So today we're doing a meditation about expanding into multiple levels of consciousness.
So why do we want to do this?
Why is this valuable?
And today the answer was to feel whole and to actually feel as great,
As big,
As expansive as we actually are.
We often become very focused in a very small aspect of our actual potential as humans.
You know,
They say that human beings maybe access 10% of their mental capacities or their human capacities.
And it's very easy,
Again,
Even when we talk about the work ethic and how we just get so focused on working,
We really never take the time to expand into what it is to be human.
Because by the time we're finished work,
We're tired.
And we don't even have the mental energy or even maybe the spiritual energy to kind of sit and expand into other aspects of who we are.
The philosopher Plato talked of an allegory of the cave,
And I'm sure many of you have heard of this.
But the way the story goes is there's a cave and there are all these people chained and they're staring at a wall.
And behind them is a fire.
The fire is really bright.
And if they turn to look at the fire,
It's too bright,
So they don't look at it.
They stare at the wall.
Then there's puppets behind a low wall,
And the puppets are above the wall.
The people are in front of that low wall staring at the puppet show in front of them.
And they're staring at the wall,
And they've been there since birth.
And they believe that what they see on the wall is reality,
These shadows of what's going on behind them.
And they stay fixated,
And they get stuck.
And they don't understand that they're in a cave.
They've never seen sunlight.
They've never expanded into who they really are as humans,
Because they're focused on the puppet show on the wall.
In so many ways,
This can be us.
It can be from external influences,
Keeping us focused on the wall.
But we can do it ourselves also.
We can have mental stories that replay.
And they're exactly the same as staring at that wall,
Watching these stories replay over and over and over again.
We can have emotional things that have happened to us in the past that have then created a story.
And as we replay the story,
We re-feel all the emotions which make the puppet show feel very real,
Even though we're actually replaying the past.
And when we get so focused,
And we all do this,
When we get so focused on this mental story that is projecting on the wall in front of us,
We start to believe that that's who we are.
And it's not even close to who we are.
We are so much greater,
Every single one of us,
No matter what we've experienced,
No matter what trauma,
No matter what gifts,
No matter what has happened in our life,
We are so much greater.
This is one of the beautiful things about meditation of all kinds,
That we close our eyes and for a time,
The fire in the cave goes out,
The puppet show ends,
And we get to explore our true reality,
Who we really are in all of our expansiveness.
And this is really the goal,
And then bit by bit,
We start to realize that when that fire comes back on and the puppet show starts,
We have that ability to step back and say,
Wait a minute,
There's more than just this.
This maybe have been true at one time,
But I wonder what's outside the cave.
And we start to simply start to explore beyond it,
And eventually the cave just disappears,
And there is no show.
All right,
Are you ready?
So we're going to do a few movement practices first.
Historically,
When we meditated,
This was often the use of many yoga movement and posture in asana,
Was to actually release the tension out of the body so that we could sit still and go inward and not be distracted by whatever was trapped in our bodies,
Emotionally,
Physically.
So let's sit nice and tall,
Closing our eyes and allowing ourselves to breathe deeply with every breath,
Expanding the belly as we inhale,
Contracting as we exhale,
And allowing yourself to completely come into this moment,
Allowing that beautiful Buddhist mantra,
Present moment,
Only moment.
Just allowing your breath to bring all of your focus into your body.
If thoughts come in,
It's okay,
Just let them float by.
The beautiful Taoist teacher that used to say,
It's okay if thoughts come in,
Just don't serve them tea.
Let your chin fall down to your chest and slowly roll your head to one side to one shoulder and let it roll to the other shoulder.
Nice and slowly feeling every ligament of the neck and shoulders.
They say that the meridians that run through the liver go through the shoulders.
So when we breathe deeply and simply move our head in this way,
We're clearing any stored emotions in the liver,
In the body.
Just breathe deeply.
Bring our head up to center and then turn your head to look over your right shoulder and then turn your head to look over your left shoulder.
Take a deep breath in with your head over your left.
Exhale as you look over your right shoulder.
Breathing through the nose,
Again nice and slowly allowing all of your consciousness to come into the body.
Bring your head to center,
Take a deep breath in and exhale and then bring your navel in a circle around your pelvis.
They call this Sufi grind or Sufi circles.
Even your upper body is like a mortar and pestle moving around your pelvic girdle.
