Shift into your comfortable lying down position.
Close the eyes.
Bring to mind a bowl.
Any warm bowl that you can visualize.
Maybe it's simple and white.
Maybe it's brown and made of clay.
Maybe it has patterns,
Colors,
Other textures.
Imagine this warm bowl being placed on your belly.
Tune into the sensation of the bowl rising and falling with your breath.
See it so vividly in your mind that you can feel this bowl actually on your belly.
Fall into the wave of up and down with your breath.
See it so vividly in your mind that you can feel this bowl actually on your belly.
Becoming so focused on the sensation,
Everything else falls away.
Your mind's eye is right on the belly rising and falling.
The sensation of the warm bowl against your belly.
And the rise and fall of the warm bowl itself.
And the rise and fall of the warm bowl itself.
Start to make your breath slower and deeper.
Remembering how sacred the simple is.
Simple as nothing of us except presence.
In a world that keeps urging us to optimize,
Explain,
Get more complex.
Simplicity quietly returns us to what is already whole.
A slow,
Deep breath.
A warm bowl on the belly.
An honest word.
Remembering these moments of simplicity are not placeholders for a better life.
They are the life.
When we strip away excess,
We don't lose meaning.
We uncover it.
The sacred doesn't shout or perform.
It hums softly beneath the ordinary.
Waiting for us to notice that what is most essential has been here all along.
And all that remembering comes from the focus on one breath at a time.
One warm imaginary bowl.
One rise and fall.
Over and over again.