We'll begin the meditation in Shavasana.
So take a moment to get comfortable with the props,
Stuffing the spaces between your body and the floor,
Comfortably stretching out.
So we'll begin the meditation here.
As your body is settling into the ground,
Into the cushions,
Enjoy the fact that you are able to relax these surfaces,
These textures underneath your body.
Allow for three long exhales to braid an alliance between the natural weight of your body,
The point of contact with the earth,
Releasing all past concerns through the first exhale,
Any concerns about the future after the bell rings and the meditation ends.
And a third exhale to release any standards of perfection or expectations about this experience.
Allow it to be natural,
Discovered.
Explore your last 24 hours and find at least one thing to be grateful for,
At least one beautiful scene that you saw in the last day.
It may be a loving exchange or all of the above.
So as the energy of positivity and gratitude radiates out through the water of your body,
Begin to scan from the top of your body,
Which could be the tip of your nose as it is the closest to the ceiling,
Most likely,
Down through the tactile field.
That is,
Everything on or within the skin boundary scan down through,
Vanishing out the biological parts.
Imagining a sky-filled shell replacing all the organs,
The blood,
The bones.
And that any of the stress and tension of the last 24 hours becomes swept up in this scan and delivered into the underworld,
Into the ground,
Upon which we are in the pose of the corpse.
Pay particular interest to the fine muscles of your jaw and your eyes,
The fingertips and toe tips like vents,
Releasing the non-functional tension of the day,
The projections,
Anything we were grasping onto,
Like smoke.
As we are becoming intimate with the bottom of every exhale,
And the weight of the body,
Begin to explore the points of contact with the surfaces under you.
The different qualities of pressure,
Weight,
And gravity as your animal sinks deeper into the ground.
As you savor the weight of your body falling deeper and deeper into the ground,
Know that you are completely safe in your set and setting.
As you are relaxing,
The game here is to maintain the vigilant awareness of your space,
So much so that someone could pop a balloon in the room and it would not startle you.
This will craft an organic balance between relaxation and vigilant awareness.
About every three to five breaths,
Check in.
Are there any areas in the animal body that could use an invitation to relax more?
Could someone sneak up on you in the room?
If you see the nervous system is a little bit upregulated,
Continue to emphasize the length of your exhales,
Fully and completely,
Discovering the spark that brings the inhale.
The inhales are never taken.
They are given,
And who knows how many.
A good death meditation has so many benefits.
Removing procrastination.
Removing divisiveness in relationship,
As each interaction may be the last time we have in this life to meet.
It removes indecision.
Many traditions consider death meditation indispensable in taking death as an ally,
The pulse of life.
As you continue to relax and dilate your awareness into your setting,
We move into water element.
As earth sinks into water,
Notice the fluid quality in the body.
Circulation.
Any areas of clammy coldness fluctuating to feverish heat.
This may be accompanied with a sense of nausea,
Which doesn't mean you're sick.
You are shifting from animal to astral.
The undulations of the breath like a soft sea rising and falling,
And the heaviness of the animal increasing as earth and water mix.
About every five breaths,
Continue to check in the different quadrants of the meditation.
The physical animal is relaxed.
The emotional tone is appreciative in an affirmative mode.
The awareness is vigilant and startle-proof.
And the attention is with the sensations of the breath,
Protected from imagination,
Memory,
And leaping forward into the future.
As water dissolves into fire,
Imagine there is a spinning ring of sparks below your feet.
And as you choose to invite this spinning ring of sparks to move up from the feet to the knees,
The boundary between self and environment begins to fly apart.
This is called jyoti,
Sparks.
Slowly continue to move this spinning ring of sparks from the knees,
Region by region,
Up until you've come above the head.
As you explore the fire element,
The sensitivity to the cold regions of the body,
The hot regions of the body,
Is vivified,
Savored.
Certain areas feel denser than others.
Take your time.
The ring can move back and forth as you wish.
But when you finally do come above the crown of the head,
Then make another pass slowly down back towards the bottoms of your feet.
As fire element dissolves into space element,
You may notice a high-pitched ringing may be present in the space between your ears,
Somewhere between a buzz.
There may be a sense of throbbing pressure around the head.
And the sense of the interior of the body being full of current electricity,
Full of life force,
As we become hyper aware of our nervous system.
At this point,
Begin to play with filling your mind into your hands.
What does it feel like without narrative in the bare attention,
The raw experience of embodiment?
You may notice tingling areas where it seemed like no sensation was present is full of appearances.
If certain parts of the body spasm or jerk,
This is common.
Sometimes traumas need to be shaken out of the body spontaneously.
And in that in-between waking and dreaming,
As the body is moving into a sleep paralysis,
But the mind may imagine we are activating in a dream realm,
There can be an awkward in-between there,
Between stillness,
Waking,
And dreaming.
Again,
This is why we are practicing this bardo meditation,
To explore the space between waking,
Blacking out,
Blacking out,
Dreaming.
Continue to use your awareness to guard against falling asleep.
You are startle proof.
You know precisely where your animal is in the room.
For the last few moments,
Check in with these different quadrants of the meditation experience of fidelity,
Balance,
Free of identifying or being confused with these appearances being you or yours.
They are simply happening,
Causally dependent,
And ephemeral as a dream.
Begin to deepen the breathing.
Feel free to move your thumbs across the fingertips,
Wiggle the toes.
Before we move,
We plant one more seed for prospective memory.
We intend to remember,
Tonight when we're sleeping,
And we wake up in the bed,
To not move,
To be aware that we are in our bed,
And allow the atmosphere of the dream that we've temporarily woken up out of to remain unbroken,
So that when the dream re-emerges,
As we are in our bed,
We can enter into it volitionally,
Awake,
To explore this illusion which has no constraints,
No physical constraints.
Slowly begin to gather your knees and hug them into your chest,
Savoring this heaviness,
The earth,
Water elements.
And then rolling over to your right side,
If you're with child,
Roll to your left,
And you can use the bottom arm as a pillow under your ear as you come onto your side into a fetal position.
Let it not be lost on us,
The intimacy between the fetus and the corpse in this sequence.
Death and rebirth,
And the power of our vulnerability as we are in this new form,
The same but different than the animal that lied down 24 minutes ago.
Take as much time as you need to settle,
And when you're ready,
Find yourself in an elevated comfortable seat,
Offering a minute to savor the afterglow of this practice.
