Where's the base of your heart?
Take a moment to feel into your heart.
Maybe put your hand over it,
Maybe both hands,
With one palm below your heart,
Near your sternum.
Close your eyes if that feels safe.
The heart is the seat of our emotions.
Maybe all you can feel right now are difficult emotions.
Maybe you can't feel anything.
Or maybe you can sense the immense capacity of your heart to feel.
We're not going into any of the stories that our emotions have to tell right now.
What we're going to do is a meditation practice that's meant to locate the base of the heart,
The limitless capacity for a spacious now experience of our inner world.
The base of the heart lies behind the story and underneath the pressure to define or explain ourselves.
We can invite ourselves to move into that place and observe from a safe and impartial distance the constantly moving and changing nature of our emotional world.
That's the invitation that this meditation is designed to invoke.
One of the inspirations for this practice is Tara Brach's spacious awareness meditations.
I suggest you check her out if you haven't already.
So find a comfortable place to sit or lie down.
You can close your eyes or soften your gaze and keep them open.
Begin by noticing the physical sensations of breathing.
Where is breathing happening?
Is it in your sternum and ribs,
Expanding with each inhale?
Or the way your clothing moves to adjust to the breathing body?
Just be with the breath be with the breath,
Not fixing or changing or anticipating,
Just watching.
Next,
Allow your awareness to expand to all four corners of the room you're in.
See if you can stretch your awareness to fit the entire room.
Notice what if any changes there are in the body and the brain.
Hearing and other senses can also expand to include the noises in and outside the room and most distant sound.
Next,
Expand your awareness.
Start with the top of your head and allow your imagination to push the ceiling and roof,
Move out into the sky above and into the clouds,
Expanding awareness outside our atmosphere and into space,
Reaching beyond the most distant star.
Do the same with the ground beneath you.
Allow your awareness to expand to open up and rock and material to the center of the earth and out the other side into space and beyond the most distant star.
Now allow the same awareness to expand on either side of you to the right and the left,
Moving beyond the walls that surround you through the buildings of your neighborhood and city and across the countryside,
Across the land,
Over the ocean,
Then out into the furthest reaches of our atmosphere and out into space beyond the most distant star.
And finally,
The space in front and behind you.
Expand your spacious awareness through the walls and out into the buildings beyond through homes,
Buildings,
Open spaces,
Open spaces,
Out into farmland and over rivers and the ocean,
Through the limits of our atmosphere and out into space past the most distant star.
Sit with your spaciousness now.
Now notice the changes in your breathing,
In your body,
Notice the phenomenon of thinking as it arises,
Or hearing.
Notice how thinking can also become spacious,
How thoughts themselves can come apart like mist or clouds in the sky and move along currents of air,
Spreading out in the vast blue sky until they disappear.
Now carefully,
With sacred attention,
Transfer this feeling of spaciousness and vast awareness slowly into your heart.
Share the cool,
Open,
Liberated feelings of your expanded awareness with the internal space of your heart and allow the space in your heart to grow,
To expand around any emotions,
Feelings,
Or stories you may find yourself getting snagged on as you explore the contours of your heart space.
Stay with this transition,
Moving the outside spaciousness into your heart space.
And if the heart begins to feel closed or you get distracted by some thought,
That's okay,
You haven't lost it.
The space is still available to you if you bring your focus again to the expansive awareness around you and then gently glide that awareness into your heart.
When you investigate this open,
Spacious heart space,
You'll find a seat,
A base in this expanded heart.
Its precise location and texture is yours alone.
Know it when you find it.
Expand your internal awareness to search out the base of your heart.
Take your time,
Take your time.
Stay alert to sensations of openness and the gentle pull of stillness that is waiting for you in a particular place at the base of your heart.
Notice what sensations are associated with discovering the base of your heart.
How does it feel there?
What are the qualities of attention that you bring to this space?
Sit for a while with this inside and outside spaciousness,
Allowing yourself to modulate between them.
Allow thoughts to come and go,
Dissipating like vapor on air currents.
Allow feelings to come and go,
Watching them move through your open heart space as you anchor yourself at the base.
Take a few minutes in this expanded awareness.
When you're ready,
Open your eyes and move slowly for the rest of your day or evening.
Thank you for meditating with me.
