This is a short meditation for when you feel like you're drowning and you can do this with your eyes open,
You can do it on a walk,
You can do it with your eyes closed with me right now.
So when you're drowning,
Oftentimes it's because you're in a sea of thoughts and feelings and beliefs and you've lost perspective and contact with your ability to be with whatever it is you're thinking and feeling or believing.
But you're also flailing a little bit,
You know,
You're scrambling and you can feel the scramble.
So think about the struggle that you're having right now,
The thing that's most dominant,
That you're most afraid of,
And we're going to go in and we're going to touch just the edges of it without being consumed by it.
So if you think about this struggle,
The feeling of being drowned like you're drowning,
What are the thoughts that come along with it?
What are the emotions?
Maybe you can't name them but you can feel them.
And where does it live in your body?
Can you find it?
Draw a chalk line around the experience in your body right now.
And if it's your whole body,
It could be a chalk line around your whole body.
But where is its epicenter?
Like where does it have the greatest force to pull you under?
Get a sense of where it stops and where it starts,
Like where's the edge of the experience in your body,
The edge of intensity.
And then go to one edge of that experience,
The top or the bottom or the side,
And put your attention on that edge.
Notice what you feel there.
Just this edge of it.
So that you're not fully in it but you're riding the surface of that edge.
And if you find yourself getting kind of pulled out or strained,
Just come back to the edge of that feeling,
Being aware and noticing.
Is this your experience here and now in this place?
And if you like,
You can stay on that edge or you can start to expand your awareness inside of the edge,
Feeling more into the experience.
You can work your way around the edge,
Noticing that,
Surfing it,
Riding this edge,
This way.
You have such really painful big things happening right now.
They can feel really big and feel like you're underwater in them,
Turned about.
But you can ride the edge.
It takes going towards it,
Finding it in your body,
Getting out of your head,
Getting out of the story,
Getting into your body,
Finding that edge and doing what you know how to do.
Move in along it.
And then here's the next thing that you can do with that experience,
That that experience is sitting in another experience,
Which is your whole body's experience,
Right?
You have your whole body with this epicenter of drowning feeling.
And then your whole body is sitting in another experience of spacious,
Loving awareness all around you.
So you can focus in and ride that edge of your experience or you can expand out and feel the experience that's greater than you,
Greater than this edge.
Sometimes that can help too.
But what helps really is for you to know that you get to be the chooser of how you ride it,
Riding the edge or expanding out.
You don't get to choose how big the wave is or how intense the experience is.
And that's okay.
But you do get to choose how you ride it,
Where you place your attention.
And then I also want you to know and see that I'm in the water with you.
You're not alone in any of it.
In fact,
There's a lot of people in the water with you.
You can bring them in if you like.
Nobody is having your experience.
But we all share in our experience of being human and riding this edge of pain while leaning back into the mystery of love and expansiveness.
And that's all.
