Meditation On Remembering Who You Are

In the immortal words of Mufasa: "Remember who you are." This meditation is a guided journey through the forest of the mind, into the space where you can let go and remember yourself back to life. Close your eyes and follow along with the images that arise in your mind.

Transcript

The two of us are walking,

Talking,

Telling tales of heartbreak and loss.

Lessons learned and love that matter.

We're in the woods,

Walking slowly down a winding path.

The small stones our feet press into the soft soil leave little imprints,

Stories of our having been here.

The birds are singing,

And in their song is your entire life until now summarized.

Good and bad,

Ugly and beautiful,

Chaotic and peaceful.

We come to a sacred place,

The kind that makes you want to take off your shoes.

There's a small clearing,

And in that clearing the fire pit.

A hole to climb into,

A hole impossible to come out of the same.

The two of us know why we're here.

We've been here before.

We do this every once in a while,

You and I.

We come here every time one of us forgets.

Right now is a time of remembrance,

And a time for praise.

A time for gratitude,

And a time for learning to live slowly once again.

The hole speaks of your wholeness,

But you do not listen yet.

For your ears are pointed inwards,

Towards that place in you that craves change.

Yet also,

The place that fears being changed.

It's the same beautiful story every time.

The two of us sit at the edge of the hole and we start giving thanks,

Praising the many events that led to this one,

Flowing back in time.

Back to when you first entered the forest,

To the decision that led to that.

Back to all the heartbreak and grief that a life lived beautifully must certainly entail.

Back to the silent,

Steady love underneath it all.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

To the people in your life who led you here.

The ones who,

Like shadowy characters,

Taught you how to be broken open.

To the warmth of those figures of light and lightness,

Who held you and nursed you back together again,

Time and time again.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

All the way back to your birth.

Back to that triumphant first cry of being from your little mouth.

Back before your birth.

Back into the lives of your parents and all the deeds and misdeeds that led to this moment.

Imperfect,

Yet imbued with the random grace that led to this moment.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

Back to the birth of your parents and into the life of your grandparents.

Back into the life of your great,

Great grandparents.

Back,

Back,

Back.

Exponentially backwards,

All the way back to the start of life.

All the things that had to go right for this moment to happen exactly as it is.

The generations and generations of unbroken family lines.

All the beings that had to live out their story,

Who had to die for this very story to be your story.

You say thank you to it all from the deepest place in the vibrant stillness of your heart.

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

You're ready.

You climb down.

There is ash-white firewood,

Smelling like vision and healing.

Smelling like rain in the desert.

It fills up the bottom and the sides of the hole.

You sit down upon the dry,

Dry firewood.

You place yourself in meditation posture.

You close your eyes and wait as the sun goes down.

And the dark assurance of a starlit sky awaits your becoming.

There is a spark in the depths of your heart.

The part where stillness speaks the secrets of infinity.

The fire in the core of your being that always remembers.

That golden spark,

That still,

Quiet glow,

Now takes on a stronger hue.

Glows and grows.

Fills you up with painless,

Purifying fire.

Flames that now lick out of you and ignite the dry and frequent firewood all around you in the hole.

You are set ablaze,

Free from pain.

You burn brightly,

Quickly.

Becoming millions and millions of particles of clear white ash.

You are whirled up into the night sky as the embers of your fire compete with the brilliance of a thousand stars.

You spread out across the forest.

And every particle of you lands in a different part of the wholeness that you seek to remember.

You rest in the roots of the old trees digging deep down into the ground for nourishment,

For water.

With gentle stability to withstand the strong winds of life.

You connect with other trees through a vast mycelium network spread throughout the forest.

You rest within the network,

Learning the speech of trees.

Feeling the flow of information pass through your body.

You feel the information as you.

You are the tongue in the poetry of trees.

You rest in the earthworm inching through the dirt,

Sensing the rainfall.

You rest in the mole,

Searching out the earthworm,

Almost blind,

But yet perfectly sensible.

You rest in the beauty of all that is underground,

Feeling the vibrant aliveness of what we usually ignore as being below us.

