Good morning,
And welcome to The Artist's Morning.
My name's Darius,
And I am so grateful that you and I get this time together.
Let's begin our practice.
If your eyes are open,
I'd like to invite you to close them now as we begin to go inwards together.
And let's go nice and slow here,
Starting with some deeper,
Slower breaths,
Giving yourself a moment to land,
Landing in your body,
Landing in your seat.
Just a gentle reminder that you,
Dear artist,
Are allowed to go slow.
You are allowed to go slow and give yourself the space you need.
Let's take a deep breath here together,
Breathing in,
Holding at the top of your breath for just a moment,
And dropping our shoulders and making some noise on our exhale and letting it all go.
Today our practice will be on the theme of calm,
Committed,
Consistent energy.
Today we will gently,
We will lovingly slow down so that our calming energy can become a magnet to our dreams.
Throughout the meditation,
I'd like to invite you to continually,
On your own,
Take slow,
Deep breaths.
If it's available to you,
Make some noise on your exhales and see if you can find a little bit of ease and pleasure and comfort as you breathe.
Let's try one together right now,
Breathing in and gently letting it go.
Today,
With your permission,
I'd like for us to travel somewhere magical.
I want you to join me in this beautiful forest,
Imagining in front of you,
Around you,
Behind you,
Trees,
Plants,
Animals.
There's a freshness to the air here.
In this beautiful forest,
There is this clear sensation of safety and support.
It's a really beautiful and really comforting place to be.
And before we go anywhere,
Do anything,
I just want to leave some space for us to take in the energy of this forest,
Breathing the air in,
Feeling the ground beneath our feet.
Perhaps you can feel the sun against your skin.
It's the perfect temperature for you.
And in this beautiful forest space,
So full of life,
You happen to notice about a hundred feet in front of you,
A bird.
It's a blue jay,
A beautiful,
Small blue bird.
It's sitting on a branch of a tree and it notices you.
And somehow you immediately know this is no ordinary bird.
This blue jay represents your dreams.
You feel an excitement in your heart because everything you dream of is right there in front of you.
And you take a few quick steps forward and this dream bird begins to fly further away to a further tree.
Further away to a further tree.
This beautiful bird is looking for your calm,
Committed,
Consistent presence.
Let's take a deep breath here,
Calming our energy,
Breathing in and letting it go.
Now,
All around us,
There are squirrels that are looking for you.
Now,
All around us,
There are squirrels,
There are chipmunks,
There are other birds vying for our attention.
And it's okay to look away.
It's okay to step in different directions.
It's okay to go fast.
It's okay to go backwards.
It's okay.
When we bring our calm,
Committed,
Consistent presence to this beautiful dream bird,
This dream bird flies closer to us.
We do not need to chase.
We do not need to do 20 things at once.
We can go slow and our dreams will step towards us.
If you are open to it,
If you are ready,
Let's use our breath.
Let's use our mind to stay with this beautiful bird,
To let this blue jay know.
We are calm.
We are committed.
We are consistent with our presence.
There will always be squirrels.
There will always be chipmunks.
There will always be distractions and we will always have the ability to slow down,
To stay with our hearts and to bring our presence to our dreams.
I believe in myself.
I believe in my dreams.
I believe my voice matters in this world.
I believe in myself.
I believe in my dreams.
I know my voice,
My ideas,
My vision matters in this world and just take a moment to notice how those affirmations impacted this beautiful dream bird of yours.
Your dreams matter.
Your desires,
Your longings matter.
There's no right or wrong way of bringing our dreams to life.
My gentle invitation here is instead of chasing and doing 20 things,
Sometimes what we need to do is to slow down.
We slow down so we can feel the impact of our incredible hearts.
We can hear the wisdom within them.
This is our last song.
I'm going to stay quiet from this point on and just give you and this beautiful dream bird some time together.
And before our meditation comes to an end,
I want to make a little space in case you want to share some gratitude with your dream bird.
Thank you,
Beautiful dream bird for always being here.
Let's take one deep breath here together,
Breathing in and letting it go.
Thank you for meditating with me.
Thank you for going on this journey into this beautiful forest with me.
Dreams and dreaming,
In my opinion,
Are a skill.
They take practice.
If you haven't practiced for a while,
Maybe your bird was a bit more distant or elusive.
That's okay.
Stay committed to this bird,
To your dreams,
To your heart,
And you'll see big improvements.
For those that are joining us live at the artist morning,
I'm going to put 20 minutes on the clock and share a journaling prompt for us and allow us to continue this exploration.
Of course,
If you're catching this on a replay,
Perhaps on insight timer,
You can do the same.
Put 20 minutes on your clock,
Get your journals out and see what's here and ready to be expressed through you.
Thank you once again for meditating with me.
My name's Darius and I will see you next time.
