Hi,
This is Nora Sophia.
Thank you so much for taking time to meditate with me.
I want you to just get in a relaxed position,
Whether that's sitting or lying down,
And just be in a quality of relaxed awareness.
There's no tension.
You're just being present.
And I just want you to allow all of the sensations,
All the noise around you,
Whether it's noise from the street,
Noise from your body,
Just all the sensations and all your thoughts to simply have permission to come and go.
I want you to be aware of your breath,
To let it stay in just a very natural way without intentionally changing its rate or its depth,
And to just be aware of full breaths.
Today we're going to focus on coming back to center.
Oftentimes life can take us off track.
We have different types of disturbances.
How do we come back within ourself?
How do we witness so that we don't attach?
How do we get to move back to center and then get to experience the present moment throughout the day?
So I want you to come to the center of your chest.
I want you to experience the warmth in the center of your chest as if you were breathing in and out through a set of nostrils that were in the middle there.
And when you breathe in,
You're breathing in air that is so light and so warm.
And when you breathe out,
You're breathing out all the tensions that gather throughout the course of the day.
And I want you to realize that right in the center of the chest is your sanctuary.
It is your place of rest.
It's a place of quietness.
It's solitude.
It's the place that witnesses that is just present.
It's a retreat.
And it's a place you can go into at any time that you want to just feel that peace and quietude.
Learning how to serve others,
We need to first learn how to work with the things that sort of get attached to us.
The things to which we have an attraction or even a distaste for.
So sitting in the middle of your chest and just remaining there,
Just resting there,
I want you to bring to mind some event that might have happened to you today or recently.
Just let yourself go back and remember it.
Maybe it was an event that had some residual excitement or aversion.
Maybe it had some guilt or sadness.
Maybe some agitation,
Anger,
Or frustration.
And I just want you to notice the event and then come back into the center of your chest,
Breathing in and breathing out.
And then we're going to let the event go.
And then once again,
Go back to that event and watch the way in which you change from your harmonious,
Quiet mind.
As you start to bring that event back into reality,
I just want you to notice the way that the event pulls you out of your present center.
I want you to see the way in which you lose the center to this dance of life.
We all do it all the time.
And just keep going back and forth until you've worked with that event enough so that you can think about it without leaving that quiet place in the middle of your being.
So no matter what we say about this event,
Whether it was a wonderful event or an averse event,
We can say,
Yes,
That happened to me,
But that event is not me.
I witnessed the event,
But I am not the event.
And now I want you to just try another situation and let your mind just float over your day from when you woke up until this moment and see which events grab your attention.
Notice what grabs you.
It'll either excite you or it'll give you an aversion,
Maybe some deadness,
Whatever it is that you feel.
Maybe you'll just start to think about it very intensely.
But the minute you find one of those events,
Just stop.
The fact that it is sitting there with all of that power is because we haven't allowed ourselves to fully digest it,
To allow it to pass through us.
So when you find such an event,
Come back to the middle of your chest,
Just breathing in and out,
Find your center.
And from there,
Look at the event again,
Keep floating back and forth out into the event and back to the center until you can stay in that center with the event present just as part of the fabric of life without pull,
Without push.
This is the process of digesting life experiences and bringing them back into the center.
This is the value of moments of meditative quiet at the end of the day when you gather together all the strands and bring them back into the center.
This is harmony.
This is continuity in life from that place in the center.
From the place in the center,
You can see your own comings and goings.
You can witness your own joy and sadness.
You can feel your own hopes and even despair.
You can see it all and yet you'll remain quiet in the midst of it all.
And those events which are particularly dramatic or trying or continuing over a long time or involve pain in the body or fear,
Those are the ones you work with a little more to keep them connected to your center.
And as your center gets stronger and you trust that you have a home inside yourself,
A home you can always go to,
Just by sitting down and taking some breaths and working with the breath until you quiet down,
Coming into the center,
Then you can digest the day's events.
And once you're able to do that,
Then you can even begin to help digest other people's suffering and joy and offer them harmony when they're lost on the roller coaster of life.
The drama of life is wonderful.
It's intense.
It reminds us that we're alive in it.
And yet without harmony,
The space where you're always present quietly,
Clearly,
Only then are you able to be with life,
With love,
With openness,
With safety and invulnerability.
Now,
I want you to just take a few more breaths,
Just a few more deep breaths right into the center of your chest.
And from this place,
When you're ready,
I want you to just emerge remembering that you can always return.
I'm Nora Sophia.
Thank you for meditating with me.
