Lisa Benner Living

02/06/2022

01/06/2022

12/31/2021

Goodnight 2021

12/29/2021

Winter Wonderland beauty ❄️

12/20/2021

You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.
But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight —

and it is possible: its great strength
is breaking into my body.
I have faith in the night.

~Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by

Wishing you nourishment, abundant joy, and rest this Yule.

09/20/2021

Wednesday is the Autumnal Equinox, a moment in time when we come as close as we can to experiencing equal day and equal night. A meeting of seeming opposites.

Western thought often seems to get caught in dualities. We parse — and sometimes rend — things apart in our attempt to understand them, and then we forget that the separation doesn’t exist, that we created an artificial severance where wholeness was the true state of being. I remember the shock when I learned that all of those different muscles named during anatomy were created by a scalpel. In the body, they are unified and work as one.

At the Equinox, we are also called to remember that an atom reflects a solar system. As above, so below. As within, so without. These too are statements of connection that sound like duality, perhaps because even connection is simply the joining of disparate parts. Unification is becoming a single unit.

Yoga means union, and I believe that we are being called to the middle path, a radical opening up in the centre that lies between two false choices — false choices that we created. As David Whyte says, “Sometimes you are not meant to choose; sometimes you are meant to go between things.”

Where might it be possible for you to move between rather than choose between?

09/13/2021

I was sitting with David Whyte on Sunday as part of his latest Three Sundays series, and he said, “All the experiences and wounds in your body are doorways to another constellation of living.”

I felt a catch in my breath.

A surprise doorway in. An unexpected discovery.

Like that part in the fable where the heroine collapses under the immensity of her quest — giving her full weight to the tree or standing stone or mountain side — and only because she finally gives her full weight, a new doorway opens, an unforeseen path to possibility.

I want to go on that journey, explore the universe of me, encounter the mystical vastness I contain.

As you feel your current experiences in your body, what is your doorway in? Will you give it your full weight? How do you explore the constellation of you?

📸: Saanvi Walvekar

08/16/2021

I have been feeling, lately, into vulnerability. I think often, as children, we believe that part of growing up is to become invulnerable — adult agency will make us powerful, and we learn to look for power over rather than dwelling within.

In his book Consolations, David Whyte says:

“Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.”

To me, to fully come into myself is to fully embody my vulnerability, to inhabit the full spectrum of my possibility, to root down in the mud even as I reach for the light. The art of following our vulnerability is the way it brings us into the seasonality of our lives. Former ways of feeling on top of the world become a place of stasis. The release of that attachment is the breaking down of barriers, bringing us to root down into what is actually happening. Possibility and vulnerability are irrevocably linked. The manifestation of possibility is a living that includes dying, a receiving that includes loss. The only way to fully live is to be deeply vulnerable.

What are the ways you protect yourself that hold you in stasis? How do you unfurl that holding into the blossomed presence of this current seasonality of your life?

08/02/2021

Yesterday was Lughnasadh, the first of three harvests in the Celtic Wheel of the Year. A time when we are asked to celebrate the bounty and gifts of the land and simultaneously asked to ensure that we tend to that land even as we fight and work and vie for what we desire.

Imagine that you are standing on a hilltop where you can see in all directions. Look to the east where you see newly cleared fields of grain beginning to ripen; what is coming to fruition in your life now? How is it developing?

Look to the south where you see fields thick with golden corn; what arises in you as you receive these firstfruits?

Look to the west where the grain is unhealthy and beginning to mold; in what ways may you have knowingly or unknowingly contributed to this through choices you have made?

Look to the north where there is a field ready to be cut down; what is drawing to a close in your life?

Now turn to your centre. How is your soul proceeding toward its harvest?

📷: Frank Albrecht

07/31/2021

Sage and Sumach cold infusion on it’s way!

07/28/2021

First foray into creating wild yeast!

07/26/2021

Inherent to the study and practice of yoga is svādhyāya, self study. A dear friend once said to me, “I think everything you do in your teaching is about tapas (discipline)”; my response was, “No, everything I do is about svādhyāya, tapas is simply a powerful tool in that self inquiry.”

We often consider self knowledge to be the goal, but I have been wondering lately, is self knowledge truly possible? And do I want it to be? Self study and self knowledge are not the same thing.

I have long believed that it is impossible to know everything. Even if one could know everything in one moment, the next moment, everything would not — could not — be known. The universe is not static. Each moment offers something new, something to be discovered, a mystery to be encountered and explored. Limitless possibility means the existence of miracle. Magick lives and breathes.

I long for both manifestation and potentiality. I believe this is the union of yoga — that in our incarnation we contain both. I am the known and the unknown, that which is and the limitless possibility of that which is not yet, full of growth and mystery and not completely knowable. Awareness is my pursuit through this science, not knowing, and awareness requires presence. Simple, vibrant presence. Being with what is, moment by moment, in all its steadiness and fluctuation and transformation and manifestation. Technique takes us to clarity so that we can pay attention, but then we need to be rather than do.

