This is the nine friends meditation.
If you haven't already,
Go ahead and find a comfortable meditative position.
This meditation can be done sitting,
Lying down,
Or standing.
The structure of the meditation is that we're going to touch nine friends in order,
And I'm going to guide you every step of the way,
Giving you some pointers and some guidance as we go.
We'll start with the first friend,
Which is the posture.
Sense your posture.
Sense your posture.
Take your time.
Take your time.
Feel and notice your posture.
Sense your posture.
Feel free to make gentle adjustments.
Take your time.
Sense your posture.
Feel and notice your posture.
Take your time.
Feel free to make gentle adjustments.
We'll transition now to friend number two,
Which is the pulse.
Sense your pulse.
Sense your pulse.
Take your time.
Feel and notice your pulse.
Notice the sensations of the pulse.
Notice the rhythm of the pulse.
Sense your pulse.
Sense your pulse.
Take your time.
Feel and notice the pulse.
Prepare now to transition to friend number three,
Which is the breath.
Sense your breath.
Sense your breath.
Take your time.
Feel and notice your breath.
You might notice the sensations of the breath.
You might notice the rhythm of the breath in time.
Sense your breath.
Sense your breath.
Feel free to make gentle adjustments.
Does the breath feel stuck or shallow or erratic?
You can take your time.
Sense your breath.
As we prepare now to transition to friend number four,
The body.
Sense your body.
Sense your body.
Take your time.
Feel and notice the body.
Notice the body.
Notice the body generally as a whole.
And notice particular parts and areas of the body.
Sense your body.
Sense your body.
And take your time.
If any part of the body is uncomfortable,
Feel free to make gentle adjustments.
And take your time.
And sense your body.
Sense your body.
Prepare now to transition to friend number five,
The smile.
I invite you now to let a smile come to your face.
And smile naturally.
Smile comfortably.
Even the faintest smile will do.
It can be a smile that's imperceptible to anyone else other than yourself.
The slightest little curl of the lips,
That's plenty.
Let that smile come to your face.
And sense your smile.
Sense your smile.
And take your time.
Feel and notice your smile.
And feel free to make gentle adjustments to your smile.
Smile comfortably.
Smile naturally.
Even the faintest smile will do.
And sense your smile.
Sense your smile.
And take your time.
As we prepare now to transition to friend number six.
And this is friendship.
I'm going to invite you now to connect to a sense of friendship within yourself.
If you can't sense that,
That's okay.
I'm going to give you some tips and guidance for cultivating that sense within yourself.
When we try to sense friendship within ourselves,
One thing we can do to cultivate that sense is to bring to mind people and beings that we love.
Sometimes it's best to start with something relatively simple.
Your favorite pet.
A beloved friend.
Someone who when we call them to mind,
We feel a sense of warmth and connection and safety and trust.
And use this imagery,
This imagery of a beloved person.
Or creature.
Sustain this image in your mind's eye and notice how that connects you to a sense of friendship.
Second technique you can try is picturing a place.
A beloved place.
Could be a vacation place.
A place in nature.
A place in your home.
A place you go every day.
A place you dream of visiting.
Picture a place that when you picture yourself being there and you picture it in your mind's eye,
You feel a sense of welcome.
You feel like you belong.
You feel like you belong.
You feel a sense of gladness.
And notice how gently sustaining that image in your mind's eye connects you to a sense of friendship within.
The third technique you can use to cultivate a sense of friendship is within yourself to express kind and encouraging and supportive words.
To be quite literally a good friend to yourself by giving yourself words of friendship.
Words of kindness.
And any words will do,
The words themselves aren't really so important.
What matters is the effect they have on you.
I like to start with words like peace and love and harmony.
Friendship and kindness.
You can use a word like hug.
A warm cup of tea.
Any words that create a space and a sense of safety and respect and belonging and fondness within.
And whether you're using a method or not,
As you feel that sense of friendship arising within,
Connect to it.
Sense it.
Sense friendship.
Sense friendship.
Take your time.
Feel and notice that sense of friendship alive within you.
Sense friendship.
And if that sense begins to feel faint,
Just go back to your cultivation tools.
You might picture a beloved place,
A beloved being.
Or you might offer yourself words of friendship.
You could think of it kind of like starting a fire and blowing on it to encourage the flames.
Sense friendship.
We'll transition now to friend number seven,
Which is suffering.
Sense suffering.
Sense suffering.
Take your time.
Feel and notice suffering occurring within you.
One aspect of suffering,
Often the first and most primal aspect,
Is pain.
This can be physical pain.
It can be a more emotional or psychological pain.
Feel and notice any pain alive within you.
And take your time.
There's no need to judge or label,
Describe or analyze.
Just sense it.
Sense suffering.
Sense any pain.
And take your time.
Another aspect of suffering is urge.
Feeling intense urges within us,
Subtle urges within us.
Cravings for things.
Impulses to act.
Compulsions to repeat certain behaviors.
Sense urge.
Feel and notice urge alive within you.
And take your time.
The third aspect of suffering is stress.
This combination of pain and then the urge to act.
And then the urge to do something about pain.
It comes up against limitations.
Limitations of skill.
Limitations of time.
Limitations of attention.
