This meditation was recorded by MBSR teacher Adele Stewart live on Zoom May 2020 in Woonoona in the pandemic.
It's the mountain meditation and you're invited to take a comfortable seated or kneeling posture.
So finding yourself a comfortable seated posture where ideally you have a nice stable base either sitting on a chair or on a meditation cushion or a kneeling stool and feel your back reasonably straight but not too rigid.
Being your head balancing nicely on your shoulders.
Maybe starting off by noticing if there's any points of tension in the body that just would like to be softened a little.
Maybe between the eyebrows and the shoulders.
Maybe noticing a little bit more loosening of the tension on the exhale.
So letting your breath come and go as it will.
Using the breath to be present.
So an invitation to picture the most beautiful mountain you know or know of or can imagine.
One whose form really speaks personally to you.
Everybody's mountain will be a little different but there'll be some common features.
The lofty peak,
The vast sloping sides,
And the huge base rooted in the earth.
All our mountains are likely to be massive,
Unmoving,
And beautiful.
A beauty that's both individual to each mountain and also expressing the sort of universal qualities of mountainous.
So however it appears,
Just sitting and breathing with the image of this mountain.
Observing it,
Noticing its qualities.
And when you feel ready,
Seeing if you can bring this mountain into your own body so that your body sitting here and the mountain of your mind's eye become one.
Your head becomes the lofty peak.
Shoulders and arms,
The sides of the mountain.
And the lower half of your body,
The solid base rooted in the earth.
Perhaps noticing the sense of uplift.
The elevated quality of the mountain,
Feeling it deep in your spine.
Becoming a breathing mountain.
And the mountain doesn't try to be still,
It simply is still.
Exploring if it's possible to be as still as a mountain.
Still completely what you are.
And also a centered,
Rooted,
Unmoving presence.
And for all mountains,
There's a constant change happening perhaps on the surface and around the mountain.
The passage of the day and the night.
The sun coming up,
Different lengths of shadows,
Heat of the day.
The sun going down.
Darkness.
Perhaps the moon and the stars overhead.
And also the changes over the seasons.
So in winter,
It might be snow or ice,
Very cold winds.
Perhaps depending on your mountain,
The trees may be bare of leaves.
Then in spring,
Ice may melt,
Streams may flow.
There might be buds of leaves and flowers.
And baby birds and animals being born.
Throughout this change in the days and the seasons,
The mountain sits there,
Still,
Massive,
Grounded,
Being itself.
Then in the transition to summer,
Might be really hot days,
Bushfires,
Burnt trees,
Perhaps summer storms.
And then autumn,
Perhaps a change in color of the leaves,
Leaves dropping,
The air cooling.
And through it all,
The mountain just sits being itself.
And constant change on the surface of the mountain,
Insects and animals and birds,
Flowers dropping,
Growing,
Blooming.
There might be people up on the mountain.
People might think the mountain's beautiful or not so beautiful.
But the mountain isn't fazed by this.
It just continues being itself.
Continuing to sit,
Unmoved by the weather,
Unmoved by what happens on its surface,
Unmoved by the world of appearances.
And as we sit holding this image of the mountain in our mind,
The invitation is to embody this same stillness,
Rootedness,
Equanimity in the face of everything that changes in our own lives,
Over seconds,
Hours,
Years,
So continuing to meditate for a little while.
If it's been helpful continuing the mountain meditation,
Noticing without reaction or identification the thoughts that come and go,
The emotions,
The mood states,
The body sensations,
Our own constantly changing weather.
So so so so so so so so so so so so
