Jemma,
Good evening.
Make yourself comfortable in your bed.
Lay on your back,
Palms up,
And fingers naturally curving inward.
Feel that you are totally relaxed.
Take a deep inhale through your nose.
Exhale out your mouth.
Clear the mind and body from the day's activity.
Begin to breathe consciously now through the nose.
Feel the breath move in and out the nostrils.
Feel the coolness on the air coming in.
Feel the warmth of the air going out.
Begin to follow the breath's pathway through the body,
Just as you practiced the empty bowl meditation.
Notice the natural pauses at the top of the inhale and at the bottom of the exhale.
And hang out in these spaces as it feels comfortable and natural for you.
This time of year,
Springtime,
The divine decorates the earth with ornaments of multicolored blossoms as she busily attends to the rebirth and nurturing of her vast offspring.
Euphorically,
Abounding the earth with flowers refers to the time of spiritual fulfillment.
Flowers of wisdom bloom after a long time of struggle in darkness.
We could say the darkness of winter.
We could say the darkness of ignorance,
Avijja.
In the spring,
The astral lotuses begin to bloom in the subtle body along the spine.
These are the chakras.
As these lotuses bloom,
The brain opens and expands to receive.
The fragrance of self-realization is experienced through this blossoming garden within.
It is here that our prenatal and postnatal karmas are cleared and the ego that has once created delusion is washed away.
The pathway up the spine leads to shirsa,
The crown,
Where the thousand-petaled lotus blooms.
This path becomes clear and accessible in the springtime of our practice,
Only after we have lived through much darkness and we are able to continue to strive for the light of wisdom.
Let my gardens speak for me when I am gone.
Let them speak in colored whispers of all the beauty I have seen,
Felt,
And lived.
Let them speak of how much death had to find me.
How many hard seasons it took to make me a living,
Breathing thing.
Let them speak of my seasons of growth and abundance.
But let them also tell of my seasons of loss and decay.
Let the soft,
Wet earth be a reminder of hardness that didn't win.
Of sadness that didn't calcify.
Of surrender that triumphed over resistance.
And let the glorious,
Fragrant blooms speak of my life and its greatest lesson,
That the beauty we make never dies.
Come sit by my garden.
Come sit by my garden.
Come sit by my garden.
Come sit by my garden.
Come sit by my garden.
Come sit by my garden.
