Grounding Into Presence & Love

Please be welcome.

Letting your body feel welcome in your place.

Letting your heart and breath feel welcome in your body.

Letting your life feel welcome in your mind.

And letting your mind feel welcome to kind of run like a river,

Not hold itself together,

Not watch itself,

Not know what it's up to.

And feeling really welcome to tune into your own presence in whatever way you can or works for you.

It could begin with feeling the warmth of your body.

Here is this mysterious community of cells making its own warmth.

Letting the body to sink down into the ground,

Into the earth,

Just slowly,

Like maybe a silk parachute gradually arriving.

And perhaps to gravitate to feel your body more in the lower half of the body,

Somewhere,

Probably the lower belly or lower back,

Seat,

Legs or feet could be good.

But perhaps not so much looking for what to do and how to do it this time.

Giving some time for arrival,

Maybe into a kind of dewiness,

Freshness,

Into a sense of the continuous fabric of life that includes you.

So as we sink into the ground and allow presence to be part of what we're aware of.

And yet we can't really exactly make presence into an object of meditation in the same way that we can be aware of sensations.

So kind of being welcomed into this fabric of life that includes a kind of presence of your own,

Your body and energies and mind and life flows.

And here you are.

But not discontinuous,

Part of a web of life like a wave on a sea.

Really here with this definite shape and temperature,

Atmosphere and inner weather for a while.

Resting into the ground can be like resting into something like an essence or secret of life.

Can be like leaning into being allowed to love what you love or allowed to let your roots reach down for what's nourishing.

Resting into the ground can be like resting into the web of aliveness or sea of aliveness of which you are but apart a wave.

And allowing ourselves to gravitate into feeling the sensations perhaps in the lower belly or the back.

Perhaps including the breath or not,

Perhaps including the sounds or not.

Whatever feels more releasing and alive.

Whatever feels more like permission for ease,

For letting it be.

Resting into the ground with a gravitation into the belly with perhaps an awareness of sounds and breath as all one field.

Resting into the ground is like resting into opening to the inner world.

The life beyond body that's in the body.

The living quality in sounds and hearing that's more than just that one sound.

Resting into the immediacy of experience.

That liquidic,

Uncatchable,

Intense,

Just now sensation,

Sound,

Living.

And resting into that immediacy also means resting towards timelessness through now.

Resting through literal silence to something even more quiet.

Through our literal stillness to something even more still.

So really not worrying about how many moments you're catching or missing,

Letting it flow by.

Trusting your wide mind to let the living sensations and sounds flow by and be intimately received and released in one gesture.

That we don't need to get something from any of these sensations or sounds,

Letting them be.

Not worrying about how distracted you are or aren't.

But if there is some agitation then perhaps resting lower down in the body into the feet or letting the breath come as if lower down into the legs.

But mostly not trying to make it right so that you can feel alright,

But rather feeling what already feels okay even when you're not okay.

And interrupting when you can the habit of worry or tension or feeling not okay with just direct perception of body,

Of sound,

Of color.

Or even specifically of somewhere in the body that feels good.

Or even a memory in the mind that can help you remember feeling good so the body can start to come back to that chemistry.

Coming out of our habit and compulsion to get narrowed down to the negative.

And coming back to what else is also happening now.

Letting the body be heavy as if,

If you like,

You could gradually let each part of your body feel like you're holding a lovely heavy stone.

Or if you find that trying to be still is making you more agitated,

More alarmed,

You can really go into movement with meditation.

Perhaps staying in the same place like the lower belly in the body,

Staying with the contact with the ground and letting your body be heavy.

Whatever is good for you,

For feeling at home on the earth and in your mind and body,

Allowed to be at ease or allowed to be receptive to what would help you find permission to be at ease with whatever is going on.

That just because there's an emotion doesn't mean you have to go for the ride.

Just because there's a lot of thinking doesn't mean you have to be up in your head.

Let it be and gently gather in your lower belly or wherever you feel good together.

Letting the body be heavy as if,

If you like,

You could gradually let each part of your body be at ease with whatever is going on.

Letting the body be at ease with whatever is going on.