We're just really drawing a circle with your navel.
Inhaling as you go around the front,
Exhaling as you go around the back.
Our eyes are closed,
Really focusing on your spine,
Feeling it articulate around the front,
Around the back,
Opening up the area between your shoulder blades as you go around the back,
Bringing your shoulder blades together as you come around the front.
Being aware of your legs,
Your feet,
Your knees,
The skin on your face,
All aspects of your body.
Let's roll the other direction,
Remembering to breathe,
Inhaling around the front,
Exhaling around the back.
Coming to center,
Taking a deep breath in,
Exhale,
Bending your right elbow and placing it on the floor beside you,
Stretching your left hand over your head into a nice side stretch.
Inhale up to center,
Left elbow onto the ground,
Stretching your right arm over to the left and exhaling.
Coming center,
Exhaling side at your own pace,
Just stretching out the side body.
Coming to center,
Taking a deep breath in,
Exhaling.
Your next inhale,
Arching the spine forward,
Bringing your shoulder blades together,
Pressing your chest forward,
Exhaling,
Rounding the back back.
Bring your shoulder blades apart,
Inhaling forward,
Exhaling back.
Nice and slowly,
Just releasing anything that's stored in the spine,
In the shoulders,
In the pelvis.
And allowing yourself to become aware of this physical body,
This incredible body that has brought us through so many things in our life,
That's experienced so much,
That's healed from so many things,
Even the smallest scratch,
The smallest scrape,
Magically healed.
Let's come to center,
Take a deep breath in,
Exhale and stretch out anything else that just needs to be stretched before we sit still.
Open and close your fingers,
Stretch out your face a little,
And then come sitting nice and quietly.
Feeling the breath moving through our body,
Expanding the belly as we inhale,
Contracting as we exhale,
Relaxing our shoulders,
Letting our chin tuck in just a little bit to straighten the spine.
On your next inhale,
Inhaling,
Expanding the belly,
Expanding your ribs in the front,
Side,
Back.
Gently releasing on the exhale,
Again inhaling,
Expanding the belly,
The ribs in the front,
Sides,
Back.
And upper chest.
And connecting with this beautiful pranic body,
This body that is constantly dancing with our physical body,
With every breath bringing in new oxygen,
New thought,
New potential,
Exhaling,
Cleansing,
Releasing.
You don't even have to think about it,
The body naturally does this for us.
And we're going to move into the emotional body.
And I want us to feel all the possibilities.
Imagine your emotional body is a circle,
And around the edge of the circle is all the emotions that are possible.
Happy,
Sad,
Angry,
Elated,
Still,
Content,
Furious,
All the emotions.
And imagine yourself in this quiet space,
Almost swimming around through all these emotions.
All the possible experiences of being,
Of feeling human.
Just allow yourself to go into all of them.
Feel your potential for sadness,
And then feel your potential for happiness.
Feel your potential for quiet,
Stillness.
Feel your potential for elation and excitement.
And as we breathe,
Really allowing all of these emotions to flow through our body,
And allowing them to always be flowing.
Emotions are often seen as being fluid.
It's almost like the passion of being alive,
Constantly flowing through our body,
Enlivening our organs,
Our cells,
Our thoughts.
The beautiful part of being human,
Feeling everything.
And then we move into the mental bodies.
First,
We look at the positive mind,
The mind that wants to do things,
That gets excited,
That says,
Let's have something great for dinner.
Let's make love.
Let's write a book.
Let's build a house.
Let's do something great.
And feel your potential for that positive mind.
And even if you've never explored it,
Explore it now.
Even just the feeling of that excitement of stepping forward into something new.
This is our potential.
And then let's flow into our negative mind,
Which isn't bad,
But it's our cautious,
Wise mind that says,
Hmm,
Do we need that?
Is this important?
Are we repeating a pattern?
Do we need to look deeper?
What's going on here?
And explore that deeper part of you that notices things,
That feels your emotions,
That's aware of perhaps even what your soul is here to do.
And then feel the beautiful interplay between the positive and negative minds,
Like they're friends talking to each other,
Saying,
Hey,
I've got this great idea.
Oh,
Have you considered this?
Yes.
Let's look at this.
And they talk to each other like wonderful friends.
And in the middle,
We find our path between their conversation and we step forward.
