Welcome.
Give yourself permission right now to settle,
To breathe.
Perhaps you have held a tight grip on yourself today.
You can let that grip relax.
You can let tension run out of your muscles like water running off a rock.
You can feel it as it leaves,
A memory written into the muscles of your body,
A memory of tension that slowly fades.
You might now allow yourself to open to yourself,
To other memories,
Other experiences of relaxation.
Open yourself as you might a well-worn book,
The book of your memory,
Perhaps falling open to a well-loved page.
In hell,
The smells of fine paper and inks,
Of a lovely handmade binding,
This book of you.
Take a few more breaths of acceptance,
Allow.
Let yourself remember that first and foremost you are a student,
A novice,
A seeker,
And that you will always be so.
The book of your life has pages to run,
Chapters,
Each waiting for you to mark them with letters and words,
With drawings,
With memories yet to be made.
Memories can come to us from our minds,
But may also be from our bodies,
Encoded in muscle and skin.
Memories can also be saved,
Perceptions of our senses,
Hot,
Dark,
An image,
A smell,
A sound,
Something written on our bodies,
Inner cells of body,
Embodied,
Cellular memory encoded in muscles or senses,
Encrypted with a cipher we sometimes hold the key for.
Instincts are passed along to offspring through genes.
And what are instincts if not memories?
Memories of how to respond,
With fear,
With flight,
With tenderness,
With love.
These are ancestral memories,
Memories of ancient altars,
Of time worn rites of survival,
A feeling of communion from heart to heart to heart to heart,
Going back through the ages,
Back to some ur-language,
Back to our first attempts to name things,
To write a language of memory.
Your memories may be your own,
But they may also be something passed down to you,
Passed along to you from another.
For a moment or two,
Let memories come as they will.
Let yourself accept what comes as you will.
This is Sutra 96.
When the unforgettable calls you,
The memory of something noble,
Generous,
Inspiring,
Accept the gift,
Savor every detail.
The beauty we admire is a visitation from another moment,
Infusing body and heart.
Memory transports us beyond time and space into the living presence of wonder.
For a moment or two,
Let memories come as they will.
From your body,
From your mind,
The memories spawned are like a dream,
Something passed in an allegorical language,
Presented in this moment by your mind and by your heart to lead you to relaxation,
First to a liminal state between waking and sleeping and moving ever towards rest.
The familiarity of the poetry of our bodies with our own meter,
Our assonance,
Our rhyming schemes.
You can trust the messages of memory as waymarkers on the path to rest.
Delightful memories,
Those that warm us,
A smell of our favorite dish cooked by a favorite person,
Wafting to a snug in a blanket in front of a warming fire.
We can reenter those moments,
Bask in those feelings,
And for a time be content with the world.
We can rest in grace.
When by oneself,
Flooded with delight and memory,
Here is the ritual that caress,
Embrace that particular pressure,
Your subtle body replays the dance inundated by sensation.
Surrender to the deluge and know it as your own.
This ocean of bliss is you.
Perhaps a memory of sound,
Of music softly played in the silence of the night,
The sound of water filling a glass of water dripping from your roof during a summer rain.
You may have tended a winter fire and remember the feeling of heat on your hands and forearms,
Or the heat of the sun on your bare skin warming you on a summer's day.
Perhaps you recall the nudge of a pet's head against your leg,
The softness of its fur,
Or maybe the feel of fingertips brushing your arm,
Moving across your cheek,
Your lips.
A memory of rest,
Of relaxation,
A feeling of calm that enveloped mind and body,
A moment when time seemed to stop.
Let memories of peace,
Of relaxation wash over you.
Hold on to some memories of taste or touch,
Or let them swirl around you like autumn leaves.
Let memories come like dreams,
Something remembered,
Some moment of quiet,
Some lullaby of breath,
A touch,
A caress,
A feeling of home.
Let them all come,
A deluge to guide you home.
Surrender to the deluge.
Know it as your own.
This ocean of bliss is you.
Take rest.
Rest.
You you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
