The Invitation

When you hear that initial "gong" in meditation, what do you think, feel, and do? After so many years of meditating, I think of any bell sound now as an invitation. But what is that sound inviting us to or into??

Transcript

Today my next client came into my office and she plopped down on the couch with all of her bags and trinkets and I'm expecting her to launch into her story of whatever has been happening for the week and instead she kind of lays back on the couch and she says I'm ready for the invitation and it took me a second even though I say that word every single day and I asked her what what do you mean by that and she said the the gong the meditation I'm ready for the invitation and it just stung my eyes for a minute that after all these weeks and months of working with her she has incorporated the very first thing I say once I hit the gong which is let this be an invitation and so before I launched into meditation with her I asked her what that meant what did she think I was inviting her to and she actually took a deep breath and she said you're inviting me to slow down to notice my body to notice how I'm feeling in this moment to see what's going wrong to honor what's going right to notice my heartbeat and to notice the contents of my mind the coming and the going and not to take any of it too seriously but just to witness it and then to come back to something in the room that feels more present more in this exact moment like the temperature of the room or my feet on the floor or my butt in the chair she said I'm ready for the invitation and again my eyes had tears in them because she said it back to me better than I could have said it myself and I felt so pleased and so proud of her and so proud of myself for holding this container for so many hours and she and many others like her stepping into this container and allowing themselves to slow down and see themselves and notice things in a new way and so briefly today I would like to offer this invitation to just do a little mini meditation here and I just want you to think about that word invitation what are you inviting yourself to do when you sit down to meditate when you listen to any of these insight timer talks or guided meditations or even put on the timer bell and just are quiet with yourself what are you inviting in in that moment so let's just do this for a minute or two and I will ring the gong so let that gong be our invitation to be or also witnessing our doing all the ways that maybe we have been covering up our being with doing so for just a moment here we are these simple innocent human beings sitting on couches sitting on floors lying on beds hearts beating just noticing who we are today who we are in this moment what we bring to this present moment so we're just slowing down to feel our bodies feel what is not working and even though we would call it not working it still is working somehow because we're here but honoring the difficulties the aches the pains the challenges the parts that just do not quite feel well-oiled allowing that to be there possibly releasing it a bit with your exhale if there's a bit of muscle tension that you can relax into giving some time to what is working the parts of your body that feel good the blood that's flowing that you even woke up today that you are alive inside your body your mind is working maybe not as good as you want it to work but it is working that you still have goals and dreams and desires you care about people you care about yourself you're not giving up because here you are working with yourself working with your mind working with your heart working with your energy and then just focusing on our breath for a few rounds taking a nice deep breath in and then blowing it out very slowly as if through a straw allowing the exhale to be longer than the inhale meanwhile you're still noticing your body what it's experiencing how it feels now noticing your muscle tension if anything has relaxed and then glimpsing our ever present thoughts patterns what are we thinking what are those tapes that keep playing noticing if the patterning is helpful or unhelpful noticing if the thoughts that you land on light a spark in you and there's something exciting there to follow to pursue to complete somebody to call or do those thoughts not go anywhere and do they drain you and do they make you feel bad about yourself or bad about another person so you are the only one who can notice that if those thoughts are worthwhile to continue in a loop in your brain and then taking another couple deep breaths just to give some space around that because we are not our thoughts we just have thoughts we are not our emotions we just have emotions so just noticing the spaciousness now after having slowed down for a couple minutes noticing your body noticing your breath and noticing the movement of your mind putting this all on a context of openness spaciousness curiosity and hopefully an invitation there's an invitation to slow down pay attention honor what's there and allow something to move that wants to move because in the movement of it something's going to feel better something's going to feel a little bit more like yourself a little bit more like freedom a little bit more like what is authentically you and only you can decide who that is and what that is what feels better what feels more interesting where do you choose to put your time your energy and then coming back to meditations like this or your own meditation or any other that you find on insight timer that speaks to you that allows for this idea of noticing that allows for this idea of invitation to just notice more and more who you authentically are and allowing that to be good enough more than good enough there's such beauty in this simplicity to have a mindset of invitation and really every moment is our invitation so just another breath or two here again just highlighting for yourself whatever you were invited into maybe what you're invited to drop that no longer serves you maybe the next literal little micro want something that you just feel like doing right now it can be so small something that's available to you that you can just get up and go do right this minute and then you can notice the successful end of that and that it felt good in the doing of it it's honoring yourself it's learning to trust yourself that you not only heard the invitation but you followed through and you took yourself up on the invitation and you can be very pleased with yourself that you were alive in that moment to say yes to the invitation so thank you for spending a little time here with yourself with me in this space of invitation one more deep breath and I'll ring the gong thank you for honoring yourself in this beautiful life have a wonderful day and I'll see you in the next one

Reviews

Beautiful invitation and the timing of coming across this couldn’t have been more perfect. Thank you 😊