The focus of my meditation today is going to be on loss and grieving and how we can use ceremony and ritual as a way to recognize and metabolize things that happen to us in order to further transformation to open ourselves to new possibilities.
So I'd like you to find a comfortable place where you can sit or lie down for the next 20 minutes or so.
I recommend wearing headphones.
I'd like you to find a place that feels private,
A place that you can be emotionally vulnerable.
Once you've got yourself set up,
Begin connecting with your breath.
Letting the air move in and out of your body.
Close your eyes.
Begin to relax the muscles of your face.
Take three deep breaths,
Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Begin in through the nose and out through the mouth.
Once again,
In through the nose and out through the mouth.
Over the past months,
Our world has endured a lot of change.
Everyone has been affected in subtle ways,
In large ways.
In this exercise,
We're going to explore these changes together safely,
Kindly,
Using our imagination to explore together.
With your eyes still closed,
Imagine yourself in a room,
A fireplace,
Comfy furniture,
A large desk.
You're seated at the desk,
On which has a large sheet of paper and a pen.
You pick up the pen and begin to recall some of the things that you have lost over the past six months.
One at a time,
Begin writing them down on the piece of paper.
As you write,
Allow the emotions associated with each loss to come up,
To feel them fully.
You can write about many things or one thing with many details,
Whatever is coming up naturally for you.
Continue imagining yourself to write these things out.
Feel in your body as you write,
Right from the body.
Allow yourself to begin wrapping up.
You've got about another 30 seconds to a minute to write.
Make sure that you're calling somebody else.
Sit with the paper at your desk.
You begin carefully folding it into a square.
You stand up and pick up the piece of paper.
You walk outside,
Step through a doorway,
Carrying the paper with you to an outside veranda where you meet a group of people,
All of which who are committing the same ritual as you.
All who have wrote their losses on their page and who are with you.
You meet in a circle,
See the faces of the people around you.
One by one,
Begin placing your pages into a bowl at the center of the group,
Beautiful ceramic bowl.
You place your paper down amongst the others.
An individual from the group steps forward and lights a match and applies it to the papers,
Which immediately begin curling against the fire and steps back where she.
You all observe flames as they engulf the pages you've written,
Enveloping with fire,
Transforming them into ash and heat.
You watch in silence together,
Hear the sounds of nature around you as you stand in solidarity of each other.
And the last bit of paper is disappearing into ash,
Which is swirling with a little bit of breeze that's around you.
The group comes together and as one picks up the bowl,
Begins carrying it away,
Away from the house,
Away from the structure.
Across to a broad field with trees and brush.
And there's someone that's dug a hole.
You walk up to the hole which has been begun and you dig your hands into it.
You're feeling the earth between your fingers,
The smell of the earth,
The texture.
And bring the bowl closer to the hole,
With utmost care and love in pouring the ashes into the hole that was created.
Refilling the earth by hand.
And another member arrives with a pot of water.
You carefully pour the water over the fresh earth,
Soaking it and refreshing the soil.
You stand with the group in a circle around the earth pile.
Again in silence and recognition.
Now you begin walking away from the group towards a solitary bench that is yours.
You sit down and you take a deep breath.
You spend some time in your heart.
Imagine the people outside of you who are maybe suffering,
Perhaps greater than you.
Hold those people in our heart.
And you open your eyes and stand up and walk away from the bench through the field.
Hear your feet in the grass as you move.
Smell the air.
Feel the breeze and the ambiance of being in nature.
Visualization begins to fade into nothing as you exit the field.
Slowly begin to return to your body.
Take three more deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Breathing in and out.
Breathing in and out.
One last time.
Breathing in and out.
So important to stop and recognize when you've experienced loss.
It's easy to think about resilience as simply moving on from the things that have happened from you,
But we're humans.
We feel emotions and grieving is a real thing.
And there are small deaths and large deaths and everything in between.
We can use ritual and ceremony in order to place emphasis on these things that have happened to us for a moment and to reflect and to fully feel our emotions before we can then move on and reevaluate,
Reimagine,
And transform our lives to the new reality that is unfolding underneath us at all times.
Thanks again for being with me and for sharing this space together.
I bow to you deeply.
Be well.
