Welcome to this meditation.
Find a relaxed comfortable position.
You can be seated on a chair or on the floor or on a cushion or you can lay down on your back.
If you are sitting,
Keep your back upright but not too tight.
Let your tongue rest in your mouth wherever it is comfortable.
Feel your toes,
Your fingers.
Take a breath in.
Relax your hands.
Relax your shoulders.
Turn into your breath.
Feel the natural flow of your breathing in and out.
You don't need to do anything with your breath.
Not long,
Not short.
Just let everything to be natural and what feels good for you.
Notice where you feel your breath in your body,
How you feel it in your lungs,
In your stomach.
Feel your chest is moving with your breath.
How air is flowing in and out.
When one breath ends,
Another one begins.
You might notice that your mind may start to wander.
You may start thinking about other things.
This is only natural.
If this happens,
It is not a problem.
Just notice that your mind has wandered.
You can say thinking or wandering in your head softly and then gently redirect your attention back to your breathing.
Let yourself relax and become curious about your body,
The sensations it experiences,
The touch,
The connection with the floor or the chair,
The pillow.
Relax any areas of tightness or tension and breathe.
Imagine yourself on a beautiful beach that is filled with white sand.
You are walking there with your bare feet and feel the sand underneath your feet tickling your toes.
The sky above is dark and blue like velvet.
There are beautiful colorful flowers that are dancing in the wind,
Seaweed rustling.
The scent of flowers is intoxicating.
Orchids,
Roses,
Beautiful bright flowers.
The night is full and you can hear the sound of the ocean.
It's just like a breath.
In and out.
Waves crashing onto the shore.
But the waves are small,
Not too strong.
You hear birds singing or other monkeys.
Cicadas in the grass.
These are bright exotic birds like parrots.
Flamingos flying.
You can see silhouettes of flamingos.
There's a beautiful conch on the sand.
You pick it up into your hands.
It's almost as big as your palm.
Conch is colored like a light green.
It's soft.
You put it on your ear and you can hear the breath of the ocean.
Taking those same breaths as you are taking because we all come from the ocean.
We are all made of water and we are all one.
Take a deep breath in and out.
In and out.
And when you are taking these breaths,
You can feel the water touching your feet.
The water is warm.
It is inviting.
It is the same color as the night sky.
Dark deep blue.
You look up into the sky and you can see that it's filled with stars.
And you can see those stars reflecting into the ocean.
Moon is in the sky.
Beautiful,
Bright.
Round circle.
A mystery has captivated our minds for eons.
How it has such a strong power to the ocean and the way we behave as humans,
To the animals,
To the tides.
Thank the great moon for existing and giving us light during these dark nights.
You begin to walk away from the beach and go towards a tavern.
There is some nice,
Gentle music coming from there.
The building is white and the window frames are dark blue like the ocean.
The tavern is made of sandstone.
And when you enter,
Music continues.
There are candles on each table.
There are cats sitting on the chairs.
There's a dog sleeping behind the counter.
And even a parrot looking down at you from the ceiling.
You decide to go to sit to the porch.
There's an empty table.
Everything is peaceful.
You feel happy and content.
This place is like a paradise.
It is filled with colors and scents.
Musicians pick their guitars,
Flutes.
The music is calming and beautiful.
You move your body together with me.
You move your body a little bit to the beat.
There's a view to the ocean from the terrace.
There are dolphins that jump in and out into water,
Making their funny noises.
You hear the splashes.
It looks like they're laughing and smiling.
But what it is that comes behind these dolphins?
It looks like a human.
You can see their hands,
Their head,
Their face,
Which also smiles and laughs.
And their tails are brightly colored like a rainbow.
And the moonlight shines light on them.
And these beings look like they sparkle in all the colors of a rainbow.
There's not just one,
But many.
And they laugh together.
They form a circle.
And they sing and dance and have fun.
You are not alone looking at these mermaids.
Other people have come to the terrace as well.
Their eyes are wide open.
Some of them has their mouth open.
It's a miracle.
But nobody says anything.
We are all just looking at these beautiful,
Magical creatures.
