Consecrating the Heart Altar - Biblical Meditation

Begin your day with Awakened Body and this guided meditation practice, in which we center, listen deeply to messages of the body, and select an intention for our day. Through deep body listening, we identify a growing edge that awakens our consciousness.

Transcript

Hello,

I am Rabbi Sarah Brandes from Awakened Body,

And I am so glad that you have decided to start your day here with me.

Here at Awakened Body,

We place the body and the wisdom that it carries right at the center of our lives and our spiritual practice.

So that's what we're here to do.

You might have chosen to make use of our 30-minute active yoga flow before settling in,

But we are here now to do a 20-minute guided meditation.

Don't forget if meditation isn't your thing,

You can make use of the digital tool we have to take us through the centering process we're going to do right now,

Or you can do this through conscious writing,

Through journaling,

And all those tools are there for you at AwakenedBody.

Org.

But if you are here to practice with me,

I'll trust that I'm finding you in your designated practice space.

Maybe you need help setting up a home altar,

Be sure to check out our resources on how to do that.

The way we create healthy habits is by cueing our minds that what we are here to do right now is to drop in deeply,

To give the body space to speak of its wisdom,

And to start our day by setting intention.

That is how we take things higher.

So let's get started.

Just take a breath and let the eyes close for a moment.

And as you exhale,

Send breath down,

Deep,

Deep,

Deep down,

Roots into the earth.

And on the next inhale,

Let the breath guide you to length and the spine grow up nice and tall.

The next exhale feels the shoulders soft down spine.

Just breathing here with me.

A Kabbalistic tradition challenges us to open our eyes in gratitude.

The first moment we become aware that we have woken up to start a new day,

That we create the habit,

We train ourselves to have that first thought be one of gratitude.

In practicing gratitude,

We practice noticing goodness,

Noticing blessing,

And therefore calling in more goodness and calling in more blessing.

So I'm going to use the feminine and spiritualized Hebrew sentence.

And you,

If you are a man,

Can say,

Nod-deh.

And if it speaks to you,

Of course,

You can invoke the God language for King Melech,

Or you can say along with me,

Mo-da' ani le-fanayich.

I am so grateful.

Ruach Chaya v'kayyamit.

Shechazagt b'ni shmatib echem lah.

Thank you,

Thank you for this gift of having woken up today.

Let's breathe now in gratitude,

Challenging ourselves to allow five blessings to just come to mind.

Each breath,

A thank you that arises from the heart.

No matter how much struggle we're waking up into today,

There's always also goodness.

And as you're ready,

After you felt the texture,

You've held one blessing in your palms or placed it on your heart.

Then allow the next one to arise.

In gratitude.

And we are here this morning to consecrate the heart altar.

So place these five gratitudes like sacred stones around your altar.

Let them be reminders for you throughout today.

The Kabbalistic tradition says that there is tremendous transformational power in listening.

Shma Yisrael,

Listen up you God wrestlers.

We are here to listen.

The body as we know is a keeper of our story,

Of our memories,

Of our wounding and our blessing.

Let's now listen to the deep wisdom in the body.

We're going to take a body scan.

We can imagine a beam of light sort of like we might see at the supermarket if we're doing self check and using a scanner.

So let's scan the body now.

Crown to root.

Keter to malchut.

Letting that light pass over the body.

Just listening.

Breathing deeply and noticing what the body has to say today.

Are there tight places?

Are you having any pain today?

The places that feel expansive,

Jittery,

Maybe from a positive place of excitement.

We'll be here now for several moments just listening to the body.

De Porter.

Are safe.

Bodies are majestic tools.

They are the most important resource that we have in doing the deep work of our lives.

Your body is perfect,

Just as it is today.

And so as you're breathing with the sensations of being in this body,

Let's allow the attention to settle on one place in the body that has a story to tell today.

You might say,

As we do in our journaling practice at Awakened Body,

Body,

Who needs my attention today?

