to invite you to return to your battered and underlined copy of the book, or purchase one if you don’t have it, and perhaps read it in parallel with the monthly group process; and, as well, consider his suggestions for the relevant month.
If you’re a listener, there is an Audible.com edition which was made by Sounds True, and has Stephen narrating. It’s a condensed version. The book doesn’t seem to be on Kindle nowadays. (It was once.)
And lastly, you don’t have to buy or read the book. You could just respond to the questions posed each month in the Year to Live session, first Thursday of the Month. Here’s the exercise for the coming month:
September’s Contemplation
Who dies? Investigate that which remains when the body has fallen away, as well as that which was present before we took birth. Occasionally add original-face meditation to those meditations already being practiced. Keep company with the wise, reading together the writings and listening to the recordings of those whose spiritual practice is so well developed that they have received and can share insights into the nature of the after-death experience-. Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta, Buddha, Jesus, Sarada Devi, the Hassidim, Aldous Huxley, Ram Dass, Dogen, Ananda Mayi Ma, and Neem Karoli Baba (known as Maharaji).
— Levine, Stephen. A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last
The Meeting Dates
The coming dates are: August 7, September 4, October 2, November 6, December 4, January 1, (in memory of Joyce), February 5.
Warmly,
Sue & Christopher.