Guided Meditation: Live Session, 4 September 2022

Let yourself arrive wherever you are right now.

You may be sitting down,

Lying down,

You might be listening to this talk as you're walking,

Taking a walk,

Wherever you are.

You can let your attention drop down out of the thinking mode and just come down into the body.

Now if you're walking,

Just feeling the movement of your body through space,

Feet pressing down on the floor,

On the ground.

Just the weight of gravity pulling you down,

Heaviness,

The different bodily experiences of cool or warmth,

Hardness or softness.

If you're sitting,

Just let sit with your back straight,

Invite your shoulders to relax and you might take a few longer,

Deeper breaths.

Breathing in,

Breathing out,

Nice deep in breath,

Filling the lungs,

Filling the chest and a long slow out breath.

Breathing in,

Calming the body,

Breathing out,

Calming the mind.

Opening an attitude,

A quality of kindness to your experience right now.

Letting the deeper breaths help you settle and arrive,

Just be here now.

Breathing to your experience with kindness,

With care,

This moment without judgment.

If you're experiencing something a little challenging,

Difficult,

Maybe it's been a difficult day so far or you've woken up and feeling a little bit,

As they say,

Got out of the wrong side of the bed or just feeling something a bit out of sorts,

You might put your hand on your heart,

Maybe the other hand on your belly and just wish yourself well.

Feel the weight and the pressure,

The warmth of your hand or hands on your belly,

On your chest.

Just caring about this life,

This being that you know better than anyone in the world,

Yourself.

As Mary Oliver says at the beginning of her poem,

The Wild Geese,

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

So let the soft animal of your body just be present here with kindness,

Taking care of yourself.

You might find it helpful to consciously invite a smile to your face.

The smile sends a message to our brain,

To our nervous system,

That we can be at ease,

That we don't have to be vigilant or hyper-vigilant.

We can just,

We can rest in being here.

So if it's helpful to think of a loved one or a dear friend,

Somebody or a pet,

Somebody who,

Some being or some,

Somebody that makes you feel happy or joyful,

Taking in their image and just let yourself be here,

Smiling,

Letting the smile help you relax and settle.

If that's helpful for you.

And the invitation is to meet ourselves where we are,

Not to cover anything over or deny our experience,

But simply to open to what's here,

To give space to what we're experienced,

Just to allow it to come and to go in its own time,

Whatever's here.

So if there's some sadness here,

From wherever it might be coming from,

Rather than getting caught up in the story of why you might be sad,

You know,

And what somebody may have done or what you should have done or could have done or all of these things,

Let those go with kindness and just open to how this emotion feels,

Where you feel it in your body,

Maybe around your heart or maybe some teariness around your eyes and allow what's here to be here.

Just let it come,

Let it be,

Let it go.

So that sadness doesn't have to be a problem,

We don't have to keep it away because,

You know,

We might think it might,

Will last forever,

But just when we make room for it,

It is,

As Rumi speaks about,

You know,

Like a guest coming to visit for a while.

And then when the guest has stayed as long as it wants to or needs to,

Then it goes.

We don't have to try and grab it by the neck and take it to the door and put it outside,

Because if we do,

What's pretty guaranteed is it will find its way in through the back door or through the window,

Through the roof.

So just allowing what happens when you allow your experience to be just as it is right now,

Nothing needing to change,

But just welcoming,

Welcoming the guests,

Welcoming your experience.

As Dorothy Hunt says,

Peace is this moment without judgment,

This moment in the heart space where everything that is,

Is welcome.

So you might scan your body,

Just briefly moving attention down the body and up the body and just notice what's calling for attention.

The body gives us really helpful information.

If we're stressed,

For example,

Or worried,

You know,

We'll probably notice the thoughts in our mind,

But perhaps even,

You know,

More basic are the bodily feelings.

Typically our belly,

Our stomach muscles will contract,

We'll get tighter,

The muscles generally and the torso will tense up and our breathing will tend to get shorter.

So just the more we can notice that and just allow what's here,

Allow those feelings rather than,

You know,

Having them locked in that tension,

Just allow them to breathe,

Open the space around them,

Let them come and go.

Let the sensations and feelings in the body come and go.

Let the emotion pass through,

Just pass through us.

Yes,

They tend to leave a lot faster when you welcome them in.

As Carl Jung said,

What you resist persists.

And he also said what you don't bring to consciousness comes to you as fate.

What you don't bring to consciousness comes to us as fate.

We don't bring it into awareness,

It's acting and affecting us,

But in unconscious ways,

You know,

And that often in painful ways.

So just making space for what is here right now.

And it may be helpful to just let your attention rest on your breathing as a way of just letting yourself be here now,

Be present.

Just meeting your experience with kindness,

With care.

And when the mind goes off into thought,

As it will,

Sometimes it's quite a lot,

Sometimes it's more occasional.

However it is,

See if you can just invite it,

Invite the attention back,

Let the thought go.

Invite your attention back to the breath and the body.

Just coming back,

Choosing to turn your attention to your experience right now rather than being caught up in the stories of the mind,

You know,

And invite you,

You know,

If you feel like you have a lot to say in the comments,

For the meditation,

Just let your attention go inward to your own experience.

Lots of time afterwards to share,

To share how,

You know,

What's been happening for you.

This moment just as it is,

This moment without judgment.

And just feeling yourself here with your experience,

But also here with almost 600 of us here today,

All over the world,

Practicing together,

Breathing together.

It's with an intention of waking up,

Of living more kindly,

More wisely in the world.

Feel the connection with everyone here,

All these beings who like you want to be happy,

Want to be free of suffering,

Want to live with greater ease and well-being,

Freedom.

Just in these last couple of minutes,

Breathing,

Breathing in,

Wish yourself well,

Whatever words or without words,

Just a wish for yourself.

May I be happy,

May I be safe,

May I be kind to myself,

Whatever it is for you,

Just to wish yourself well.

And as you breathe out,

Just wish everyone here well.

May you be happy,

May you be safe,

Free from suffering.

Everyone may you experience joy in your life,

Peace in your life.

So this circle,

This cycle of the breath,

Wishing yourself well,

Wishing everyone here well,

And broadening it out,

If you'd like,

To others and out to all beings everywhere in the world,

Wishing them well,

Cultivating a heart that wishes well to everyone and not just everyone but all experiences,

You know,

Wishing well,

Befriending,

Befriending your experience,

Befriending everyone and befriending all experience,

You know,

The difficult ones,

The conflicts,

Bringing an attitude of befriending to this conflict or this difficulty.

I shared this poem before,

Certainly at the beginning of the pandemic,

It's by Danusha Lameris who is or was the poet laureate of Santa Cruz County,

California,

Her book,

Bonfire Opera,

I don't know if it's out or coming out,

This is Small Kindnesses,

It was written before the pandemic but kind of has echoes.

She says,

I've been thinking about the way when you walk down a crowded aisle,

People pull in their legs to let you by,

Or how strangers still say,

Bless you,

When someone sneezes,

A leftover from the bubonic plague.

Don't die,

We are saying.

And sometimes when you spill lemons from your grocery bag,

Someone else will help you pick them up.

Mostly we don't want to harm each other,

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot and to say thank you to the person handing it,

To smile at them and for them to smile back,

For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder and for the driver in the red pickup truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other.

Now,

So far from tribe and fire,

Only these brief moments of exchange.

What if they are the true dwelling of the holy,

These fleeting temples we make together when we say,

Here,

Have my seat,

Go ahead,

You first,

I like your hat.