Welcome everyone to your weekly meditation.
I hope this meditation finds you somewhere enjoying the springtime.
In Oregon things are starting to blossom.
The air is filled with beautiful fragrances.
It just feels like energetically returning a corner.
Let's just go ahead and come into our meditative posture.
So you can be seated or lying down,
Standing.
You can even do this as a walking meditation if you feel like your body needs to move.
Let's start with our three deep breaths.
Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Let's set our grounding connection,
Our grounding cord.
The grounding cord is just a visual in your mind's eye that connects your body into the earth.
Maybe it's tree roots or a rainbow or just a beam of light.
Just imagine something as wide as your body,
Connected to your back body,
Your sitz bones,
Your hips.
Let that visual extend down through your cushion,
Through your floor,
Into the beautiful nourishing earth.
Now with each out breath,
You're just allowing any mental formations,
Any body,
Physical pain,
Body discomfort.
All that just flows down through your body,
Down through your grounding cord,
And it's just easily composted by the earth.
Send down through your grounding cord any mental formations,
Any thoughts about anything that's not just right here,
Right now.
If you feel so inspired and called,
You may just want to say a silent prayer that you intend to align yourself with unconditional love,
To move through the world with grace and ease,
To find joy in this moment.
Let's take a few moments to check in with our body.
Meditation is an embodied exercise.
It's not just about releasing and relaxing mental formations,
But it's about opening up our awareness to the present moment,
Which includes our body.
Just bring our awareness into our chest.
Just notice what sensations arise as the breath moves through you.
Move our attention into our hips and our sits bones.
Start to feel the material of your pants and your leggings.
Maybe you feel the hardness or the support of the chair,
Cushion.
Let's move our attention into our hands,
The palms of our hands.
Just trying to get a sense of our body,
Awareness of the body,
The sensations,
The ability to focus on a body part and hold our focus there.
Expand our awareness to the sounds.
Beyond the sound of my voice,
What sounds do you hear?
Now,
Let's gently bring our attention to the sensation of the breath.
Just try this.
See if this is possible.
See if you can hold three of those sensory inputs at once.
Let's see if you can be aware of the sounds coming in through your ears,
The feeling of the breath in your body,
And the awareness of your sits bones on your cushion or your chair.
We're training now so we can be aware and awake off the cushion with our family,
With our loved ones.
If any thoughts are arising,
No problem.
Just simply let them go or you can send them down through your body and out the grounding cord.
If you so choose,
You can say these words,
Body,
Mind,
And spirit are grounded.
I am firmly connected to the earth.
I am here now.
I move easily through the world.
We're going to do a compassion exercise.
I've been trying to work with compassion because often when I think or dwell upon the suffering of others,
I have this fear that I'm going to get sucked into that negativity,
Into a place of fear and anger,
Hatred.
But suffering is life.
Life is suffering.
It sounds dramatic,
But if you interchange dissatisfaction for suffering,
And then it's just the human condition to be dissatisfied.
It's not all the time that we're dissatisfied,
But often we've been sitting too long.
We feel like we need to stand up.
We've been hanging out with one person for a long time.
We may feel like we need to hang out with a different person.
And so that wanting something to be different,
It's that dissatisfaction.
And of course,
There are large dissatisfactions,
Large sources of suffering and pain,
Physical ailment,
Loss of a loved one,
Change,
Change in all its forms.
So when we work with the heart of compassion,
We're bringing in,
Acknowledging,
Witnessing another's suffering and having our heart be open to that suffering,
Having our heart tremble,
Having our heart respond.
And just through that witnessing and that response,
Alleviating some of that pain or discomfort.
Carrying part of the burden,
Lightening the load.
Let's just bring into our heart,
Our heart-mind state,
Someone dear to us that may be feeling some kind of dissatisfaction.
Maybe it's a minor suffering.
Maybe it's a major suffering.
But regardless,
They're feeling that they want life to be different.
Let's just gently breathe in their pain,
Their discomfort,
Their disease,
Their suffering.
And then when we breathe out,
We're just going to breathe out strength and wellness,
Support,
Love.
If you feel inspired,
You can repeat these phrases after me.
It's just a chant of compassion.
We surround all forms of life with infinite love and compassion.
Especially do we send out compassionate thoughts to those in suffering and sorrow,
To those in doubt and ignorance,
To all who are striving to attain truth,
And to those whose feet stand close to the great change called death.
We send forth all wisdom,
Mercy,
And love.
May the infinite light of wisdom and compassion so shine within us that the errors and vanities of self may be dispelled.
So shall we understand the changing nature of existence and awaken into spiritual peace.
Thank you for practicing with me today.
