Namaste and welcome to this meditation stream with me,
Dhyansay,
Live from my home in Basel,
Switzerland.
In these special times,
Everything is changing and also our awareness is changing.
We are noticing new things,
We are experiencing changes and different things.
For example,
Borders in most of the countries are closed or are highly restricted.
This is something which is very abnormal for most of us.
I remember when I grew up in India,
For a very long time I had no sense of borders.
I did not know what borders meant,
I did not know what visa meant.
But then I moved to Germany in my early 20s and then I first time got to feel what does it mean to cross the borders.
What does it mean to enter new borders,
To have visas and all that stuff.
And this was a very strange feeling for me.
Not good,
Not bad,
Just a strange feeling to have this awareness of borders,
Of restrictions.
I lost it after now a long time,
That sense of borders is back again.
I live in Switzerland and when I try to go to Germany,
I see that everything is closed,
Which is a neighboring country.
Another important thing to notice is in our awareness,
These changes,
What are we feeling?
Those feelings are important to notice because this awareness has significance,
Not just for our daily lives but also for our spiritual journey.
Yesterday I was talking about social distancing and how the awareness of the other and the distance,
The gap between the other is more significant.
Today we are going to focus this awareness on boundaries,
On borders,
On boundaries.
And the first set of boundaries that we all live is the body.
The body that we are in is the first boundary that we all experience.
Just like when you are used to roaming around freely and suddenly you are restricted to the boundaries,
The borders and then to the boundaries and the borders of your home,
You only feel strange because earlier you knew the expansion,
You knew what it meant to be outside those boundaries and those borders.
Same is with the body.
It is also strange,
Somewhat strange that we all grow thinking,
Assuming that these bodies,
These borders of the body are the boundaries that we are confined in and there is perhaps nothing outside these boundaries,
These borders of the physical body that we can experience.
But as your awareness,
Your spiritual awareness grows,
You feel that there is more that you can expand beyond the body.
In yoga,
This expansion beyond the body was explored deeply and it was classified in five different layers.
I will very briefly explain those layers so that we can understand how we are meditating,
What are we going to do,
How this technique really helps us to have an expanded consciousness and a sense of peace and peace.
A sense of being connected with the whole.
So the yoga says the first layer of the body which is the physical body,
The Anmaya Kosha,
This we all know.
With our normal levels of awareness,
We all know this body,
This layer of the body.
There is nothing interesting about that.
But when we go deeper,
When the awareness starts to increase,
We feel that there is another body which we can experience which is known as the pranic body.
The body you can think of it as the body of breath,
Pranameya kosha.
When you are breathing in and out and your awareness slowly starts to expand,
You can feel this subtle layer of the body which starts expanding beyond your physicality.
Slowly your physical boundaries,
They blur and you feel that your energies are expanding.
They are going beyond the body.
If you are sensitive,
If you are aware.
If the awareness increases further,
You experience the body which is the mental body,
The manomaya kosha as explained in yoga.
Which is to say the body of your mind and your mind also expands with the expansion of your awareness,
With the expansion of your consciousness.
You are not only restricted to what you think,
What thoughts provide you as information,
What emotions trigger in you,
In your being as an activity.
But also something more than what your mind,
Your mental body is giving you the experience.
If the awareness expands further,
There is another level of the body which you can experience,
The fourth level which is known as the knowledge body or the jnanmaya kosha.
What that means is with this expanded sense of energy body,
The subtle body,
The expansion of the mental body,
Your wisdom also expands.
It is more inclusive,
It has more view,
More vision in it than you would have before.
This expansion is known as the expansion of jnanmaya kosha of knowledge.
And the last which is the bliss body,
The anandmaya kosha.
What that means is in the ultimate expansion of your consciousness,
In the ultimate expansion of your awareness,
There is no end to your bliss.
You are blissful just the way you are and it has no boundaries.
It is flowing in from you to the world,
From the world to you.
There are no boundaries and you feel this expansion in your experience first hand.
In today's meditation session,
We are going to focus on a couple of subtle bodies while we are bringing our awareness to our breath,
To our centeredness.
We will slowly first of all bring our awareness to our boundaries.
We will feel our boundaries of the physical body and then put our imagination to work to feel and assume and imagine for a moment that your body is somewhat expanding.
And you try to feel that expansion of the body,
Not the physical body but the energy body.
That your energy body,
That your sensation,
Your feeling is somewhat beyond your physical body.
And let this expand as much as you can.
Let your imagination allow you to expand your subtle body,
Your pranic body.
If this does not happen,
It's fine.
Don't need to stress yourself.
Just imagine that it's happening,
Feel that it's happening and let the boundaries of your physical body blur as you expand your awareness with this subtle body.
After a few minutes,
We are going to shift our awareness to the mental body which is to say that we are going to bring our awareness to the mind.
In the same process,
Allow the mental body to expand the boundaries of the mental body to become blurred,
To melt down and you slowly feel that you are expanding.
Your mind is expanding beyond its boundaries.
Your awareness,
Your consciousness of the mind is expanding beyond the boundaries.
If you don't feel it,
Imagine it,
Fake it until you make it.
Try to do this with your body,
With your mind and the rest follows by itself.
The wisdom,
The bliss,
The peace,
The centeredness all follow by itself as you go into this meditation,
As you enter into this feeling,
This imagination of expansion of your subtle bodies.
With that,
I invite you to close your eyes and take the next minutes to enter into silence,
Inwards in your own being,
Settle your body in a comfortable posture,
Either sitting cross legged like myself or with legs straight on a couch or a chair.
Important is that your back is straight,
Shoulders relaxed,
Head relaxed,
Face relaxed and a gentle smile on your face.
Take a nice deep breath,
Inhale from the nose and exhale from the nose.
Feel your body,
Awareness inwards and feel your boundaries of your body,
All the sensations,
The boundaries of your body.
Breathe in and out normally and your awareness on your boundaries.
From your head to toe,
The entire body,
And its boundaries.
Feel your awareness to settle on the boundaries of your body.
Imagine that your body is expanding,
The energies are expanding,
The boundaries getting blurred with every breath,
The boundaries getting blurred,
Your body expanding.
Keep on imagining,
Feeling,
Beyond the boundaries let them expand,
More and more.
Notice the sensations,
The experience beyond your physical body.
Let this expand with every breath,
As you settle in silence and your energies expanding upwards.
Your energy is filling the entire space,
Beyond your physical boundaries.
Shift your awareness to your mind,
Notice the boundaries of your mind.
With every breath,
Imagine,
Feel,
That these mental boundaries are expanding in all directions,
Boundaries getting blurred,
And your awareness expanding along beyond your mental boundaries.
Allow your awareness to expand,
Beyond your mental boundaries,
And fill the entire space,
Your body at rest,
Your mind at rest,
And your mental body expanding,
Your awareness going beyond the mind.
Leave all effort,
All imagination,
All feeling,
And simply sit in silence in this expanded awareness of yourself.
Sitting silent and aware,
And aware,
In a state of expansion,
Awareness,
And silence.
Bring your awareness back to your breath,
To your physical body.
Notice the peace in your body,
Centeredness in your mind,
Your sense of bliss in this moment,
Arising out of you,
In your silence.
And very gently and slowly,
You may open your eyes.
You may open your eyes.
