All right,
So go ahead and find yourself in a comfortable spot somewhere where you can feel relaxed but also stay upright and alert.
Let's just start like we always start with three deep breaths.
Breathing in through our nose and out through our mouth.
Maybe just start to feel that familiar tug of gravity,
The weight of your body being pulled to the earth,
The weight of your arms.
Maybe you can start to feel your sitz bones or your bum connect to your cushion or your chair.
Just coming into present time.
Let's set our grounding connection so it's just a visual that connects your body into the earth.
It doesn't matter if you're way up high in an apartment or down low.
You're just going to visualize some way of your body connecting to the earth.
Now as you exhale,
You're just allowing your body to relax and you're letting Mother Earth hold you and nurture you.
You're just letting go and releasing down into Mother Earth.
Anything that's not serving you at this moment,
This time and space,
This embodiment.
As you breathe out,
You might just start to feel the tension in the crown of your head release.
The tension in your shoulders and your neck ground down and out through your grounding cord into the earth.
Mother Earth is so much larger and wiser and older.
She's so much bigger than our petty human concerns.
She easily composts,
Recycles anything that's not in our highest good.
Just let it flow down and out.
It's almost like gravity is pulling out any imperfections and impurities.
Just anything that's not serving you or your community today.
While we're here,
I invite you to connect or to create a two-way connection with Mother Earth.
On your inhale,
You can imagine that you're breathing in nourishing grounding earth energy so that you know when you're out in nature,
The earth just has this pulse and this rhythm that's deep and slow.
I just invite you to play with that if you'd like,
Breathing in nourishment and then continuing to breathe out anything that doesn't serve you.
There might be a favorite place in nature,
Someplace in nature that right now would feel so deeply nourishing to your spirit.
If you'd like,
I invite you to journey there in your heart and your mind and just bring in that nourishment for yourself.
You might imagine what it looks like,
What it feels like on your arms or your legs,
The temperature of the air or the water is.
Just allow that nourishment and that replenishment to cycle through your body.
It's almost like you're calibrating your frequency to the frequency of the earth and just allowing that place in nature to just sort of reset,
Especially after this week,
With all the ups and downs.
Many human traditions or cultural and spiritual traditions talk about the human body being a really special place because we are the merging of heaven and earth energy.
We've brought in earth energy and now I just invite you just easily,
With just the intention,
Without a lot of effort,
Just invite you to bring in some cosmic chi or heavenly energy.
So it's just the counterpart to Mother Earth,
His Father Sky.
Just allow your spirit to be buoyed or touched.
Just rise up a little bit with a sense of expansion and possibility.
Just allow maybe starlight or cosmic chi,
Whatever works for you,
To come in through the crown of your head.
This comes in through your crown,
Pours down over your torso,
Starts to mix with that earth energy that you've brought up from the ground.
Being rooted,
Yet alert,
Grounded,
Yet energized,
Connected to both earth and sky.
This is the ideal human condition.
We're going to go into silence in just a minute.
I just invite you to continue to play with the interplay of these two energies.
You see if you can get into a rhythm or circuit in your body of bringing in earth,
Bringing in heaven,
And grounding off anything that doesn't serve you.
Or simply allow yourself to rest in this energized and grounded space and go into your meditation practice,
Perhaps focusing on your breath or the sensations in your body.
Let's gently come,
Staying in meditation,
Let's gently come into our heart chakra,
Which is just the energetic center for love and compassion.
I always like to start with some gratitude for the heart.
It works so effortlessly and fearlessly every moment of the day.
Not only does it keep us alive,
But it's just this tender organ that's constantly interfacing with our loved ones,
Our colleagues,
What's happening in the world.
It's just working so hard to keep us balanced and in connection and relation with people.
Just start with some gratitude for the heart and its efforts.
Maybe just a gentle investigation into this space that holds love and compassion.
Just how is your heart today?
Just gently listen for a response and there's no need to change the response or manipulate.
