Welcome,
And thank you for joining me for this mountain meditation.
I invite you to find a comfortable seated position.
It helps to be quite upright with your eyes closed if that's comfortable for you.
Noticing the feel of the chair beneath and behind you and the sensation of your feet on the floor.
Your arms and your hands can rest comfortably in your lap in whatever position they feel most comfortable for you.
As you're settling,
Just beginning to bring your attention to your breathing.
Noticing each in-breath and each out-breath.
Not trying to change your breathing in any way,
Just noticing,
Allowing it to flow easily and effortlessly at its own pace.
Inviting your body to become still.
I invite you now to bring into your awareness the image of a beautiful mountain,
Perhaps one that you already know or are familiar with,
Or allowing your imagination to create a beautiful mountain for you.
Some people are very visual and others are less so.
And if you can't get an image of a mountain in mind,
Then just think about one.
Just inviting a sense of a strong,
Majestic mountain in mind.
Feeling its overall shape,
Its lofty peaks or peaks high in the sky,
Its large base rooted in the bedrock of the earth's crust,
Its steep or gently sloping sides.
Noticing how massive it is,
How solid,
How unmoving,
How beautiful,
Whether from afar or up close.
Perhaps your mountain has snow blanketing its top and trees reaching down to the base.
There may be streams and waterfalls cascading down the slopes.
There may be one peak or a series of peaks.
There may even be meadow and high lakes.
Just taking some time to observe,
Noting its qualities of the mountain.
And when you feel ready,
Inviting these qualities of the mountain into your own body so that your body and the mountain in your mind's eye become one.
As you sit here,
You begin to sharing the massiveness and the stillness and the majesty of the mountain.
You become the mountain.
Grounded in the sitting posture,
Your head becomes the lofty peak,
Supported by the rest of your body,
Your shoulders and arms the sides of the mountain,
Your hips and legs the solid base rooted to your cushion or your chair.
Exploring in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine.
With each breath as you continue sitting,
Becoming a little more of the breathing mountain.
Alive and vital,
Yet unwavering in your inner stillness.
Completely what you are.
Beyond words and thoughts,
A centered,
Grounding,
Unmoving presence.
As you sit here,
Becoming aware that the sun travels across the sky,
The light and the shadows and the colors are changing moment by moment in the mountain stillness and the surface teems with life and activity.
Streams melting snow,
Waterfalls,
Plants and wildlife.
As the mountain sits,
Seeing and feeling how night follows day and day follows night.
The bright warming sun followed by a cool night sky and the gradual dawning of a new day.
And through it all,
The mountain just sits.
Experiencing change in each moment.
Constantly changing,
Yet always just being itself.
In summer there is no snow on the mountain,
Except perhaps for the very tallest peaks.
In the autumn,
The mountain may wear a coat of brilliant golden colors.
In winter,
A white blanket of snow and ice.
In any season,
It may find itself at times enshrouded in clouds or fog or pelted by freezing rain.
People may come to see the mountain and comment on how beautiful it is.
But none of this matters to the mountain,
Which remains its essential self.
Clouds may come and clouds may go.
Tourists may like it or not.
The mountain's magnificence and beauty are not changed one bit by whether people see it or not.
Seen or unseen,
In sun or in clouds,
Day or night,
It just sits being itself.
At times visited by violent storms,
Buffeted by snow and rain and winds of unthinkable magnitude.
But through it all,
The mountain sits.
Spring comes,
Trees leave out,
Flowers bloom in the high meadows and slopes.
Birds sing in the trees once again.
Streams overflow with the waters of melting snow.
And through it all,
The mountain continues to sit.
Unmoved by the weather,
By what happens on its surface,
By the world of appearances.
Remaining its essential self through all the seasons.
The changing weather and the activity are being unfurling on its surface.
In the same way as we sit in meditation,
We can learn to experience the mountain.
We can embody this sane,
Central,
Unwavering stillness and groundedness in the face of everything that changes in our own lives.
And it's true that we experience storms of varying intensity in our lives,
In our minds and in our bodies.
And often we endure periods of darkness and pain as well as moments of joy and uplift.
Even our appearance is changing constantly,
Experiencing a weather of its own.
By embodying the mountain in our practice,
We can connect up with its felt sense of strength and stability.
We can use its energies to support our own energy and tap into our inner felt resources.
It may help us to see that our thoughts and feelings,
Our emotional storms and even the things that happen to us,
Are very much like the weather on the mountain.
The weather of our own lives is not to be ignored or denied,
It's to be encountered,
Honoured,
Felt,
Known for what it is and held in gentle awareness.
And in holding it this way,
We can become to know a deeper silence and stillness and wisdom within us.
Mountains have this to teach us,
And much more.
So if you resonate in some way with the strength and stability of the mountain in your sitting,
It may be helpful to use it regularly as a practice.
To remind your body of what it means to sit mindfully,
With resolve,
With wakefulness and in true stillness and strength.
Spend a few more moments continuing to be fully with all the felt sensations which arise when you're with your image of the mountain.
Then gently inviting your awareness to expand back outwards into your surroundings,
Back into the room you're sitting in,
The weight of your body in the chair.
Just gently inviting your body to move or stretch in whatever way which feels comfortable for you.
Opening your eyes and orientating back into your surroundings.
Thank you for joining me in this practice.