You stretch your roots,

Searching for water.

You rest within the water below,

Letting yourself be drunk.

Transformed by the roots who continually transport you to the world above.

You rest in the trunks of the many trees.

Strong,

Thick trunks.

Thin and flexible ones.

You rest in oak.

You rest in chestnut.

You rest in beech and birch.

You find yourself in every shrub,

Bush,

Fern and grass.

You rest within every single individual leaf.

And as the sun comes up,

You remember what it is to truly be nourished by sunlight.

You breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out fresh oxygen easily,

Gently and naturally.

You rest in a small red squirrel,

Climbing in the treetops,

Taking in a fresh breath of morning air.

Breathing out carbon dioxide for the trees,

Before you run out looking for acorns and hazel,

You give and receive eternally back and forth and back and forth.

Time passes,

Seasons change,

Summer turns to autumn.

You rest in the orange and red shades of leaves,

Preparing to let go once again.

Winter is slowly arriving and you give up the old to make place for the new.

The leaves are falling all throughout the forest.

You rest in the sound of the rustling magnificence.

You touch the ground lightly after letting go of last year's bloom.

You decompose and are covered with snow.

You become nutrition for bacteria and fungi for future life.

All in a circle,

In a spiral of ever-changing renewal.

Same but different every time.

This has all happened before.

Winter is here and you rest in the soft silk-like paws of a hungry fox,

Hunting for food throughout the winter.

Leaving tracks of crystal clear focus in the fresh snow.

You rest in the little family of brown mice hiding in their nest.

You rest within the warmth they give each other by their closeness.

You rest in a thousand wildflower seeds underground,

Ready to burst with growth and possibility.

You begin the climb upwards as the seasons change again.

It is getting warmer and you appear through the spring dirt,

At first only with inklings of green,

Over time turning into a sea of ten thousand colors,

Exclaiming beautifully with your blooming that the warmth of the world has returned.

You rest within the delicious fragrance of this explosion of life.

You rest within a million bees searching out the perfumed nectar and making honey out of the beauty that you find.

You rest within the sound of the stream running through the forest.

You rest within the salmon swimming in the stream.

You rest within the young bear learning to catch the salmon with the clumsy,

Powerful paws.

You give and you receive.

Give and receive.

You rest within the iridescent blue-green feathers on the macbhi's back,

The ones that many people miss,

Thinking that the world is only black or white.

You fly above the forest,

Watching from above as down below.

You give birth to yourself in a million different forms,

Different beings,

Different lives,

Yet all part of your changeless,

Changing nature.

Seasons change and time passes.

Summer turns to autumn,

Autumn turns to winter,

Winter turns to spring and spring turns to summer once more.

Over and over again.

A hundred times.

A thousand times.

The forest changes and you are in the changing.

Always different.

Always the same.

You are the changeless change.

You are the placeless place.

You experience time differently now.

You know the flavor and texture of deep time,

Timeless time.

You rest within the infinite now of the listening of a badger's ears waiting for the rain to end so that she might leave the dryness of her den again.

You rest as a vibrant deep silence underneath the busyness of all that life.

You rest as the entire forest.

You rest as a relationship of everything in the forest,

Together and separate,

Different than the same.

You are intimate with everything here.

You know it as yourself.

There are people in the forest once in a while.

They walk through you appreciating your beauty,

Trying to remember something that they have forgotten.

You rest within their looking.

You rest in their dreams of remembrance.

You rest in their dreams of belonging to a place.

Some of them go home and meditate on the forest,

Trying to remember what they have forgotten.

You rest as the meditation.

You rest as the meditator.

You rest as the body meditating right here,

Right now,

Always at home.

You rest as the sense of belonging deep within the heart.

You rest within the question,

If consciousness is truly without limits,

Then how many limitless consciousnesses can there be?

You rest as you.

Always infinitely,

Deliciously you.

Always at home.

Try to remember this time,

And if not,

Don't worry,

We will just do it all over again.

The world loves to be remembered back to life.

The world loves to be remembered back to life.

The world loves to be remembered back to life.