How you see God can really affect how your spiritual life progresses and one concept of God that is particularly warming to me,
Nurturing to me is God is the Beloved and you'll see it in a lot of spiritual traditions,
Many different religions.
So the passage I'm going to read is from Mirabai who echoes this idea of God as the Beloved.
So let's prepare ourselves to open our spiritual heart and you can sit up with your spine straight or you can lie down and let's begin breathing deeply.
Lots of times what we do to calm ourselves is to breathe deep from the diaphragm.
Let's do something a little different.
On the in-breath you see if you can expand the diaphragm but also see if you can open up your chest and open up your shoulders.
So you're really expanding the lungs on the inhale and then on the exhale just let the breath fall like a sigh.
Breathe in through the nose feeling the diaphragm dropping but then also opening your chest,
Your lungs,
Opening your shoulders,
Rolling your shoulders back and feel someone maybe pulling on your sternum up towards the sky and then maybe hold the breath for a moment and then sigh it out.
Make sure you sigh it out completely.
So with each breath you're expanding,
Opening the chest and really feeling every part of your lungs expanding,
Opening and then hold that for a moment until you can't hold it anymore and then sigh it out.
So when I do this in my meditation practice I sometimes make some pretty obnoxious noises.
What that is is those little groans are tiny prayers.
So at any time during this practice if you find your mind moving away bring yourself back to this breath of really feeling your spine growing tall on the inhale,
Opening the chest,
Opening the shoulder,
Opening the throat,
Expanding,
Feeling someone pulling on your sternum to the sky,
Holding that breath for a moment or two and when you can't hold just sigh it out.
Let it go.
So I'm going to read this passage a few times and each time see if you can listen in a different way.
So let's hear these words from Mirabai.
One cannot break the love that connects you with me beloved.
Just as a diamond which cannot be broken with a hammer,
My love for you is unbreakable.
My heart enters you as shine enters gold.
My heart resides in you as a lotus resides in water.
I get lost in you like a bird gets lost in the night sky.
Come again to me beloved.
So just sit with those words for a few moments.
You can continue breathing those deep breaths or you can breathe normally.
Let's feel the essence of those words sink in.
Let's hear these words again.
This time see if a particular image arises up and kind of seizes your spiritual heart.
One cannot break the love that connects you with me beloved.
Just as a diamond which cannot be broken with a hammer,
My love for you is unbreakable.
My heart enters you as shine enters gold.
My heart resides in you as a lotus resides in water.
I get lost in you like a bird gets lost in the night sky.
Come again to me beloved.
So if a word or an image here really rose up,
See if you can let that pulse for a few moments.
Let's savor these words again.
One cannot break the love that connects you with me beloved.
Just as a diamond which cannot be broken with a hammer,
My love for you is unbreakable.
My heart enters you as shine enters gold.
My heart resides in you as a lotus resides in water.
I get lost in you like a bird gets lost in the night sky.
Come again to me beloved.
So this time like a mantra,
Repeat the words come again to me beloved.
So it's like a prayer.
So you inhale deeply and exhale come again to me beloved.
So the fourth time we hear these words,
Let's use them as a jumping off point to this pool of inner stillness.
This is where we do what we can to quiet the mind from chatter and we rest in the words like a falling back into that stillness.
One cannot break the love that connects you with me beloved.
Just as a diamond which cannot be broken with a hammer,
My love for you is unbreakable.
My heart enters you as shine enters gold.
My heart resides in you as a lotus resides in water.
I get lost in you like a bird gets lost in the night sky.
Come again to me beloved.
So let's sit back in the stillness and if your mind wanders off return to that breath.
So even if you had one second of inner stillness or a few moments of inner stillness it's important to take a few moments to return holding on to that anchor that we've cultivated but recognizing that there is work to be done in the world.
So we remember that stillness as we take a deep breath in together really opening expanding the chest holding for a few seconds and then exhaling sighing it out.
You open your eyes if they were closed and just take a few moments to recognize your time in this moment but even though time seems to stop in a meditation we know that in our current bodies there is a specific purpose that we were called to fulfill.
Whether you know it or not hold on to that stillness as you either seek that purpose or live that purpose and any time that you feel that life is pulling you away from that stillness from that inner peace you can always come back to a practice like this one.
Much peace and love to you.
