Good morning and welcome to the artist morning.
My name is Darius and today's guided meditation is going to be a little different.
It's going to be one part guided meditation,
One part guided visualization.
And the intention is to bring you closer to something that most of us spend a lot of time and energy trying to push ourselves away from.
Today,
If you are open to it,
I'm going to give you an opportunity to spend some time with your ego.
Now for many of us,
Our egos can be our enemies.
They are known to have a lot of judgment,
A lot of criticism,
A lot of boastfulness.
And maybe that's true and maybe you might be surprised what happens when we spend a little bit of quality time this morning in the presence of our egos.
Let's begin our meditation.
If your eyes are open,
I'd like to ask you to close them now.
Wherever you've been so far today,
Whatever you've done,
Wherever you're going after this meditation,
We're going to put all of that on pause.
And the invitation in this moment is for you and all of your parts to arrive here now.
Let's start by connecting with our breath.
Notice if it's shallow or deep,
If it's quiet or maybe it has a sound.
Are you breathing through your nose or your mouth or maybe both?
When you take deeper breaths,
What happens to your heart space?
Does your heart feel the difference?
Does it enjoy a deeper breath?
Maybe it doesn't and that's okay too.
If you're open to it,
I'd like to ask you to see if there is a way for you to sit up a little bit more tall,
Still gentle,
But with a long spine,
With an open heart,
Chin gently pointed straight in front of you.
There's a gentleness to this position,
But there is a readiness,
There is a solidity,
There is a strength to this position as well.
The next part of the meditation,
It is helpful if we can stay in this ready position,
Allowing anything that shows up to know that we are here,
We are present,
We are open,
We are here,
We are here,
We are present,
And we are open.
Take a deep breath here in this ready position,
Breathing in,
Holding at the top,
Allowing your shoulders to come up with you on the inhale,
Squeezing your shoulders,
Holding,
Holding,
And I want you to let it all go and drop your shoulders and if you are open to it in this present state,
In this ready position,
I'd like to invite your ego self to join us and to take a seat directly in front of you.
If your ego has decided to join us today,
I want you to take a moment to notice how old is this ego self?
There is no right or wrong answer.
You can come back to this meditation anytime and maybe the answer will change.
How old is this ego self?
For me,
He is a 21 year old version of Darius.
There is a toughness to him.
There is a sharp edginess to him.
There is an arrogance to him.
Yours might be completely different.
As you look at this ego self,
Begin to notice,
Even though he's only a few inches in front of you,
That there is a distance to him.
There is much of the world that he pushes away.
I want you to make sure you are still in this ready position,
Leaking energy towards or away from this ego self,
Doing the best you can to stay present.
Is there anything you notice about about this version of you sitting in front of you?
To the right and behind,
Maybe 10-15 feet on an angle,
There is a father or a father figure.
To 15 feet on an angle,
There is a mother or a mother figure.
Can you see the impact these two individuals have had on this ego self?
Maybe it's a slight imprint.
Maybe it is a massive imprint.
No need to judge.
Just notice.
If you pay close attention,
You can see behind them,
There is another set.
There is a mother figure and a father figure.
Behind them,
Another set.
Behind them,
Another set.
These triangles angling out,
Imprinting,
Imprinting,
Imprinting,
All the way to this ego self sitting in front of you.
Are you able to see the generations of unconscious imprinting that have done the best they could protect you,
Protect them,
To protect us?
Maybe there is some gratitude for the generations before or for doing the best they could.
Gratitude for everything they've done to get you here,
Now,
And behind the toughness,
Behind the ego,
Behind the judgment,
Critical mindset of this version of you sitting in front of you.
There is something else directly behind this version of you that we call the ego self.
If you pay close attention,
There is a beautiful child version of you,
Maybe five,
Maybe eight years old.
Can you see that version of you?
Beautiful,
Precious child.
Can you see that this version of you,
In all their toughness,
In all their judgment,
In all their imprinting,
Is doing the best he can,
Best she can,
Best they can protect this child self.
The world has a lot to say about our egos.
Would like us to discard this part of us,
To be embarrassed,
To ignore and deny.
You can do that if you like.
The third possible option,
If you're open to it,
Is to bring conditional love here.
Unconditional love here.
I'm going to stay quiet for the rest of this meditation and allow you to explore,
Experience,
And express.
And before our meditation comes to an end,
I'd like to give us one more opportunity to share a little bit of gratitude with this version of us sitting in front of us,
This child self sitting behind them,
And all the generations that fan out to the right and left.
Let's take a deep breath and if you're open to it,
Place one hand on your heart and maybe find a single word.
It could be love,
It could be thank you,
It could be gratitude,
It could be power,
Whatever it is.
And let's let that intention,
That message echo all the way down our family line.
Breathing in,
Letting it go.
You can come back to this meditation anytime and spend some quality time with your peoples.
For now,
Thank you for meditating with me.
For those of you joining us live at the artist morning,
I'm going to put 20 minutes on the clock and allow us to continue the experience by getting our pens and papers out and expressing what's real and honest and available to us in this moment.
If you're catching us on a replay,
Of course you can do the same.
Perhaps you're catching this on insight timer.
Please put some time on your own clock and see what's here.
Thank you once again,
My name is Darius and I'll see you next time.
