So I'm going to touch on this theme of letting go and creating space because that's another way to talk about letting go from a few different angles today in our practice and I that way I hope that it will serve each of you in its own way and it definitely hopefully will address just this innate human condition that we all have.
So just taking a few moments to come inside your breath,
Your body,
Your awareness,
Such a gift to give yourself.
We can often approach our practice like okay I'm going to work with my mind now or I'm going to work with my emotions,
I'm going to get somewhere,
I'm going to be more spiritual or whatever but see what it feels like to just come into the space of your inner body and give yourself the gifts of silence,
Space,
And stillness.
They're already inherently there.
We can gift the experience of them more and more to ourself by just turning our awareness to that presence.
See if you can find the silence,
The space,
And the stillness inside your body or perhaps underneath you or around you.
It's inside whatever you're thinking,
Whatever you're feeling,
Whatever you're noticing,
It's inside everything.
Dropping your grounding cord,
Connecting with the earth,
Giving yourself access to even more stability and support.
And as that grounding cord is vibrantly connected and you're feeling gravity and you're feeling breath,
You know that you are arriving in present time and that you are safe in this moment.
And let's start with a fabulous letting go practice that really ideally should be done at least once a day which is checking on your energetic hygiene.
How are you?
What's in your field?
What's in your awareness?
How is your body holding itself?
And are you tracking or managing anything that's not yours?
And I invite you to trust your intuition.
Maybe a person in your life appears that's just like a little too close in or maybe is a current event that's just kind of swirling around you or some regret from the past that's still pulling on you.
Just get curious what your body shows you when you start to do an inventory of how you are,
Where you are,
What's around you.
You don't have to judge it,
Judge yourself for having it,
Just notice.
And I invite you to offer this prayer in every cell of your body.
I consciously release any and all energy that does not belong to me or serve my journey.
I bless it and I let it go in full consciousness.
Just feel your system releasing,
Detoxifying,
Letting go.
Then you can also say,
I consciously retrieve any and all of my life force from any object,
Event,
Person,
Or time where it might be tethered.
Blessed and purified all of my life force in my breathing body in this moment.
Breathing your life force in and back and down and just once again checking your space.
Is there anything else that needs to be let go of?
Anything else pulling on you or that you're pulling on?
Can you just let it go?
Open your yourself up.
Let this release.
Let it move through.
So our object of meditation today that I would love to invoke for you is that what you're going to continue to bring yourself back to is your open awareness.
This very still,
Silent,
Spacious presence inside of you that's always here,
That's always aware.
It's like the ocean of you that does not get caught in any wave.
It's deep and wide and spacious and at its core it's very still,
Very dynamic.
Feel your your body.
Feel your spine.
Okay and from this place what I would like to invite you to do is think of a situation or a person in your life that's felt challenging.
Just call that forward and just start to notice how your body feels or how your energy feels or your emotions start to pick up as you imagine this person being in front of you or this situation being around you.
Just notice without judgment what starts to happen in your body or your mind.
Allow it to be there.
You don't have to pick your most triggering thing.
You could pick something kind of in the middle.
It's up to you.
Probably best to start with something.
It's not a 10 out of 10.
I want you to really notice just what happens in your body.
Does your throat get tight?
Does your energy get shaky?
Do you feel heavy?
Just get curious what happens when I relate with this thing.
Often you might notice it kind of pulls you forward.
Like we had our energy retreat at least pretty far back and down and it's like it just starts to pull you forward.
That may or may not happen but just see what you notice.
And whatever's kicking up in your nervous system,
See if you can just keep noticing and loving it with your awareness.
If you can stay connected to your awareness,
You can feel anything safely.
You can relate to anything safely.
It gives you space.
It gives you capacity because it immediately reminds you that this thing is not all that you are and it's not all that's happening right now.
So what I invite you to do is it's kind of like solidify this event or this person.
Really see it in front of you and notice what often happens is like we get kind of collapsed into that experience.
It's like a wave that we get caught in.
Like we're relating to this person let's say.
This whole cascade of feelings and emotions and experience starts to happen and it's like we're caught in their wave.
What I invite you to do right now is we're not pushing it away or anything like that or dissociating.
We're just giving ourselves some space.
It's like there's space around this person.
There's space around this event.
There's room for you.
There's room to move.
There's room for freedom.
There's room for choice.
There's room for power and presence.
Just see what comes when you just put space around whatever this thing is and you stay in your awareness.
Notice what changes in your body when you do that.
So there's still that person or that situation there but in the space that you're creating there's room for you to stay with your own experience,
To feel what you feel,
But to also let things move and to stay connected to your own wisdom and your own compassion,
Especially for yourself.
It's when we collapse into something or Velcro ourself to it that it can take us for a ride.
We get lost in it.
We believe that it defines us.
Just keep opening yourself up so that you see the space around the thing and you might still have a lot of feelings but there's room to feel and room for that feeling to move and change and ideally to find its freedom and let go.
If you get lost in thought just come back to your body.
Once you feel stabilized perhaps conjure up that person or that event again and just keep a portion of your awareness connected to your still,
Spacious,
Silent inner center as you relate to them or to it.
An opportunity in this practice is that you start to realize that even though this situation,
This person is here and it's impacting you,
You can also be okay.
There's room for you to stay connected to yourself and you don't need to lose your sovereignty or your inner connection.
And perhaps you can open into the invitation of what you could let go of that's tethering you to this person,
This situation in a way that doesn't serve or isn't working.
One of my teachers in Nepal was talking about when something's hooking us,
Usually there's a hook inside of us that that hook connects to.
There's something in us that is velcroed or tethered or available for that person or situation to hook.
And he said instead of being a hook,
Be an egg.
You can't hook an egg.
And so in a way what I'm inviting is this idea of like you're creating so much space and you're so self-connected that there's this space that just makes you like an egg.
There's no hook available anymore.
And it's not that you're pushing it away or you're dissociating.
It's just you're so self-contained,
So self-connected that you're not available to be hooked.
You're present with yourself,
With what's happening,
But you're not hooked.
You're not collapsing into the experience.
We do that by staying connected to our awareness,
Staying in our center,
And remembering that there's always space in and around everything.
This practice can give you access to a powerful,
Powerful truth and knowing that you can be okay no matter what.
In the midst of great challenge,
Being attacked,
Belittled,
Disparaged,
All the things that can happen,
You can be okay.
A part of you will always be well inside.
And staying in connection with your awareness allows you to be able to feel or relate to anything safely.
You can relax.
Just relax and be in your breath.
Check your energetic hygiene again.
Just notice how you are now.
And if you cleared some of your space today,
See if you can fill it back up with you,
Your essence,
Your light,
Your awareness.
When you're ready,
We'll open our eyes and come into our shared space.
But I invite you,
As always,
To stay connected to that spacious inner core that we've been working with today,
Even as you engage back with the world.