What we're looking for is the offering we're going to place now on the heart altar.

The Awakened Body,

We work with the imagery of the Mishkan,

The sacred tabernacle at the sacred center of the Holy People.

We locate that at our heart center.

And we know that the tight places in our lives that get translated into tight places in our bodies,

They are what we are working on.

It is our lessons,

Our becoming,

That is trapped in those tight places.

So let's now settle in on one spot in the body that is asking for our attention today.

Let's take our sacred hands and gather it up and bring it now to the heart altar.

So feeling the breath moving through the body up and down the length of the spine.

Let's call to mind now the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

Seeing ourselves stretching towards the Sun like a tree.

Our roots,

Our interconnectedness of Shrinah,

Deep into the earth,

Drawing up energy from source,

Moving up the length of the spine,

Each of the 10 Sfirot,

Shining out the crown of the head at Ketu.

Let's now allow the attention to settle on Tiferet,

The heart center.

When we pray in the Kabbalistic tradition,

We address Hakadosh Baruch Hu,

Tiferet,

This face of God that is at the heart center.

And it is here that we find our heart altar.

Breathing now,

Visualizing divine light at the heart center.

Each inhale sees that light expand,

Filling more and more of the space that is you.

Radiating out beyond the expanse of your body,

Filling even the room where you are practicing now.

Each inhale brighter and brighter.

And each exhale sending your heart energy outward into the world.

And as we breathe deeply,

We feel the lungs filled to capacity and visualize our full lungs as the outstretched wings of the two angels that adorn the heart altar.

Made of one pure piece of gold,

It is from this place that the divine voice emerges.

In the Mishkan,

It is from here that God spoke.

And at us,

This is the seat of the still small voice that reminds us of our purpose.

So seeing now your heart altar,

Kruvim,

Angelic wings outstretched at the heart center.

And now let's bring our offering,

The tight place that we found in our body scan.

And let's lay it on the altar at the sacred heart center.

The Torah,

The sacred book of the Jewish wisdom tradition,

Describes that in the temple,

The high priest would lay his hands directly on the offering,

Joining with it.

So we lay our hands now on this most delicate piece of our humanness,

This tight place that needs our loving attention this day.

And as you lay your hands upon it,

You might feel the place in your body where you found it,

You might feel it begin to shift.

It might tighten and recoil from the attention that you were giving it.

It might start to soften as you place your loving hands on this part of you.

Just listening.

And let's right now set our intention for our day.

This tight place that our body has offered up to us,

That thing that we are churning right now in our lives.

Let's now give it a name so that we can keep it with us throughout the course of our day.

You might choose to say it in the form of a blessing.

I bless myself that today I will grow in forgiveness.

I bless myself that today I will grow in trust.

Find the language now that's right for you,

But set your intention for this day.

And right now we're going to leave our offering here on our heart altar,

Trusting that it is the moment to moment of our lives that will most help us to become who we are meant to be.

We're going to leave it here in this Sacred Heart Center and let our lives help us to wash it clean or burn it clean.

And we'll pull back our gaze so that we again see the totality of the heart altar.

See the heart center radiant.

See the Kabbalistic Tree of Life extending the full length of you.

And before we close our morning practice,

Let's settle into a place of prayer.

You might choose now to whisper to yourself.

You might choose to open your prayer journal.

But it is so important before we set off to the business of our day to ask for those things that we most want.

To trust that the nature of this plane of existence is abundance and goodness.

And that transformation happens when we cry out,

When we ask for what it is we need.

So let's hold now for a few moments in a place of heartfelt prayer.

Take as much time as you need or as you can give your self with your prayers,

With your deep body listening,

With your practice of gratitude.

And I hope that you'll commit to taking a pause in the middle of the day to drop back in.

And if you choose to do the guided meditation with us,

We'll draw from the resources of water and of fire.

The means by which offerings are transformed on the heart altar.

Blessings for you for a day of abundance,

Of joyfulness,

Of gratitude.

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