Mountain Meditation (From Palouse Mindfulness)

This is my recording of the "Mountain Meditation" from the Palouse Mindfulness script. This meditation helps us use the strength and majesty of the mountain to weather the storms in our lives - to remain our essential self. This particular script is one of the first meditations to click with me during the early days of my recovery.

Transcript

The labelled brain is very polarized.

It is modeled by the door believed in by our eyes.

It appears to be more NB.

Take a few breaths and allow yourself to settle into this present time experience,

This moment.

The Mountain Meditation,

Which we're about to do,

Came from the Palos mindfulness website,

Which adapted the script from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mountain Meditation.

It's one of my favorites,

And I'm glad to be able to share this experience with you all tonight.

It's recommended that you do this meditation in a sitting position,

Either on the floor or the chair,

Whichever is more comfortable for you.

Just in a way that you can sit in a dignified manner,

Feeling your body upright.

As you adjust your sitting position,

You can start scanning your body from the top down.

Just notice anywhere you're holding tension or stress.

You can soften your eyes,

And if it's comfortable for you,

You can allow them to close or keep them open and just keep a soft gaze in front of you.

Relax your jaw.

Allow your arms to hang by their own weight,

Let gravity do its work.

You can rest your hands in your lap or at your side,

Whichever is comfortable.

Bring attention to your chest or your abdomen.

Sometimes we forget that when we hold stress or we have anxiety that we tend to tense up in these areas.

If you notice there's any tension,

Just soften,

Relax.

To start,

We'll bring our attention to our breath,

The actual physical sensation of breathing.

Feel each breath as it comes in and goes out.

Let the breath be just as it is.

There's no reason to change it,

To force it.

Just let it flow easily.

For some,

It might be easier to recognize that as you inhale,

You can mentally say in,

And as you exhale,

You can mentally say out.

Just know that you're breathing in and you're breathing out perfectly well right now.

As you sit still,

Recognize that you're sitting with a sense of dignity,

A sense of resolve,

A sense of being complete,

Whole in this very moment with your posture,

Reflecting the sense of wholeness.

Now,

Let an image form in your mind's eye of the most magnificent or beautiful mountain you know or have seen,

Can imagine,

Or have been to.

Just let that image come into focus.

If you find that a visual image isn't coming,

Just allow the sense of what a mountain means to you,

The way its overall shape,

Its lofty peak or peaks high in the sky,

The large base rooted in the bedrock of the earth's crusts,

Its steep or gently sloping sides.

Allow that feeling to come into your mind,

Into your body.

Notice how massive the mountain is,

How solid,

How unmoving,

How beautiful,

Whether from afar or up close.

Perhaps your mountain has snow blanketing its top in trees,

Reaching down to the base,

Or rugged granite sides.

Maybe there are streams and waterfalls cascading down your mountain.

It could have one peak or maybe a series of peaks with meadows and high lakes.

Observe your mountain.

Note its qualities.

When you're ready,

Bring the mountain into your body as you sit here so that your mountain becomes one with you.

You share in the massiveness and the stillness and the majesty of the mountain.

You become the mountain.

Grounded in the sitting posture,

Your head becomes a lofty peak supported by the rest of the body affording a panoramic view,

Your shoulders and arms the side of the mountain,

Your buttocks and legs the solid base rooted to your cushion or chair,

Experiencing in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine.

With each breath,

As you continue sitting,

Become a little more a breathing mountain,

Alive and vital,

Yet unwavering in your inner stillness,

Completely what you are beyond words and thought,

A centered,

Grounded,

Unmoving presence.

All right.

As you sit here,

Becoming aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,

The light and shadows and colors are changing virtually moment by moment in the mountain stillness.

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 studded with stars,

And then gradual dawning of a bright new day.

Through it all,

The mountain just sits,

Experiencing change in each moment,

Constantly changing,

Yet always just being itself.

It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day,

Calmness abiding all change.

In the summertime,

There is no snow on the mountain,

Except perhaps for the very peaks or in crags shielded from direct sunlight.

In the fall,

The mountain may wear a bright coat of fire colors.

In winter,

A 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,

Or maybe it's just not a good day to see the mountain.

Maybe it's too cloudy or rainy,

Foggy or dark.

None of this matters to the mountain,

Which remains at all times its essential self.

Clouds may come,

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,

And sun or clouds,

Broiling or frigid,

Day or night.

It just sits,

Being itself.

At times visited by violent storms,

Buffeted by snow and rain and winds of unthinkable magnitude.

Through it all,

The mountain sits.

Spring comes,

Trees leaf out,

Flowers bloom in high meadows and slopes.

Birds sing in the trees once again,

Streams overflow with the waters of melting snow.

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 the seasons,

The changing weather,

The activity ebbing and flowing on its surface.

In the same way,

As we sit in meditation,

We can learn to experience the mountain.

We can embody the same central,

Unwavering stillness and grounded in the face of everything that changes in our lives,

Over seconds,

Over hours,

Over years.

In our lives and in our meditation practice,

We experience constantly the changing nature of mind and body and of the outer world.

We have our own periods of light and darkness,

Activity and inactivity,

Our moments of color and our moments of drabness.

It's true that we experience storms of varying intensity and violence in the outer world and in our own minds and bodies.

Buffeted by high winds,

By cold rain,

We endure periods of darkness and pain,

As well as the moments of joy and uplift.

Even our appearance changes constantly,

Experiencing a weather of its own.

By becoming the mountain in our meditation practice,

We can link up with its strength and stability and adopt them for our own.

We can use its energies to support our energy to encounter each moment with mindfulness and equanimity and clarity.

It may help us to see that our thoughts and feelings,

Our preoccupations,

Our emotional storms and crises,

Even the things that happen to us,

Are very much like the weather on the mountain.

We tend to take it all personally,

But the mountain's strongest characteristic is impersonal.

The weather of our own lives is not to be ignored or denied.

It is to be encountered,

Honored,

Felt,

Known for what it is and held in awareness.

And in holding it in this way,

We come to know a deeper silence and stillness and wisdom.

Mountains have this to teach us and more if we can let them in.

So if you find you resonate in some way with the strength and stability of the mountain in your sitting,

It may be useful to use it from time to time in your meditation practice,

Just like you're doing right now,

To remind you of what it means to sit mindfully with resolve and with wakefulness and true stillness.

So in the time that remains,

Continue to test the mountain meditation on your own in silence,

Moment by moment,

Until you hear the sound of the bells.

The sound of the bells.

Thank you for practicing and sitting with me tonight during this meditation.

I hope you find it useful in your practice as much as I have.

Until next time.

Reviews

Namaste 🙏

Beautiful. My mountain was Lake Louise in Canada. Namaste🙏🙏

Grateful for this beautiful meditation and will return to the practice
Thank you 🙏🏽 ✨