And then imagine our third mental body,
The neutral mind,
This wonderful aspect of who we are,
That we also call our witness mind,
That just observes.
It doesn't see right or wrong.
It's completely neutral,
Just observing the world around us and observing ourself.
You know,
If there are times that our positive,
Negative mind aren't getting along so well.
Our neutral mind says,
Hmm,
I see what's happening here.
And then from that beautiful neutrality,
A solution appears,
Something new to add to the collection.
And from that witness mind,
I want us to now again experience those emotions,
But let's rise up higher,
Above ourself,
Above our crown chakra,
Bring that neutral mind to observe ourself and then even a little higher to observe more people,
People in our lives,
People we love,
And then rise up even higher above the earth.
And from this neutral mind,
Experiencing all the emotions that are out there,
From this beautiful still point within,
With every inhale feeling all these emotions,
With every exhale completely releasing them back into the cosmos.
And as we feel all of these emotions of the world and releasing them,
We come into a beautiful neutrality,
A beautiful space where we're not empty.
We feel all things.
But because we feel all things,
Imagine that beautiful circle we had,
But now that circle is greater,
It's above the earth.
When we feel this beautiful circle,
We come into the center of the circle and we feel this stillness within it all.
And let's bring that great circle into our body,
Let that circle sort of come down like a cylinder over our being and allow ourselves to expand energetically.
Allow all of these beautiful feelings to color us in,
Almost imagining yourself becoming like technicolor,
The rainbow of all that's possible in being human.
Starting to breathe,
Expanding with every inhale,
Releasing with every exhale,
Just feeling your beautiful aura pulsing with this breath and this beautiful technicolor experience of being human.
And allowing that to just flow through our body effortlessly,
As easily as we breathe.
Again,
Let's travel up the spine,
Above the head.
We're going to find our beautiful telepathic self.
We're going to find that part of us that knows everything.
Visualize that cosmic self coming through our third eye,
The point between our eyebrows,
And feel that single pointed thought.
There is no judgment here.
There's no good,
There's no bad.
There's just this cosmic knowing.
And it isn't something that we understand with our minds.
We go beyond it,
We go above our head,
Above into the eighth,
Ninth chakras.
And we just know things.
And maybe you can feel it with your body,
You can feel it with your heart,
But feel this beautiful single pointedness.
And as we're sitting,
Allow your eyes to roll up to that third eye and focus there.
And imagine that your two eyes focused on your third eye is looking out into the world through this very different vision.
And with no thought,
Just looking out,
Just like if you were in a new land and you were simply looking around you,
Absorbing what you see,
Not fully comprehending it,
But it was all good.
And then let's go up through the crown of our head,
Maybe about a foot above the crown,
And feel this beautiful expansiveness that is also us,
Our infinite selves.
Experience this beautiful oneness with all that is.
There is no time,
There is no space.
Just feel love in your heart.
Feel with every breath,
Inhaling love into this single oneness that we are.
Feel yourself floating in love and warmth.
It's like this beautiful space where we know all,
We feel all,
And we just effortlessly float there.
Allow this feeling to gently come into your body,
Into every cell with every breath,
And feel this lightness and this expansiveness.
Gently move into every cell of your body,
Feel it come into your skin,
Into your muscles,
Into your organs,
Into your skeleton,
Into your mind,
Into your memories,
Into your thoughts.
Feel this beautiful openness in your body.
And I want you to imagine going for a walk down a quiet street,
Beautiful trees along the side,
The sky is blue.
You're wandering along with this beautiful infinite self,
Permeating your whole body,
Your mind.
Breathing deeply,
Smelling the air,
Hearing the birds,
Feeling the sun on your face.
Allowing your mind's eye to see whatever beauty you love,
Whatever you would love to see on this walk.
Feel the slowness of your gait,
Feeling your feet touch the earth,
Just breathing deeply.
And finding a lovely little spot,
Maybe in a little grassy area,
Just come sitting in that spot,
In a beautiful yogic posture,
Crown of the head to the sky,
Straight spine.
Breathing deeply.
And allowing whatever you feel right now to be real.
Let it flow through your whole body.
So we're going to come back,
We'll take a deep breath in together.
And exhale,
Take a deep breath in together.
And exhale.
Another deep breath in together.
And exhale.
Slowly open your eyes.
Thank you so much.
And we'll see you soon.
