Okay,
Find yourself on your cushion,
On your couch,
Wherever you want to be for our meditation.
I like to start with three deep breaths,
Breathing in through our nose and out through our mouth.
Go ahead and start to feel the weight of your body,
That familiar tug of gravity keeping you tethered to the earth.
I like to feel my sit bones on my cushion and the weight of my thighs and ankles on the floor.
I'm just starting to let our body relax,
But stay alert as we go into our meditation.
Let's set our grounding cord,
So it's simply an image,
Just a visual of something that connects your body into the earth.
So you could use tree roots or like a waterfall coming off of your sit bones.
Maybe it's simply just a chain or a cord.
And it just comes off of your body and goes down through your floor,
Through the bottom of the house or apartment or the building you're in.
It penetrates deep into the earth.
So now when you exhale,
You're just allowing anything that your body's holding on to energetically,
Physically,
Emotionally.
You're just using that grounding cord as a tool to let you release all of that into Mother Earth.
Mother Earth is so much larger and wiser,
Capable of holding all of our incongruencies,
If she doesn't mind.
So with each exhale,
You're just allowing anything that doesn't belong in your system to move down into Mother Earth.
We're going to create a two-way connection with the earth.
So in your mind's eye,
I just want you to go someplace that you've been in nature,
That if you were there right now,
It would feel deeply nourishing and supportive.
And on your inhales,
You're going to just imagine,
Just you're using your imagination.
There's not really much effort.
It's just an allowing.
You're just going to allow that earth energy,
The energy of that place in nature to come into your body.
And then with your exhales,
You're going to continue to ground off and down anything that doesn't serve.
You can rest and know that that place in nature is deeply nourishing for you.
And as you allow maybe the smells and the scenery and really the pace and the movement of the earth to come into you.
And you're just kind of recalibrating with the heartbeat of the earth.
Earth energy is really steady and slow and grounded.
And we're just inviting in that experience into our body.
It's so easy to move at a fast clip.
I like to imagine the earth energy coming in through my toes and up through my ankles and my legs,
My knees and my thighs.
And just kind of resting in my lower body,
My lower belly.
Maintaining that connection and that tethering to the earth,
Just gently place your attention on your shoulders and your high back.
Just notice your posture and space.
Just bring your awareness into your upper chest,
Your neck and shoulders.
Allowing there to be sort of a natural rise of your energy.
Moving up into the crown of your head.
This is just the top of your head,
Your scalp.
The crown is where we hold our seniority,
Our mastery,
Our unique and precious gifts.
And I invite you to allow your crown,
Your crown chakra,
Which is just an energetic center,
To be open since we're safely in meditation.
And if it feels right and easy for you,
You can allow some sky energy,
Which is really our sense of possibility,
Expansion,
Our information from past lives.
You can allow some sky energy to come in through your crown.
There might be a certain star that's shining brightly that wants to come into your crown,
Giving you permission to be yourself,
To have sovereignty over your spirit and your body in this lifetime.
So it's just an invitation.
Sky energy is like the get up and go.
It's like the caffeine,
Caffeinated energy compared to the earth energy.
So it's nice to have that sparkle,
That stardust,
That cosmic chi.
So if you can connect to that and it feels good,
Just allow that life force energy or cosmic chi,
Father sky energy,
To come in through your crown.
And it just kind of washes over you,
Kind of like a gentle shower.
Comes down through your head,
Down your back,
Down your right arm,
Down your left arm,
Into your torso.
And it can start to mix with the earth energy.
There's countless traditions throughout history who have considered the human body a really special sacred vessel of sky and earth energy.
And so we're just allowing our bodies to be replenished and connected to these two powerful sources that are with us all the time,
But we just have to invite them in.
We just have to want to be connected to something greater and more powerful than ourselves.
This process is called running our energy or running your energy.
And it just means that you are tapping into the energy that's in the external world.
And you're running it through your body for your greatest good,
For the good of your community,
For everyone you come in contact with later today.
Hopefully you feel kind of the combination of the groundedness and then the energized spark from the sky energy.
We're going to sit in silence here together for about 10 minutes.
I invite you to continue to run your energy to see if you can stay connected to the earth energy circuit and the sky shower.
And if you notice mental formations arising,
Strenuous thoughts,
Simply ground them off using your grounding cord.
So you want to stay connected to the earth with the grounding cord.
But anything that's not serving you,
Including mental formations,
They just simply get washed away.
Gently staying in meditation.
Just bring your awareness to your heart chakra,
Which is just the energetic center around your heart.
Transmits and receives information all the time.
We'd like to start with some gratitude for the heart and its tenderness as it navigates our relationships and our children and our community and our colleagues.
Today's focus is on equanimity,
That quality of allowing the world to be as it is.
Equanimity is a heart state,
A heart and mind state of acceptance.
Neutrality.
We're just going to practice a little cultivation around that.
And so I invite you to call into your mind or your awareness situation.
Let's not tackle the most largest situation in your life,
But some little situation,
Maybe an interaction.
Something that perhaps you want there to be some change,
You want it to be different.
Things don't seem fair.
Just wish things weren't the way they were.
Just gently bring that situation to your heart,
To your mind.
And through a lens of equanimity,
We're going to offer that situation this phrase.
All beings are the owners of their own karma,
Regardless of my wishes for them.
All beings are the owners of their own karma,
Regardless of my wishes for them.
We cannot change the way the world is.
We cannot change other people.
We can own our own actions,
Our own karma.
But the rest we have to let go.
And simply allow that situation or that person or that experience that you brought into your heart and mind.
Just gently let that go and ground it down through your grounding cord or just let it kind of float away.
Hopefully there is some more spaciousness,
Some more acceptance of what is.
I'll sit in silence for one more minute and then I'll ring the bell to end our meditation.