And in any session that you wish now or another time,

Together or on your own,

In stillness or walking or doing the dishes or whatever.

There's a whole other way of practicing as well that we can have a little taste of now for whoever wishes.

If you're in a good flow,

Just ignore my voice.

If it wouldn't be disturbing to your meditation,

You could move your arm and hand and place a hand on the chest,

Giving support to the arm,

To the elbow so that can be really relaxed.

Perhaps while staying connected in the same place in the body as before,

Perhaps the lower belly.

Is it possible to get a sense of your whole body and being and lifetime?

That warm smudge of presence here with good intentions and sincerity,

With blind spots,

With gifts,

With a strange and marvelous body,

Like and unlike everyone else's.

Or perhaps sometimes it can be really lovely to imagine as if from the top of the space where you are looking down in your mind's eye at that person that's you and getting a sense of your willingness,

Your tenderness,

And the whole package of you.

Your armor and your breath and your soft spots.

What you love.

What melts your heart.

And just getting a sense of that whole person of yourself and that whole sense of the arc of a lifespan.

And if it's difficult even imagining yourself as a child or imagining someone whom you love and respect,

Who you know loves and respects you,

Or who would love and respect you,

It could be someone you've never met,

That you've just read their books or something like that,

Regarding you with an ennobling twinkle in the eye.

You as you are.

Not any different from how you are,

Exactly as you are.

What would be a sense of a kind of life breeze of a wish for you,

For that person,

Towards fulfillment of this human life,

Towards really wading into the river of aliveness,

To what's important.

And this kind of question could be a worthy question to give a month or a year or an hour to really musing over.

But for now we could just go with a spontaneous or an obvious kind of response for now.

Maybe preferably something that's just come up as if out of nowhere rather than from the head.

A real sense of a wish for peace or ease or freedom or a sense of home or okayness,

Confidence or ease or joy.

And getting a physical sense of that quality or way.

Maybe silky or maybe something substantial and kind of heavy like a wool,

Cozy wool blanket or dewy grass.

A quiet living forest kind of feeling.

Sweet as honey.

Intoxicating as wine.

And as the earth.

As moving as music,

Whatever you might find.

Again for now just a kind of spontaneous best guess.

And the possibility of finding your own way to work with connecting to that sort of blessing or wish of may there be peace or may I be peaceful or just the word peace.

Does your mind work well with having an image as well to resonate with a memory,

To resonate with a word.

And if possible including something kinesthetic,

Some felt sense in the body that comes from your experience of feeling fulfillment or home or loved or loving what it felt like or what it feels like to know you just have buckets of love in you.

And the possibility of using a more traditional kind of phrasing of may I be peaceful to start with.

Or using fewer words or no words.

Whatever works better for you.

And feeling as if you have all the time in the world.

We're just beginning with a little taste today to give you some permission to play with this form of practice if you wish.

And if possible getting a sense of that the quality of that that you resonate with or that feels like you're calling or that you know is important.

That's the juice that you're thirsty for.

That's what makes life precious.

That's what can stay with us no matter what.

The possibility of starting to get a sense of filling the body and the being with that mixture or liquid or fragrance or music.

And whenever it starts to feel as if you're filling towards overflowing you could kind of pause and fill a little more filling the bones filling the corners of the heart and mind corners of the past and the lifespan the relationships and projects filling and filling as if from a spring within within you.

And eventually allowing that to overflow.

Either a sense of radiating like a sun or spilling over like a pool in a stream or a fragrance from a tree or bush.

And just for today you could play with if you like having a sense of filling and letting that fragrance pass through as if through your skin to our world to your world.

Those cushions that air and perhaps just lightly as we come towards a close for today the session together allowing just someone to come to mind and just lightly touching that person in your mind with the same honey or silk or breeze or earthiness or wine whatever it may be.

That person who also maybe has elbows and an out breath and a past blind spots and soft spots and gifts pain and healing.

Just allowing for an instant life to come powerfully through all yourselves and just overflowing slightly or lightly and offering itself to just one person perhaps.

And then we could just let that flow a little bit as far as you like a little bit further or just everywhere throughout the earth beyond the earth may there be peace may all beings be free and awake devoted to the common good.