Getting comfortable, three bells
Okay, so if you want to get yourself in a comfortable position, or maybe you already are, and we will begin a guided meditation.
Okay, and I will ring the bell three times, and that will begin the exercise.
Notice your breathing: choosing to give up control
Notice your breathing. Instead of trying to control your breathing, follow the breath.
It's a matter of choosing to give up control.
So we're choosing to give up control to the breathing itself. It's an active choice.
It's both an intention and a softening at the same time. So I have the intention to trust and follow the breath, and also I'm letting go of any sort of control.
That is a simplified definition of authentic relationship.
In meditation, it is one of the most important pointers is you're actively surrendering. Somewhere in that paradox between active and letting go. That's where you find yourself.
So notice the breathing. You may notice your chest rising and falling, your abdomen rising and falling, your back expanding and contracting.
The space and the little pieces of dust
Now imagine that wherever your awareness is that you're just aware of this open space, whether that's in your head or your chest or around you.
And that whole space as if there was all of these little pieces of dust, right? Maybe little leaves or something, but it's all kind of floating in the space.
So you have all this space, but there's all these little very small dots floating in it, right? Little particles of dust.
And you're just holding the space for all those particles to begin to kind of very softly settle. As if it's dirt in a pool of water that's been stirred up. It's all just falling out to the bottom.
The space in your head: looking from the base of the skull
Good. So notice the space in your head.
Become aware of the skin around your head and where the space in your head meets your skull and then there's the skin. And then follow the skin and your skull back to the back of your head where the neck meets the base of the skull.
And then open and look from that spot into the space of your head.
Inviting the insecurity to speak up
And then notice any sense of unworthiness or not enoughness or fear or anxiety in your head.
You can invite any sense of insecurity or shakiness or vulnerability to speak up with this intention that you want to get to know it.
And so we're both looking from the spot where our neck hits the base of our skull, and then we're looking out into the head into or to a place of pain or anxiety or insecurity.
And we're holding both where we're looking from and the place of pain or insecurity at the same time.
Right, you might hear, I'm not enough, I'm not enough, I'm not enough. Maybe what's wrong with me? Nobody sees me.
And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to consciously relate to our own mental insecurity.
And as you hold both the place that you're looking from and also the contraction at the same time, then notice that all in between yourself where you're looking and that knot is space, and all that space is full of all of those little pieces of dust like we talked about before, all those little dots.
All those little dots are self-love
And all those little dots are actually self-love. They're emptiness moving, or as Adyashanti used to say, emptiness dancing.
And all you have to do is look from a place of safety and groundedness to the contraction and the pain while seeing that it's all arising in a field of self-love.
And then, as you're looking, just noticing how does the field of self-love relate to the contraction. You see, you're studying it. Does it want it to go away? Is it angry at it?
There is something that happens between the field of self-love and the contraction. It can only happen when you are there too, viewing it and holding it all.
It is active surrender, right?
Active surrender: the field and the contraction
Somehow, the influence of the self-love on the contraction reminds the contraction of what it always was and has always been and helps it kind of loosen.
And then your own viewing it from that safe place gives it that kind of active component, right? The intention of wanting to be honest and return to wholeness and live from a place of integrity.
And as that contraction dissolves and the insecurity subsides, you find that you have rebuilt and begun to repair your trust between what is looking, what you are, and your mind, thinking mind.
Down into the chest: coming home
Let's follow the relaxation of the contraction down through the roof of your mouth, down the back of your throat, down through your neck, and down into your chest, as if you were falling down a well into a basin of water in your chest.
And there's a sense of returning and coming home to the love that you've always been and has always been there as if you've always felt not included and misunderstood.
But now that you have let go of the knot and the resistance to the flow of life, you don't have to feel alone anymore. You are one of many drops of love in your own chest.
And there is both a wave of relaxation, a warmth and comfortability, and also a few tears of joy and heartbreak. Knowing that this is the true way, this is what you are. This is what is given to you.
And also, knowing that often it is hard or to get here or easy to forget our own wholeness.
Asking for help
Here may ask, maybe helpful to ask for help. Let me try, say help.
Can I have help? Universe, can you help me? Pool of love and wholeness. I ask you for help.
So often I forget what I truly am. Can you help remind me when I forget, when I go unconscious, when I'm stuck in pattern, when I'm triggered? Can you remind me that this is what I am? That this is always there, that I don't have to be scared and alone in the dark anymore.
And you can find that when you actively choose to surrender, right, when you ask for help, it is a vulnerable choice. In the vulnerability, something transforms.
Falling into the abdomen
And then once again, feeling any sort of relaxation or melting away or almost a disintegration or falling apart and allowing that to pull us down as the pieces fall apart out of the chest and down into the abdomen, falling down under the diaphragm, past the belly button, and into the middle of the abdomen.
Here you may have a sense it could be like a piece of stone, dense stone with a shallow bowl carved out of it. Could be often metaphor. Or maybe it's like a deep clay or compacted earth. Or possibly it could be more like a mountain, a temple, or a volcano.
Do you notice that then this area of the body is more dense? It's not as fluid or rhythmic. And there's a stillness to it that is different than the other places we visited.
So, whatever metaphor or imagery works for you, I think maybe if it feels comfortable to be in this area of the body, it could be as if you're laying on this dark, reddish, brown, packed clay earth.
And as you lay down on the earth, you kind of look back up, up at the heart, up into the mind. And laying there, you feel that stability of that deeply packed red, brown clay earth.
And that's kind of informing, you know, you're absorbing the energetic transmission of that earth into your body. And then that's moving up through your body out into what you're looking at, which is the heart area. And then the mind.
And it's as if the abdomen and the stillness and the groundedness of the abdomen just settles the heart area and settles the mind.
It's oh, it's the density and the properties of the abdomen, but it is so rooted and so dense that it just settles and pulls the moving energies of the heart and the more flighty and airy energies of the mind into a deeper stillness.
Being with the experience, three bells
Good, we'll just take a short amount of time just to be with the experience in your body now and breathe a little bit.
Okay, I will ring the bell three times and that will end the meditation.
Transcript from the recording, lightly cleaned for reading.