Hi,
It's Julie Potokur for the Balanced Mind Meditation Center.
Okay,
Let's find our comfortable meditation posture which is upright in a kind of dignified posture where your sit bones are really noticeably resting and your spine is erect but not rigid.
That great image that Roshi Joan Hollofax talks about where she says,
Firm back,
Soft front.
And then let's take three huge breaths in for four and out for six together with a sigh on the exhale.
You can close down your eyelids now if you're comfortable doing that.
And we're breathing in for four and out for six.
Let this last breath out with a sigh.
Okay let your breath find its natural rhythm now.
Notice your breath where you find it most easily.
It could be the tip of your nostrils or your chest or your belly but just rest your awareness for a couple of breath cycles on feeling and seeing your body breathing in and your body breathing out.
Relaxing your eyebrows and your eyes.
Releasing and relaxing your jaws.
Let your mouth open.
Relax inside your mouth.
Relax your tongue,
The root of your tongue.
And then when you're ready to close your lips,
Allow your teeth to remain slightly parted.
And imagine a slight smile to the outside corners of your lips.
Your breath is easy.
Dropping that smile down to your neck,
Your throat,
Relaxing,
Softening.
Dropping down to your heart center,
Your chest.
Noticing what's going on in there.
Releasing your abs.
Releasing your hips into what is supporting you.
Letting your thighs and your knees and your calves and your ankles and your feet relax.
Allowing relaxation to flow from your shoulders down your arms to your fingertips.
And then softening your hands.
You may want to place a hand or hands where you find it soothing.
Which could be your heart or your belly or cradling your face or hugging your arms just as a reminder that this soothing touch is a gift to yourself from yourself this morning.
And when you're ready,
Releasing and relaxing your hands and your lap.
Now using your imagination,
Create your perfect environment for right now.
A safe,
Comfortable space,
A place that you've been to on a trip or just a glorious place out of your imagination with your favorite chair or bed.
You're anywhere in the woods,
In the mountains,
On a beach.
Just use your visualization and interior decorating skills for a couple moments while I'm quiet to create this magical space.
Hopefully you have a vision of this space you've created and now I'd like you to open your sense doors and see if you can really notice the colors in the environment through your eyes,
In your mind's eye.
And what temperature the air might be and how it might feel on your skin.
Whether there's any objects in the environment that you can feel and touch and just any aromas in the environment and just a general feeling in your body of how it feels to be in this space that you've created so safe.
Noticing your breath,
The gap before you breathe in and skating the breath all the way to the top,
The gap before you breathe out,
Skating the breath to the bottom and you're breathing in this environment that you created.
Now if there's any words that you would like to hear offer them yourself on your in-breath.
If you'd like to take in hope or joy or courage or healing or patience,
Anything that you'd like to take in that would be particularly nourishing for whatever you're going through right now,
Breathe it in,
Breathe the word in to your soul on your in-breath and just let your out-breath be for right now.
Maybe it's a whole sentence,
I've got your back,
Everything's going to be okay.
Giving yourself what you need to nourish you and fill you up.
Now in your out-breath bestowing something wonderful to either specific individuals or to the planet at large.
So you're breathing in for yourself and out for others in this magical safe space that you've created.
Now I'd like you to bring in the cosmos in to your safe space.
Bring in the night sky,
Bring in the planets,
The constellations,
Consider the vastness while you're still sitting in your magical safe space.
This week in real life we got to see what Mars looks like and what Mars sounds like,
Bringing the planets closer to our actual reality.
Just contemplate now the stars,
The planets,
The cosmos,
Our place in it,
Our place from it.
See if you can fly through the universe in your imagination,
Safe and warm and protected.
Now taking in the words of this poem,
Not concentrating on it,
Just letting them wash through you by astronomer and poet,
The late Rebecca Elson called,
Anodotes to Fear of Death.
Sometimes as an antidote to fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark till they are all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes instead I stir myself into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood,
No outer space just space,
The light of all the not yet stars drifting like a bright mist and all of us and everything already there but unconstrained by form.
And sometime it's enough to lie down here on earth beside our long ancestral bones,
To walk across the cobble fields of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure,
Like a chrysalis,
Thinking whatever left these husks flew off on bright wings.
Anodotes to Fear of Death by the late Rebecca Elson.
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Wiggling your fingers and toes,
Coming back from the universe into your safe space you created and then into the place that you're actually sitting in,
Coming in for a gentle landing like the Mars rover and when you hear the sound of the chimes listening all the way through before gently opening your eyes.
Thank you for listening.
This is Julie Potichur from the Balanced Mind Meditation Center.