Enjoying their lives,
Singing,
Dancing,
Chanting,
Jumping all the way to the moon and back,
Trying to reach the stars.
One mermaid swims to the middle of the circle and the others bow at her.
She seems to be a bit different.
She's taller than the others.
She's beautiful and graceful.
Her tail looks like a dolphin's tail.
She has a crown made from seashells.
She reaches her hands up towards the sky.
She takes a wand and points out to a constellation of the Pisces.
And then she begins to sing.
And she tells us the story how Pisces got into the sky.
This line of obscure stars runs beneath the great square of Pegasus.
After cancer,
They are the faintest of the zodiac constellations.
The northern fish can be made out just south of Andromeda's hip.
The southern fish lies south of the great square.
The tails of the fishes are tied together by a chain,
Lying between the brighter of Andromeda's feet and the head of Ares.
The mermaid sings about the eternal love that binds the two fish together,
Like love binds mermaids together,
Like love that binds humans together,
And the universal love which connects all of us.
The fishes existed in early Egypt and then in Babylon.
They belong to the Babylonian mythology and are the only signs the Greeks failed to explain with one of their own myths.
Their myth pertains to the Syrian goddess Derseto,
Or Atargatis,
Whom the Greeks identified with Aphrodite.
Two fishes found in the Euphrates a giant egg,
Which they propelled to land.
Their adorn settled upon it.
From this egg,
After a few days,
There emerged the Syrian goddess.
At her request,
The great god honored the fishes by placing them into the heavens.
According to another Syrian tale,
Derseto once fell into a pond and she was rescued by a fish.
The Greeks of the Hellenistic age provided the fishes with a myth with rather more Hellenistic coloring by using the story that the gods of old changed their shape in order to hide from the dreadful monster Typhon.
This tale was invented in order to explain why many of the gods of Egypt had the shapes of animals.
On that occasion,
Aphrodite and her son Eros,
The love god,
Dived together into the Euphrates.
To do this,
They took the shape of a fish.
Or as another version has it,
They were rescued by a fish,
Who were rewarded for their kindness by a place in the sky.
So that they should not be separated,
They tied their tails together.
This story is a curious mixture of Syrian,
Egyptian and Greek mythology.
The mermaids hold their hands together and sing.
My mother,
My mother the ocean,
My mother the moon,
My mother goddess of the ocean.
Atargatis,
The queen of the sea,
Bless us all with your love and your eternal beauty.
Hail Atargatis,
Hail the ocean,
And hail our love to one another.
And then they are all gone,
The mermaids,
The queen of mermaids.
There is no trace of them.
We only saw them for a moment,
And yet there they were.
But the constellation of pieces is still in the sky,
Looking down upon us.
Like the ocean,
Taking care of its children,
The fishes,
Dolphins,
Mermaids,
Turtles,
Whales,
Shrimps,
Starfish.
And all marine life,
Seals,
We are all made of water,
And the sea is part of us.
The goddess has many names,
Derseto,
Atargatis,
Aphrodite,
Venus,
But they all represent the same thing,
The universal love and beauty.
Beauty also means inspiration,
Beauty means having curiosity each day,
Having beautiful dreams at night,
Peace,
Tranquility,
Happiness.
Goddess of love,
Goddess of the sea,
Also represents nourishment.
The sea nourishes us the same way as mothers nourish their children,
Or how we feel when we are with our loved ones.
Because we are all connected,
Like the two fishes made of stars in the night sky,
We are tied together with that invisible chain.
All around the world,
We are tied to the ocean,
Our primordial mother.
You can slowly return,
Let the tavern fade away,
The beach fade away,
But you keep the blessing of Atargatis,
The sea goddess.
You remember the feeling of love,
You remember how you imagined the mermaids to look like,
And the way you felt when you saw them.
You remember the colors,
And how everything felt,
And you take that feeling with you wherever you go.
We all have mermaid magic inside us.
You can move your head a little bit,
Breathe in and out,
You can feel your fingertips and move your hands.
You can tap your feet,
Your toes,
Feel the floor underneath your body,
Or the cushion,
Or the chair,
And return back to this time and place.
Manaste.
