Welcome to your morning meditation.
Feel free to find a comfortable seat,
Bats with some support underneath you.
Maybe you're sitting up in bed with the prop of some pillows.
Or maybe you're lying flat on your back with your knees bent and your feet planted.
Just making whatever arrangements ensure your comfort.
And then there's already just closing down the eyes and bringing either both hands to the belly or one hand to the heart and one hand to the belly.
And just bringing awareness now to the softening of the body,
Allowing the body to relax even though you're sitting upright.
You're aware with the eyes closed of your body in space.
And you're aware of where your body ends and the space begins.
Maybe you feel the subtle brush of the air on your skin.
And you can sense the temperature and the atmosphere of the room.
And then just allowing your awareness to soften down into the breath.
Not making any changes,
Just becoming aware of the breath and allowing it to be exactly as it is.
Our tendency in the mind is to suddenly change the breath to make it better or more controlled,
But we needn't do anything like that.
We can just allow the breath.
And feeling the warmth of your hands against your body and this gentle rise and fall of the breath.
Feeling the heart and the belly lifting with the breath in and everything softening with the breath out.
If you're finding in this moment that the mind is particularly busy and distracted,
You can bring extra focus by taking the gaze either to the third eye or to the tip of the nose.
That might well help to settle the mind's attention a little bit.
And perhaps you can just allow yourself to step onto the breath as if stepping onto a surfboard that surfs the waves.
So you just begin to float on your own breath,
Allowing the mind to travel with the in and out and the up and down of this most natural rhythm.
Feeling with the breath in every moment.
And I'd like you as you enjoy this rhythm just to begin to tune in to the miracle that is your breath.
To the idea that in every moment of every day,
This breath is breathing for you.
It's supporting all the systems of your body,
Your heart,
Your brain.
It works in coordination with the cardiovascular system.
And it supports your life and everything that you do without you even thinking about it.
It literally has your back.
And this breath,
This prana,
This life force animates the moving body,
The moving mind.
And it animates even the still body and the still mind.
And the miracle of this breath is that with every inhalation,
Your cells are being nourished with life giving force,
Cleansing down to the last detail of your body.
And in that same moment,
As you turn into your out breath,
It takes away all the waste product of the body.
Cleansing,
Refueling,
Supporting you.
Albert Einstein said that there are two ways of viewing life.
Either that nothing is a miracle to you or else you see everything as a miracle.
And it's through a meditative inquiry when we give space to pause,
Tune in and reflect and really,
Really see what's around us.
That we have the opportunity to choose one or the other way of looking.
We might decide to see it as a miracle that we're sitting on a cushion or a bolster perhaps that comes from the other side of the world.
Or that any of the objects in the room that surround us just beyond the eyelids were made by hands of people in far away places.
We might choose too to see that any form of transport that we've taken today or this week is a miracle.
That the resources that surround us in order to make our lives possible are miraculous.
Whether that's wood,
Oil,
Plastic,
Steel.
And it's this looking more deeply into things and into ourselves that helps us to remember the confounding,
Compelling mystery of all that is.
How did these things come to be?
How did they find their way into my life?
We might extend the same questions and that same degree of openness to all the wonderful people who fill our lives.
To remember also that their bodies breathe and conduct the most complex of biological functions in a way that our minds just cannot conceive,
Cannot fully comprehend.
And when we think of human life itself and the diversity of all life on this planet,
The miracle of the ecosystem.
In all of its complexity and interdependence and beauty just a vast array of life living on this spinning planet nourished by the sun,
Nourished by the rain,
Which moves in cycles.
The water cycle,
The fact of the moon,
Its fullness waxing and waning.
The waves which crash across all coasts everywhere guided by the force of gravity that emanates from her.
And the fact that day follows night follows day.
And our seasons,
They come and go according to the tilt of the earth and our position in relation to the sun as we orbit.
This universe,
This life and everything in it just a profound,
Vast,
Mysterious miracle of existence.
And we are part of it.
We are it.
A wise woman once said to me,
Don't forget the unexpected.
And it took me some time to understand what she meant until I realized I think what she meant was just leave room for the unexpected.
Leave room in your life,
In your imagination,
For all of the uncertainties to become the potential for miracles.
When we look in this way,
When we choose to see the world,
We see that miracles are all around us.
We also see that everything is possible,
Even things that we never could have conceived of,
Things way beyond the limits of the human mind.
And in doing so,
We open ourselves to vast quantities,
To endless creativity,
To infinite realms.
Seeing the miracle of life,
We allow the lesser daily stresses and irritants to begin to fall away.
They don't even touch us.
Because we decide not to take them on,
We just become a shield against them.
Because when we've chosen to see the miracle,
We choose to dance in the light,
In playfulness,
In a sense of abundance,
Mystery,
And awe,
All the qualities that are conjured by the right hemisphere of the brain,
And which make human life so joyful,
So rich with meaning.
So knowing that we have a choice in how we see means we also know we have a choice in how we experience this life and this world.
Opening ourselves to the possibility of the miraculous,
We say yes to life and all that it has to show us.
And we might just close by bringing a smile to the lips if there isn't already one playing on your face.
Noticing how you feel as we move towards closing this meditation.
And as a gesture of thanks,
Let's join our hands together at the heart center,
The Anahata center,
And silently bow the head towards the heart.
Namaste.
