Welcome.
We usually think of meditation as a process,
A methodology for going inward,
As a way to know ourselves better,
A way to make an intimate connection with all aspects of ourselves,
A way to create a unified being through self-knowledge and understanding.
And this is undoubtedly true.
It is exactly what we do in meditation.
But we are not meditating to get the best possible view of our navels.
One of my teachers says that self-care becomes self-indulgence when it no longer helps us prepare to better serve others.
If our increase in internal connection does not also increase the quality and degree of our connection to the external world,
Whether with rocks and trees or animals and people,
Then we are missing the point.
We desire to become a better person so we can in turn become better connectors,
Better partners,
Better friends,
Better stewards of nature.
We build a better understanding of ourselves so that we are better able to understand and connect with others.
This is our curriculum.
This is our school.
Our breath flows in and out thousands of times each day,
Every day over the course of our lives.
Everyone breathes this adoration of life.
Know this and be in great joy.
Life is dancing in you,
A dance of ever renewing delight.
Breath is our first connection.
The way of experience begins with a breath.
Our first inhale reaches out and takes in the world.
Your breath,
Perhaps trapped much of your day by tension or hidden by neglect,
Is your most intimate connection to the sublime source of all.
Through breath we connect physically,
Viscerally with the universe.
We draw the universe into our bodies,
Transform it,
And return it to the source.
Perhaps for a few moments you might sit with the realization of this most intimate,
Most elemental connection of your body with everything that exists around you.
Breath is the path of realization.
Breath is the path of realization.
Breath is the path of realization.
Put attention into the luminous connections between the centers of the body where the mind loves to dissolve,
Base of the spine and top of the head,
Root and heart,
Heart and throat,
Throat and forehead,
Forehead and crown of the skull.
Enter that glowing net of light with a focus born of awe,
And even your bones will know enlightenment.
Our connections to the outer world are born of our connections to our inner world.
Honesty to others is created through honesty with ourselves.
You might now choose to reach into your body with tenderness and care.
Connect with yourself,
With dreams and fears,
With strengths and weaknesses,
With joy and with love.
See yourself honestly and with compassion.
True compassion for others can only ever surface from a compassion for yourself.
One of the great gifts of meditation comes from the place where attention and love intersect.
Meditation is the practice of giving attention,
And with practice our attention skills grow stronger and deeper.
We become more capable of giving attention to relationships in the world.
The people in our lives seem new and surprising in every moment when we learn to give our attention wholly.
The gift of our attention is a stronger and deeper connection with those we love.
The sacred function of meditation is not to block out the world,
But to free you to attend to love.
When we connect with another person,
With an animal,
With family or friends,
We build connections,
Connections between hearts.
We might think of these connections as strings tying our hearts,
With enough length and enough strength to bond us across time and space,
And across the ruptures of disagreement and anger.
These strings stretch and return to shape,
But also vibrate,
Creating music.
Immerse yourself in the rapture of this music,
Tin to each note,
Each chord,
Rising up from silence and dissolving again.
Vibrating strings draw us into the spacious resonance of the heart.
Our relationships with others are pathways to enlightenment and knowledge.
You might choose now to sit for a bit listening to the music of your heartstrings.
Stay with the music that comes from the connections you cherish with others.
Vibrating strings draw us into the spacious resonance of the heartstrings.
Vibrating strings draw us into the spacious resonance of the heartstrings.
The water in your body is just visiting.
A week ago it was a thunderstorm.
A month ago it was the surface of a great ocean,
And it will be ocean again soon enough.
The air in your lungs was exhaled by a tree.
A year ago it was held in terror by a rabbit hiding from a predator.
A thousand years ago your air was in the lungs of a person sitting quietly and looking at the night sky in awe of the magic she found there.
Most of the cells in your body come and go like morning dew,
Like sunlight on the mist,
Like lightning in the summer sky.
We are constantly being remade.
We are more weather patterned than stone statue.
The light that enters your eyes traveled eight minutes and twenty seconds from its source,
The sun.
It sparked from the fusion of elemental hydrogen and its substance and your substance will one day find their way back to another sun,
To be burned again,
Again to be made into light to travel into the abyss.
Nothing is ever lost,
Perhaps remade in unknowable forms,
But always present.
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