It's just an acceptance of what is there today.
Let's gently call into our awareness some small or large act of kindness or generosity,
Something that you've done perhaps in the last week.
Just some little thing that you've done that was kind or generous.
Maybe you helped a friend or cooked dinner for a loved one.
You smiled at a stranger,
Whatever it was.
Just find one little thing.
If this week was hard and that seems an impossible task,
Find something from your past that you know you can hang your hat on that that was a kind act.
Allow that knowing of your decency,
That knowing of your humanness,
Just to kind of lodge in your heart.
It's just a remembrance that you are a kind person.
You have a generous spirit and that you yourself are deserving of love and compassion just as much as you shower on others.
May I be well.
May I be happy.
May I know love.
May I know peace.
May I be free from the causes of suffering such as anger,
Greed,
Hatred and ignorance.
Gently shift your awareness to your community of loved ones,
So people in your life.
You might imagine them circling you,
People that your love for them comes easily.
If they were to show up on your doorstep at this moment,
Your heart would just burst open with happiness and gratitude for their presence.
Call those friends,
Maybe their pets,
Maybe their children,
Grandchildren,
Lovers,
Parents,
Grandparents.
Bring them into your awareness.
Perhaps there are even ancestors too.
When you think of them,
You know of their love and you know your love for them is deep and wide.
May you be well.
May you be happy.
May you know love.
May you know peace.
Imagine that beam of loving kindness coming out through your heart and maybe it showers over them or maybe it's like a giant hug,
A big giant energetic hug that you get to give them right now.
Just notice how joyful and open your heart feels with that kind of love that you're giving out.
You can allow those friends and loved ones to stay around you and let's call in maybe one layer further out.
All the other people that are in your community that you interact on a daily basis with.
Maybe you don't necessarily talk to them but they're there.
They're your work colleagues.
They're your neighbors.
They're your community colleagues at the coffee shop and the grocery store.
They're the people that are connected to you in some way.
They've chosen to live in the same town,
To shop at the same grocery store as you.
You are connected on a physical level with these people.
Just gently find yourself surrounded by these beautiful humans.
May you be well.
May you be happy.
May you know love.
May you know peace.
We're going to stretch our heart a little further and call into this circle and this person or these people may already be there.
Maybe when you look out at this sea of relatives and sea of colleagues,
Perhaps there are some that you have friction with or you feel like may have harmed you or are harming you or are harming our nation.
If there's some kind of rub,
Some hitch in your get up with these spirits,
These people,
Just notice,
Acknowledge they too are human and are doing their best to balance their experience on planet earth,
This human experience with its highs and lows.
Let's send them loving kindness just as we would bestow upon our friends and family.
May you be well.
May you be happy.
May you know love.
May you know peace.
May you like everyone else be freed from the causes of suffering,
Ignorance,
Anger,
Greed,
Fear,
Hatred.
Let's gently bring the entire human community,
Plant and animal community in which we share this amazing planet earth.
Spirits throughout space and time,
We offer you the great loving kindness.
May you be well.
May you be happy.
May you know love.
May you know peace.
We are connected in so many ways we can't see or even feel people in places around the world.
The heart chakra actually governs personal immunity and resiliency to dis-ease and discomfort.
By strengthening this field of loving kindness,
We're actually benefiting our own health.
It's like we are generating a shield of loving kindness that both feels good to others and allows us to be protected through the heart chakra.
Let's now turn our attention back to ourselves and that gentle,
Tender,
Beating heart that desires the same thing that everyone on planet earth desires.
Just to feel love and acceptance.
To be witnessed,
Seen,
Heard,
Appreciated.
May I be well.
May I be happy.
May I know love.
May I know kindness.
May I know peace.
Buddha reminds us that no one is more deserving of our love and compassion than our ability to give and support others comes through our strength to support ourselves.
We'll sit in silence for one more minute together and then I'll ring the bell to end our meditation.
