Hi and welcome to The Daily Insight.
My name is Hugh Byrne and I'm a meditation teacher here on Insight Timer.
This meditation is a meditation on poetry and mindfulness.
I believe poetry can help us break through the stories and thoughts that often fill our minds and can help us drop more fully into the here and now.
A well-crafted poem can also help us come into stillness and deepen contemplation.
So begin by taking some moments to relax and arrive.
Letting your attention come into your body.
Feeling the contact with your seat,
Whatever's beneath you.
Your feet with the floor,
Your hands in your lap or on your knees.
Feeling the sensations of your body.
Letting your attention drop down out of the thinking mode.
Down into the body.
Could let your eyes gently close if that's comfortable or keep them open with a soft,
Unfocused gaze.
You might find it helpful to take a few longer,
Deeper breaths.
Nice full,
Deep in-breath.
Filling the lungs,
Filling the chest and releasing.
Letting go,
Relaxing on the out-breath.
Inviting a calming of the body as you breathe in.
Calming of the mind as you breathe out.
And you could invite a smile or a half-smile to your face.
Just activating the muscles at the corners of your eyes and the corners of your mouth.
The smile sends a message to our brain and to our nervous system that we can be at ease,
That we can relax.
We don't have to be vigilant.
If it's helpful you could think of a loved one or a dear friend,
Child,
A baby or a pet.
Someone,
Something that makes you feel happy or joyful.
Letting the smile come down into your heart.
Letting the smile be an expression of how you want to meet whatever's coming up in your experience.
See if you can meet it with the expression,
The attitude of a smile.
This poem,
Clearing by Martha Posslethwait,
Invites us to step out of doing and into silence and stillness.
Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose.
Instead,
Create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently until the song that is yours alone to sing falls into your open,
Cupped hands and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worthy of rescue.
In pausing and taking some moments for stillness and for coming home to ourselves,
We're creating a space,
A clearing in the busyness,
The dense forest of our lives.
And in the silence and the stillness,
Insight and clarity can come up that may not be so available in the hustle and bustle of our lives.
So sitting comfortably,
Aware of the sensations of your body and meeting whatever comes up,
Sensations,
Feelings,
Sounds,
Thoughts,
With acceptance and with kindness,
Without judging yourself,
Without holding on to anything or trying to push anything away.
And if it's helpful,
You could let your attention rest on your breathing without controlling the breath or changing it.
And let the breath be your home base where you rest your attention and return when the mind moves into thinking,
Into planning,
Remembering,
Daydreaming,
Returning kindly,
Gently to the breath.
In breath,
Out breath.
Here's a poem by the 13th century Sufi poet Jalaluddin Rumi.
It's all to talk about.
Ideas,
Language,
Even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense.
Listening to whatever is present for you right now,
Whatever you're experiencing,
Making space for this.
Feelings,
Sounds,
Emotions,
Thoughts,
Allowing them all to come and go.
Letting it come.
Letting it be.
Letting it go.
And if it's helpful,
Just letting your attention rest on your breath.
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
And coming back when the mind moves into thought.
Beginning again in any moment.
This breath.
This feeling.
This moment.
This Japanese death poem is by Kozan Ichikyo,
A 14th century Zen monk.
Empty handed I enter the world.
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming,
My going.
Two simple happenings that got entangled.
This moment just as it is.
In breath,
Out breath.
Finishing with this poem by Wendell Berry,
The Piece of Wild Things.
When despair for the world grows in me,
And I wake in the night at the least sound,
In fear of my life,
What my life and my children's lives may be.
I go and lie down where the wood rake rests in his beauty on the water,
And the great heron feeds.
I come into the piece of wild things,
Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water,
And feel above me the day blind stars waiting with their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
And am free.
Thank you for watching!
