Good morning,
And welcome to The Artist's Morning.
My name is Darius,
And I am so grateful that you and I get this time together.
Our practice today is a powerful practice.
It's not for everyone.
It does come with a warning.
We will explore the topic of death.
For me,
It's impossible to look at the topic of being alive,
The preciousness,
The gift,
The blessing of being alive without also acknowledging that one day,
All of us will no longer be here.
As I say those words,
I feel a tenderness in my heart.
And so check in with yourself now to see if you feel up for it,
If you feel resourced,
If you are interested in an exploration that will look at and acknowledge that one day,
All of us will die.
One day,
All of us will die.
But today,
We are alive.
Today,
We are alive.
Take a moment to feel the energy of those words.
Today,
We are alive.
Let's take a nice deep breath here together.
Breathing in.
Hold to the top of your breath.
Big exhale out.
Today,
We are alive.
Perhaps there is a part of your brain that is hearing this and is saying that is obvious.
And perhaps there is a deeper part of you that is hearing those obvious words and awakening awakening,
Awakening.
I want to invite you to place both hands on your heart and gently press into your heart.
Can you feel your heartbeat?
Maybe it's subtle.
I promise you it is there.
Take a few deep breaths and connect to your beautiful,
Glorious beating heart.
Sometimes,
I like to gently pet and hold and love my physical heart,
Noticing what feels good for my body and my heart and doing more of that.
And I'm going to share a very simple mantra,
And if you'd like,
You can repeat it.
It's a short,
Short sentence.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
And sometimes if I'm lucky,
I can time I am here with my heartbeat.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
Again,
I'm going to share an inevitable truth for all of us that might be difficult to hear.
My intention is a loving intention to bring us back to the preciousness and to the power of life.
And here is that inevitable truth.
Remember that you must die one day.
Remember that you must die one day.
Remember that today you are alive.
Today you are alive.
And if you notice your heart begins to contract,
If it slows down,
If it begins to guard itself,
That's okay.
If you'd like to expand your heart,
All you need to do is breathe into your heart.
Allow your spine to gently get taller,
Shoulders back,
Head up,
Energizing our hearts with our breath.
Today you are alive.
If you notice yourself in your head,
Continue breathing deep into your belly,
Into your heart,
Come back to your body.
There's nothing you need to figure out.
There's nothing you need to do here.
One last time,
Hands gently but firmly on our hearts.
I'm going to repeat that simple affirmation again.
Deep breath into your heart.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
Feeling your heartbeat.
I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
Allowing your hands to gently fall down onto your lap,
Keeping your spine tall,
Heart open.
And noticing what it feels like to be alive.
To be here now.
All your feelings,
All your sensations are valid.
We don't need to fight it.
We don't need to change it.
You don't need to quote unquote feel better.
Our practice today is not about feeling better,
But getting better at feeling.
Allowing the richness,
The fullness,
The spectrum of alive to work through us.
This is our last song.
I'm going to stay quiet and allow you to bask in your aliveness.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
I am here.
I am alive.
I am alive.
I am alive.
What an incredible experience to be alive.
To be a participant on this incredible human adventure.
Let's take a deep breath and bring our practice to an end.
Deep breath in.
Big exhale.
Bravo,
Dear artist.
Bravo,
Dear creator.
I have a feeling this was a more challenging practice.
That was by design.
When we consciously,
Intentionally push our edges,
We grow,
We expand.
We train our systems that we can do difficult things.
For those that are joining us live at the artist morning,
I'm going to share a journaling prompt and put 20 minutes on the clock and allow us to continue this exploration.
And of course,
If you're joining us on a replay,
Perhaps on insight timer,
You can do the same.
Thank you for going on this journey with me.
Thank you for meditating with me.
My name is Darius and I will see you next time.
