Then there
crept
A little noiseless noise
among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh
that silence heaves.
John Keats
I felt like a dog. There was a slight rustle in the grasses along the trail. Something nearby had alerted my attention. My mind registered that the sound was like a bird trying to quickly hide and become still. Similar to one of our canine-kin, I paused, and a keen alertness filled my senses. It even seemed as if the tips of my ears pricked up. Whatever was there kept moving, and the rustling continued.
Curious, I waited. After a few minutes, two small eyes peeked through the blades of grass. Now, I was rapt with attentiveness. If I were a dog, I might have barked. Instead, my mind seemed to start hollering to the rest of my body– a snake, it’s a snake! Simultaneously, it registered the markings indicating the snake wasn’t one that was a threat. My curiosity had turned first to near panic, then to fascination: a garter snake was making an appearance on a sunny winter day, and within a week it would be the beginning of what is known as the year of the snake.
The feeling of fascination stayed with me as I moved onward. The snake prompted me to recognize several snake-like shifts that were flowing through my life. Besides the usual shedding – and re-purposing – of material possessions such as books and clothing, some more subtle aspects of my identity seemed to naturally be sloughing off and disappearing. For example, relationships and e-subscriptions related to my prior work, worrying about things out of my influence or control, and the impulse to learn more or do more.
There has been no pull to fill up the resulting empty space. As such, I can more readily feel the potency of the snake’s ability to be grounded and content in stillness, yet to be focused with the strength and agility to move swiftly and clearly. Luckily, I can more naturally re-connect to the hidden and ever-present serpentine fluidity of existence – the curviness of tree roots and limbs, the undulating rivers, the waves rising and falling, and the clouds billowing, along with the inner rivers of blood and breath and loving qualities that embrace the inter-relationality of life all flowing: e.g., kindness, compassion, greedless-ness, sharing and reverence for the sacredness of all life.
The presence of the snake has made me even more humbly appreciative that existence itself is holy and is a continual invitation to pause, listen and offer homage. In addition to a fuller awareness of the snake-like shifts occurring in my life, the snake prompts me to be more keenly aware that attitudes and words are like venom, which can either harm or heal. I choose to endeavor toward the latter, and hope you will join me.
Practice
This practice supports awareness of your mouth, the gateway for your words
Prepare –
- Find a location that is somewhat private, or where you’ll be comfortable making faces and sounds.
- Turn your phone and any other devices to airplane mode, and remove any digital devices from your wrists or around your neck unless they are for medical reasons. If you resist doing this, take a moment to pause and ponder why.
- Standing, shake out one limb at a time for about 30 seconds for each limb. For example, balancing on your left foot, shake out your right leg. Then, balance on your right foot, and shake out your left leg. Then one arm at a time. For balancing on one foot, please feel free to steady yourself with your hand on a wall or some other stable surface.
- Find a comfortable seated position. Unless seated on the floor, rest the soles of your feet on the floor. As you feel the weight of your hips settle into the surface beneath you, invite your spine to softly rise upward. Allow your hands to rest in a comfortable position.
Practice –
- Make faces, e.g., purse and release your lips, open your mouth wide, wrinkle your nose, move your jaw around. As you move your facial muscles around, perhaps notice any accompanying movement, e.g., in your neck, chest, etc. Move your mouth around.
- Then, move your tongue around, e.g., sticking it out, rolling it back, curling it, flapping it. Open your mouth wide, saying “aaah” a few times. As you do this, invite the sound to begin down in your belly or around the navel, rising upward and out of your mouth into the space around you. With that sense of the sound rising from deep inside you, invite your jaw and tongue to relax and then hum (mmmmmm) a few times.
- Place your hands over your heart, one hand on top of the other. Silently ask your innermost self which of these it would most like in this moment – kindness, compassion, love, trust, joy, or gentleness, peacefulness. Perhaps say each of these gentle qualities aloud, and with each one, notice the subtle inner responses. Notice if there is one which feels more resonant in this moment. If not, allow your intuition to choose one. Invite your hands to relax in a comfortable position, e.g., on your lap.
- Once you have a resonant quality, in a soft voice say the word again and again with your most sincere feeling of all that the word represents and offers. Feel as though you are simultaneously offering it from deep inside of you out into the world – and simultaneously, it is showering and infusing you with its presence.
- After several times, imagine there is only the feeling – you and everything around you have merged into the expansive presence of the word you have chosen.
Transition back into your day –
- Gently bring your fingertips and base of your palms together in front of your heart. Leave a little space in the center of your palms for the presence you have cultivated to be tenderly held and retained within you. Gently bow your head and invite a silent vow to lovingly care for and nurture this presence so that it not only cares for you, but has life though your words and the way you influence the world by your presence.
- Slowly lower your hands in any position that is comfortable. Sit quietly for a few moments.
- When you are ready, return to your day.
This poem appears in Mala of the Love: 108 Luminous Poems, page 116, edited by Ravi Nathwani and Kate Vogt and published by New World Library. H E A R T H is posted each new and full moon. KateVogt©2025.
Please consider joining me for my upcoming class:
“Pathways to Peace: Truthfulness, Non-violence, Compassion and Other Universal Values,”
Thursdays, 3/27 – 4/10/2025, on Zoom 3:10 – 4:30 p.m., Pacific Time.
Registration is through the College of Marin Community Education.