How do you magnify your way of paying attention?

07/23/2021

Tomorrow is Guru Purnima, a time when we celebrate that Adiyogi, Śiva — the first yogi — chose to become Adiguru, the first guru.

We often translate guru as teacher, but it more accurately means one who takes us from the darkness to the light. To me, I don’t see this as merely imparting knowledge by making the unknown known — or even wisdom. Instead, in giving us the science of yoga, we are given techniques to make the mysteries knowable, to make “that which is not yet” manifest, to open up the vastness of limitless possibility accessible in our living.

It is an incredible gift! And we are asked for something in exchange.

Before that first lesson, it is said that Śiva sat in meditation for an eternity, the only sign that he was alive were the tears of ecstasy running down his cheeks. Many people gathered, curious, wanting to learn, but most eventually got bored and left. When he finally opened his eyes, there were only 7 left. Yet even after showing such dedication, those 7 were not immediately taught; instead, they were given techniques to prepare themselves. It is said that they performed this sadhana of preparation for 84 years.

And only then, on the full moon after the summer solstice, did Śiva finally begin to teach.

I wonder if this is what Patanjali was referring to in the first sutra when he started with an “and”: And now the study of yoga begins.

In celebrating this most precious of gifts, it seems fitting to contemplate: how do I prepare? What is my exchange, my dedication, my investment? How do I honour the teachings?

07/12/2021

I’ve been reminded lately of a story — a parable, really — in Kriya Yoga about a camel.

A camel train moving through the desert was stopping for the night and, as the camels were being secured so all could go to sleep, they discovered that they were short one hitching pin. No one wanted to stand watch and lose the night’s sleep. Then one of the drivers had the idea to take the camel’s rope and go through all of the motions of tethering the animal to an imaginary pin. Afterward, the camel was convinced that it was securely tied, and everyone bedded down for a good night’s rest. In the morning, however, after all of the other camels were untied and everyone was ready to go, the camel tethered to the imaginary pin refused to move and remained obstinate until a driver went through all of the motions of untying the rope and releasing the camel.

The camel had been free the whole time, but it allowed itself to be convinced that it was bound and that another needed to set it free.

To me, this current threshold is intimately connected to choosing whether we will remain tethered to old ways of thinking and being or whether we will release ourselves into original thoughts and new ways of moving through this living.

Davie Whyte says that one of the definitions of originality is that you don’t recognize the pattern. An original thought cannot be understood completely when it arrives. It takes time. It is an exciting invitation to discovery, and it requires being willing to risk wildly and make a companion of the unknown. The mind is constantly trying to protect you, even from the truth. Its modus operandi is what it already knows. The mind is meant to be a protector but also to serve; when it is at the center of our lives, it becomes an oppressor.

What do you notice about your thought patterns? When you observe yourself in conversation — both with yourself and with others — do you notice if/when you need to have an answer for everything? What happens when you remain quiet? when you question the easy answers?

📷: Abdurahman Iseini

06/28/2021

For a while now, I’ve been trying to name a feeling within, something bubbling up as the world around me begins to re-open and I need to step into what is, in many ways, a brand new way of being that is still mid-creation. I was interpreting it as reluctance, but I think it might actually be shyness.

In Consolations, in exploring shyness, David Whyte writes:
“To feel shy is incredibly, to look five ways at once: to the beckoning new life in front of us, to the line of retreat behind us, to alternative possibilities of escape to the left and right, and in really difficult circumstances, the hope for a complete and sudden disappearance. Shyness is the first confused but necessary crossroads on the path of becoming. … Shyness is the exquisite and vulnerable frontier between what we think is possible and what we think we deserve.”

I feel myself standing on the threshold, one foot in the air mid-step, one hand gripping the door jamb, the other shading my eyes as I try to peer into the unknown. Yet I know, the only way to discover what’s there is to take that step.

Wherever you are in this current transition, what do you experience as you approach a threshold?

06/24/2021

Nap time

06/21/2021

Yesterday was Litha, the Summer Solstice, the day of the longest light, when we celebrate the brilliance and nourishment of the sun and all that is gifted to us by the light — awareness and clarity, knowledge and learning, generosity and fullness.

The solstices are poles, opposites, extremes almost in our experience of the light and the dark. However, they are not singular; they remind us that nothing is absolute. Even in the longest day and the brightest light, there is the reminder that the return of the dark is imminent. Like the symbol for yin yang, in the center of the light is the seed of the dark and vice versa. We are reminded that the truth of the words ‘always’ and ‘never’ really only apply in the learning that they don’t really actually apply. We too contain the full spectrum of living and possibility.

Wherever you are in the cycles of your living, how do you step down and in to the touchstone of what is other? How do you move away from absolutes to allow for possibility? In your extremes, where do you look to find the seed of your being?

06/13/2021

I was a little surprised by the spectrum of emotion that flowed through experiencing my first return to live music in a truly mindful way with the magickal beings of — processing so many things on so many levels. All of it through a swell of gratitude.