Good morning and welcome to the Artist's Morning.
My name's Darius and today's meditation will be a little different.
There will be no music for our meditation.
I know people feel differently about meditations without music and that's okay.
You can feel however you'd like.
Sometimes removing music as lovely as it can be allows for a deeper connection to ourselves.
Let's begin our practice today.
If your eyes are still open,
I want to invite you to close them now as we go inward together,
Noticing what's alive here.
Where does your attention naturally go?
Let's bring our attention to our breath.
Blanketing your attention over the entirety of your breath,
Doing your best to stay with it from the first instance.
You notice it in your inhale and just stay with it,
Follow it to the last moment when it's leaving your body.
Unless you are a master meditator,
There is a very good chance your thoughts will come and pull you out of that connection with your breath.
Thoughts of your future,
Things that may or may not happen,
Things that you would like to happen,
Thoughts of your past.
And that's okay,
It's just how the human mind works.
How do you do in the stillness,
In the silence between my guidance?
Is there joy and pleasure there for you?
Is there angst and panic there for you?
Is there something else,
Something totally different perhaps?
This morning,
As I was preparing for this meditation,
There was a clear and resounding energy that had a message for me and I have a strong feeling for many of you as well.
The message was,
You are stronger than you can imagine.
You are stronger than you could ever imagine.
If you could grasp who you truly are and where you come from,
The resilience,
The tenacity,
The resourcefulness of your ancestors.
For millions of years,
Your ancestors,
My ancestors have been survivors.
All the things they've had to do,
All the chaos,
All the danger,
Through all of it,
One thing is undeniable,
They survived,
They made it,
Otherwise you and I would not be here today.
You are stronger than you can ever imagine.
You don't always have to be strong.
You don't always have to be happy.
You don't always have to smile.
And still,
You are stronger than you could ever imagine.
Perhaps you're open to this message.
And perhaps you are not.
There is a chance your heart closes to it and you disassociate from it.
And still,
You remain stronger than you could ever imagine.
The purpose of this meditation is not to make you feel happy or powerful or even strong.
The purpose of this meditation is to give you an opportunity to feel and notice what's alive inside you as you hear those words.
You are stronger than you could ever imagine.
For this last part of our meditation practice today,
If you are open to it,
If you are interested in it,
I want to invite you to see if you can connect to the incredible power,
Resilience,
Strength of your ancestors.
It's so easy to forget about them because many of them,
Most of them we've never met.
There's no photos,
No videos.
But everything they went through to survive and to allow you and I to be here now,
What a tremendous act of strength,
Of bravery.
So if you feel safe,
If you feel open,
I just want to leave a little space for you to connect to their energy and feel if there is a message they have for you here now.
Thank you.
Well done,
Dear artist.
To close our meditation,
I'd like to ask you to put your hand on your heart and just privately share a moment of gratitude for your ancestors.
As our meditation is now coming to an end,
I want to thank you for going on this journey with me this morning.
I want to let you know whatever you felt,
However open you were,
It's welcome.
For those of you joining us live at the Artist's Morning,
I'm going to put 20 minutes on the clock and allow you to do some private personal journaling.
If you're catching us on a replay,
Perhaps on Insight Timer,
Of course you can do the same.
Put some time on your clock and just notice what's here and real and looking to express through you.
Thank you again for meditating with me,
My name is Darius and I'll see you next time.
