This recording begins with a lesson.
To skip to the meditation,
Go to 4 minutes.
We are told in Sefer Bereshit,
In the book of Genesis,
That the divine spoke a desire to create the universe,
Land and water and heavens,
Plants and animals and people,
And then went and manifested all of those things over the course of six cosmic days.
And our tradition tells us that the last thing that happened was Shabbat.
It was the last thing that was created,
But it was the first thing that was intended.
That all of creation,
From the rocks to the trees to the birds to you and me,
Were created for the purpose of Shabbat.
All of this doing happened for the sake of a day filled with being.
And as you prepare to go into Shabbat,
There is a shift that can happen from being under the purview of the energy of doing,
Into the energy of being.
And over the course of the coming meditation,
I bless you to leave the external world behind for some moments and experience the beautiful presence that lives within you,
That shines through you,
And that gives you a taste of your soul,
And of the infinite divine that inhabits you always.
With blessings from Jerusalem,
I invite you to find a comfortable seat and close your eyes and become aware of your breath as your belly expands and your chest expands and as they fall yet again.
As you allow yourself to be breathed by the divine,
I invite you to experience how this expansion and contraction reflect the cosmic expansion of creation itself,
And the constriction that resulted in physical matter out of infinite light.
So as the divine breathes life into you,
Feel your heart expanding to receive that life.
And as you exhale,
I invite you to take any tension or worries of the six days and give them back to the creator of the universe.
Feel your breath taking in divine presence and releasing the worries of this world,
Taking in the being of Shabbat and releasing the doing of the first six days.
Breathing in being and exhaling doing.
And I invite you to hear the sound of that breath as an audible inhale with a wide open mouth and an audible exhale out of your mouth as a sigh.
Breathing in and letting go.
And again,
Breathing in and letting go.
And one last time,
Breathing in and letting go.
Your body softening into being.
And to ask yourself,
When I am in being,
How do I hold my body?
How are my muscles when I am in being?
How is my breathing when I am in being?
How do I approach the divine from this place of being?
And how do I relate to others when I'm fully inhabiting the consciousness of being?
Remember,
Precious one,
You were created for Shabbat.
You were created for the being.
And the doing allows you to create containers for being.
The doing plants the seeds for being.
But the goal,
The vision is you basking in the beauty that you already are.
And I invite you to take those words in.
Basking in the beauty that you already are.
With an audible hum.
Breathing in and out.
And God gifted you a day to bask in the wonder of you.
The wonder of creation.
The wonder of the divine.
And the wonder of relation.
And as you prepare to enter Shabbat,
I invite you to place your hands over your beautiful heart and bless yourself,
Precious one,
With a Shabbat Shalom.
A Shabbat of peace.
Of wholeness.
And when you are ready,
I invite you to wiggle your fingers and wiggle your toes.
And come back into your body with a yawn and a stretch.
And you can open your eyes,
Ready to bless the Sabbath with your gaze.
Shabbat Shalom.
