The connection meditation.
Establishing your meditation posture by positioning your body so you'll be as comfortable as possible,
Yet relaxed and alert.
Let your body settle down onto the chair and into gravity,
So you're fully held and supported.
Place your awareness inside the movements and sensations of the breath in your whole body.
Feeling the breath in the front,
The back and the sides,
The inside of the body and the surface of the body.
Allowing 360 degree breathing as your body expands in all directions a little bit on the in-breath and subsides in all directions a little bit on the out-breath.
Allow the breath to be saturated with kindliness and tenderness towards yourself.
Can you saturate your breath with kindliness in the same way that the ocean is saturated with salt?
Allowing all aspects of your experience to arise and pass away in each moment within a broad and open field of awareness.
Feel your thoughts,
Sensations and emotions coming and going,
Moment by moment.
And see if you can feel a warm connection with whatever is happening for you with a quality of fluidity and receptivity.
And now,
Bring to mind a friend or someone whom you like or feel naturally friendly towards.
See someone as a representative of all the people you like in your life.
In your mind and heart inviting them into your field of awareness,
Either as an image,
A feeling or any other imaginative way that works for you.
Stay grounded in your own experience and body awareness as you expand your awareness to include your friend.
Sit quietly with them in your imagination,
Gently breathing together and reflecting on all that you share with your friend.
Although you look different and the details of your lives are different,
You're both breathing in and out in very similar ways.
And beneath relatively superficial differences,
You're so alike.
Your friend will have unpleasant experiences they don't like and pleasant experiences they enjoy in broadly the same ways that you do.
They'll long to love and to be loved just as you do.
See if you can imaginatively dissolve the sense of difference and separation that we usually feel towards others and focus instead on a sense of common humanity with your friend.
Include a sense of kindliness in the breath towards your friend.
On the in-breath,
Breathe in as strong a sense of connection with your friend as you can manage.
And on the out-breath,
Breathe out kindliness and well-wishing towards your friend.
Everything that you wish for yourself,
Compassion,
Contentment,
Fulfilment perhaps,
You can now wish for your friend.
Imagine them being bathed in these qualities with each out-breath.
And now broaden your awareness still further to include other people.
Expand your awareness so it radiates out from the centre of your body to include yourself and your friend and then allow it to expand outwards to include others.
Perhaps initially bringing to mind others who are nearby.
People in the same house or building.
The same neighbourhood.
The same city.
The same country.
Bring these people to life in your imagination as vividly as you can.
Each of them is a living,
Breathing human being just like yourself.
Everything that you experience in your own life,
They experience in their lives in their own way.
They're breathing in and out every moment just like you.
They have hopes and dreams,
Fears and regrets just like you.
They long for connection and to love and be loved just like you.
Expand a few moments feeling a sense of commonality with all these other people.
Now broaden out your awareness still further to include more and more people.
See if you can use your self-awareness as a touchstone for empathy with humanity.
Instead of feeling isolated by whatever you're experiencing,
Can you empathise with other human beings as you realise how alike we all are deep down?
And including kindliness and well-wishing with the breath as you reflect on all that you share with others.
On the in-breath,
Breathing in empathy for all humanity everywhere.
And on the out-breath,
Breathing out kindliness and well-wishing towards all humanity.
Instead of focusing on difference,
Focus on commonality.
Instead of focusing on isolation,
Focus on connectedness.
Breathe in a sense of interest and connection with humanity and breathe out kindliness and well-wishing to all humanity.
And allow your breath of well-wishing to flow equally towards everybody without preference and bias.
People you like,
People you don't like,
People you know and people you don't know.
People who are awake and people who are asleep.
People who are nearby,
People who are far away.
People living in peaceful places and people living in war zones.
They're all human beings.
We are all so similar.
None of us likes to suffer and we all want to be happy.
We're all breathing in and out every moment of life.
Rest back within a broad and open field of awareness.
Remaining centered and grounded in your own experience and expanding your awareness on and on and on to include all humanity everywhere.
And also including all the other creatures.
Just inside the movements and sensations of the breath in your own body and in your imagination sensing the whole world breathing.
Expanding and subsiding.
Expanding and subsiding.
A ceaseless gentle movement and flow.
Allow the whole world to be bathed and saturated in a kindly loving breath.
In and out.
Take time as you make the transition from the meditation space to your daily life.
