Hi everybody,
This is Shambhavi.
Today we're going to do a practice called Hiranyagarbha.
Hiranyagarbha means the golden egg or the golden womb.
This meditation is a way of getting directly in touch with your indestructible value,
With your essential goodness.
Relax into a meditation posture.
Make sure your knees are supported.
Begin to experience your normal natural breath just the way it is when you're not doing anything to control it.
Begin to notice the temperature of your breath moving in and out across your nostrils.
Feel the coolness of the breath as you inhale and the warmth of the breath as you exhale.
Now notice the subtle feeling of coolness at the back of your throat as you inhale.
Feel your lungs,
Your upper torso and your shoulders expanding and falling as you inhale and exhale.
Feel the gentle rise and fall of your torso,
Your lungs and your shoulders as you inhale and exhale.
Now make contact with the movement of your lower abdomen below your belly button.
Now make contact with the movement of your lower abdomen below your belly button as you inhale and exhale.
Feel your lower abdomen,
Your lower torso 360 degrees all around front,
Sides and back,
Gently expanding and then falling as you inhale and exhale.
See now if you can experience the feeling of your breath moving into every part of your body as you inhale.
Into your nose,
The back of your throat,
Your whole torso,
Your arms all the way to your fingertips and your legs all the way to the tip of your toes.
Let your awareness sink into your breath.
See if you can have the experience of being the breath moving into every part of your body as you inhale and gently spreading as you exhale.
Feel your lungs pulling your breath into every part of your body like a gentle bellows.
Let your awareness be the breath.
Have the experience that you are the breath being pulled into every part of your body by your lungs.
And then see if you can make contact with the feeling of breath gently spreading more deeply into all the cells of your body as you exhale.
So instead of focusing now on the feeling of your body gently falling or contracting as you exhale,
Instead let your awareness merge with the breath and as you exhale have a sense of the spreading of the breath even deeper and further into every part of your body.
And now as you inhale and exhale,
See if you can make contact with the breath as your vitality.
Rather than just feeling the breath as a subtle feeling of spreading,
See if you can make contact with the vital alive feeling of the breath as it enters your body as you inhale and as it spreads deeper into every part of your body as you exhale.
Let your awareness be the breath.
Feel that you are the breath and feel your own vitality everywhere.
Step down into your own breath everywhere in your body and make contact with your essential aliveness.
You may experience it as a vibration or a humming feeling or a sparkly alive feeling.
As you continue to breathe,
Let your awareness merge more deeply with the breath until there is no distinction between your awareness,
Your aliveness and your breath.
Now your awareness is deep inside every part of your body as breath.
You feel immersed in that experience of aliveness.
See if you can go more deeply and contact a real feeling of intelligence,
A real experience of intelligence.
See if your awareness can make contact with the breath as intelligence.
If you can make contact with the breath as movement throughout the body as a spreading feeling of movement and the gentle rising and falling of your body,
That's good.
If you can go a little deeper and experience breath as vitality,
That is also good.
Breath though is more than movement and it is more than vitality.
It is also primordial intelligence.
These are all three of these,
Movement,
Energy and intelligence are three different expressions of breath,
Three different forms of breath,
Three different modes of appearing of the breath.
So if you have that capacity,
Try to go deeper and deeper into the breath as the breath and see if you can experience that fundamental intelligence of the breath,
Of everything,
Of you.
Now have an experience of your whole body as one shape,
One shape sitting on the floor or in your chair.
And like a vase,
Feel that your whole inside of your body is filled with that lively intelligence of the breath.
Feel it everywhere.
Feel you are a shape filled with lively intelligence.
And now bring your awareness to the center of your chest,
The center of the heart space,
Not your physical heart,
But the center of your chest,
The heart space or the cave of the heart.
Let your awareness rest there easily inside that space of lively darkness.
Feel it as your own home,
Your refuge.
From within that cave of the heart,
From within that restful darkness,
See emerging a tiny golden egg.
It might be made out of beautiful pure gold emitting a soft golden light,
Or it may be made out of pure golden light.
See a tiny golden egg glowing beautifully and softly about the size of the digit of your thumb.
Let your awareness enjoy this golden egg,
Haranya Karba.
Let your awareness be magnetized by the beauty of this egg.
Don't worry if you can't visualize.
Just think of the golden egg or imagine it and let yourself enjoy it.
From the center,
From this golden egg,
Feel your whole heart space filled with soft golden light.
Think to yourself,
I am this golden egg.
I am this beauty.
I am this magnificence.
I am this purity.
I am this goodness.
See the golden egg as a source of all wisdom and all virtue.
All compassion,
All clarity,
All creativity,
All kindness,
All curiosity,
All intelligence,
All generosity.
Experience the golden egg as the essence of these wisdom virtues.
Say to yourself,
I am this golden egg,
Indestructible wisdom virtue.
And now experience your whole self as a field of lively intelligence at the center of which is this golden egg of wisdom virtue.
Experience this as your real nature,
Eternal and indestructible.
Write in this experience until you feel like getting up from your chair or your cushion and try to carry it into the rest of your day.
