Hello and welcome to this meditation on the tarot card,
The Wheel of Fortune.
So let's begin in a comfortable seated position or lying down.
If you're seated in a chair,
Make sure both feet are flat on the floor.
And wherever you are,
Just make sure the spine is nice and long,
Fully extended.
And bring your attention to your breath.
Starting to slow the breath down,
Deepening your inhales,
Bringing the breath into the belly.
And slowly and fully exhaling all the air out.
Bring your inhale and exhale to smoothly transition between each other.
And notice the changes that happen in your body when you inhale and exhale.
Changes expand and contract,
Your chest and shoulders move,
Belly fills,
Belly empties.
Breath is moving into the body and out of the body through the nostrils.
What else do you notice?
What other sensations or micro movements of the body?
Continuing with this breath,
Bring your attention to your center.
That might be your heart,
Maybe it's your belly,
Maybe it's that space below the belly button.
It will be different for everyone,
But just look for the place that feels the most stable and calm within you.
And if you're not sure,
Just pick one spot for now,
You can always try another one at another time.
But for now,
Trust your choice.
And rest your attention here.
So we're going to attempt to keep our attention at our center for the rest of this meditation.
But if you notice and you probably will several times notice your attention wandering,
Whether it's up to your head or somewhere else completely different,
That's okay.
But at the point that you do notice your attention has wandered away from your center,
Gently bring it back to center without judgment of yourself or your mind.
Just come back to rest in your center.
And from your center,
Becoming aware of your breath again,
The passage of your breath,
Moving in and out of you.
Becoming aware of the continuous cycle of inhales and exhales,
Receiving,
Giving,
That constant sense of rising to the top of the breath on an inhale and descending to the bottom of the breath with an exhale.
You might begin to experience your breath cycle as a wheel.
Perhaps breath moving up the backside of the body on an inhale and descending down the front of the body on an exhale.
Or vice versa,
Just notice what feels most natural to you.
Your attention safely resting in your center as you experience your breathing as a wheel.
The wheel continues,
The cycle repeats over and over and over.
And yet with each breath,
We are changed.
With each inhale,
Fresh oxygen comes in to nourish ourselves,
Our bodies,
To energize us.
And on each exhale,
We remove waste and toxins from the body.
And in this way,
With each breath,
We are constantly being transformed.
Though our minds tend to believe we are the same from one breath to the next,
At our center,
We know different.
With each breath,
We are not who we once were.
And this transformation is how we live.
We must continually allow for this transformation to survive.
So pause a moment here,
Staying in your center,
Feeling yourself surrendering to the inner transformation occurring with each breath.
Allowing these cycles to be,
To heal,
To change.
Softening in their wisdom and honoring that these very cycles and changes are what's keeping you alive.
You might notice softening in your center as you surrender,
As you become more comfortable with this constant change occurring in your body,
In your life.
Welcoming and accepting each breath,
Each shift,
That inhale and that exhale makes in your mind,
Your body,
And your spirit.
And as you continue to surrender to this,
Perhaps you're noticing that softening,
Radiating out from your center into other parts of the body.
There's no need to control anything.
You can trust in your breath.
You can trust the change it brings is exactly what you need.
So coming back to your center,
If your attention has wandered,
But for the sake of comparison,
Let's take the attention from the center out to the periphery of your being.
While the cycles of your breath continue,
That wheel continues to spin.
Did moving your attention outward affect your breath or affect how you feel?
Are you as softened as you were at the center?
Are you feeling as much ease?
Are you able to surrender?
Out on the edges of the wheel,
We can get dizzy,
Distracted,
Fearful even.
We may want to control the spinning,
But our efforts will only create unnecessary tension.
I invite you back to your center where you can rest and be more observant of the cycles.
Your vision isn't spinning here in the center.
Instead it is more clarifying,
Helping you see more clearly the cycles of your life,
Allowing you to be more discerning about how you want to engage with these cycles,
How you might move with them from the vantage point of your center.
You begin to see how those downtimes in your life offered you a retreat to use your free will to reflect on your experiences,
To integrate the wisdom presented to you by those experiences.
In these downtimes,
You can truly come into yourself and come into better relationship with all of the parts of you.
And also from your center,
You can see how those uptimes in your life offered experiences and growth,
Opportunities to shine and apply your wisdom to your life and to come into right relationship with the world around you.
This is the medicine of the wheel of fortune.
If we are always on top,
We may learn nothing.
We may never know who we truly are.
The spotlight would burn us up.
If we are always at the bottom,
We could not grow and bring our unique and necessary light to this world.
Take a moment here to offer deep gratitude to the wheel of fortune and all the cycles it has brought and will always bring to your life.
These cycles have kept you alive.
These cycles allow you to grow and thrive,
To nourish and love and to deeply connect with the mysteries of life.
Take a moment now to connect with wheel of fortune energy and ask if it has any messages for you at this time.
Take a moment in silence to give the wheel a chance to speak to you.
If it has a message for you,
Just allow yourself to simply surrender to receiving any message.
The wheel might have for you today.
Take a moment to think the wheel.
Think it for its wisdom and all the opportunities its cycles bring you.
Know that you can connect to the wheel and to your center anytime,
Especially if things are moving too fast or too slow.
Whether you're at the top and believe you don't want to descend or at the bottom and you believe you don't want to be there either,
Or if you want to control the situation,
Come back to the medicine of the wheel.
Come back to your center.
And you can take another minute here if you'd like.
And only when you're ready,
Slowly blink the eyes open.
Deepen the breath.
Thank you for joining me for this meditation.