And this combination of the pain and the urge and then the sense of limitation or inability creates stress.
Sense any stress within you.
Feel and notice stress alive in you.
There's no need to describe or label.
No need to judge or analyze.
Just feel and notice stress.
And take your time.
And the fourth aspect of suffering is thought.
In particular,
Compulsive thinking.
Thinking that just arises and sustains and then goes on its own power.
Almost like a voice comes in,
Speaks,
And then goes out.
When we have that pain and that urge to do something about it and the stress of sensing limitations,
The mind will start generating ideas and agendas and strategies and thoughts and reactions.
All sorts of mental content around this tension.
Sense thought.
Feel and notice thought occurring.
No need to describe or label,
Judge or analyze.
No need to engage the thoughts.
Sense thought.
Sense thought.
And take your time.
Take your time as we prepare to leave friend number seven.
Just sense suffering.
Sense suffering.
Feel and notice suffering alive in you.
And take your time as we now move into friend number eight,
Which is yes.
Yes.
Sense yes.
Feel and notice yes alive in you.
Take your time.
Similar to friend number six,
Which is friendship.
Sometimes we have this sense of yes alive in us already.
We could just simply connect to that.
And sometimes the yes is something we can cultivate using simple techniques.
You might tune in to the heartbeat and you might translate each beat as yes,
Yes,
Yes.
That's one way to connect and to cultivate.
Another method is to connect to the breath.
You can imagine the inhale is whispering yes and the exhale is sighing yes,
Yes.
And the third method you might try is to say yes about two particular things.
Yes,
I'm feeling and yes,
I'm listening.
Yes,
I'm feeling.
Yes,
I'm listening.
Yes,
I'm feeling.
Yes,
I'm listening.
Feel and notice yes alive in you.
And take your time.
Take your time.
And now we prepare to transition to friend number nine,
Which is the ocean.
The ocean of consciousness.
Unbound space.
We're going to step in there together.
Just follow my guidance.
Before we begin,
Just make sure that you're in a comfortable position,
That you're stable and steady,
Because this will involve some surrendering.
We want to make sure the body is safe and secure.
We step into the ocean by releasing effort.
Release effort and let be.
Let be.
Let your body operate.
Let your body operate.
Let your body operate.
Let your attention wander.
Let your attention wander.
Surrender control for a while.
Surrender control for a while.
Relax.
Let go.
Drift at sea.
Relax.
Let go.
And drift at sea.
Sense ocean.
Sense ocean.
Take your time.
Feel and notice the ocean of consciousness.
And take your time.
As you release effort,
You let be.
Let the body operate.
Let attention wander.
Surrender control for a while.
Relax.
Let go.
And drift at sea.
Release effort.
Let be.
Let your body operate.
Let your attention wander.
Surrender control for a while.
As you relax.
And let go.
And drift at sea.
And now what we'll do is we'll cycle back through each of the nine friends again,
But this time at a much quicker pace.
The pace we had before was moderate.
And the cycle to come will only spend about five to ten seconds per friend.
Just know that when you practice this meditation on your own,
There's no one way to do it.
I encourage you to experiment and to explore with different pacing.
You could even exchange the order if you want to.
Make it yours.
So now we're going to do one more relatively quick cycle through the nine friends.
We'll reconnect to friend number one,
The posture.
Sense your posture.
Sense your posture.
Feel and notice your posture.
Friend two,
Pulse.
Sense your pulse.
Sense your pulse.
Feel and notice your pulse.
And friend three,
The breath.
Sense your breath.
Sense your breath.
Feel and notice your breath.
Friend number four,
The body.
Sense your body.
Sense your body.
Feel and notice your body.
And friend number five,
Your smile.
Let that smile come back to your face.
Natural and comfortable.
The faintest will do.
Sense your smile.
Sense your smile.
Feel and notice your smile.
Feel and notice your smile.
And friend number six,
Friendship.
Feel free to call to mind that beloved person,
Beloved place,
Or bring in those words of kindness to yourself.
And sense friendship.
Sense friendship.
Feel and notice friendship.
And friend number seven,
Suffering.
Pain and urge and stress and thought.
Sense suffering.
Sense suffering.
Feel and notice suffering.
And friend eight,
Yes.
Yes,
I'm feeling.
Yes,
I'm listening.
Sense yes.
Sense yes.
Feel and notice yes,
Alive in you.
And friend nine,
The ocean.
Release effort.
Let be.
Let the body operate.
Let attention wander.
Surrender control for a while.
Relax.
Let go.
And drift at sea.
And drift at sea.
And sense this ocean.
Sense ocean.
Feel and notice ocean.
I'll bring the guided meditation to a close at this point.
Just know that this nine friends meditation can be done any number of ways.
You could do one cycle at the pace you want and just remain in the ocean.
You can continue to cycle one through nine,
One through nine.
Using any pace you want,
Fast,
Medium,
Or slow.
You can move through some friends quickly and stay with others for longer.
Explore and experiment and tinker.
Make it your own.
And when you finish the meditation as we're doing now,
I encourage you to bow 10 times very gently with your head.
Those first nine bows are to those nine friends.
And the 10th and final bow is to the 10th friend,
Which is you.
And the 10th friend,
Which is you.
