Hello and welcome.
Welcome to anyone that's new to my recordings and welcome back to anyone that listens to my tracks regularly.
Lovely to be with you.
So today's meditation is based on the focus and direction towards contentment in life,
A lovely way to live.
Now Paramahansa Yogananda often said it is important to be calmly active and actively calm.
This is to be spiritually healthy.
Peace is the enjoyment of life.
Activity is the expression of life.
This suggests once again the importance of having a balanced life.
As we practice these teachings that are given to us from the great masters and saints and sages of the yoga tradition,
And many other traditions of course as well,
We should concentrate on having a balanced life.
As we put these practices into place,
One should counterbalance the restless producing earthly activity with calmness producing spiritual meditation.
When you have completed your necessary duties of the day,
Which require your full attention and concentration,
Learn to turn off your nervous motor.
Retreat to the sanctuary within and feel calmness.
Those are also words from Paramahansa Yogananda.
So mentally affirm to yourself,
I am calm and feel that calmness settling within your whole body.
A body that is relaxed and calm invites mental peace.
Peace is something that the world needs now.
We all need peace in our life and it starts with the individual.
In other words it starts with us.
In order to be peaceful,
In order to spread peace,
Of course we must be calm.
Calmness brings harmony and good judgment into our life and all our activities.
We need to feel a calm quiet heart and peace will emanate from the soul.
That still quiet place within all of us,
Whether you realize it or not,
We all have a soul.
It's quite indescribable,
I think,
In our limited way of understanding these metaphysical wonders.
However,
Just feel it and it will become more and more real to you as you go along with your practice.
All the meditations that I publish on Insight Timer are about preparing the body and mind to enter a sacred inner space of peace,
Wherein one can feel a divine oneness.
So let's go there now.
Please get ready in a sitting position preferably.
Close your eyes.
Checking your posture that your spine is upright,
Elongated,
But no rigidity or stiffness there.
Just feel that you're supported and that you're able to remain perfectly still for a little while now.
Another suggestion is to have your feet firmly on the ground if you are in a chair or of course if you're sitting cross-legged on your mat or on the bed.
Just make sure that that spine is still nice and straight.
Put your hands on the top of your thighs,
Preferably with the palms facing upward and roll your shoulders back a little bit so as to open the chest.
Again,
Very gently without forcing it.
And if you're not used to this meditation sitting posture,
You will become familiar with it if you practice it.
Now lift your gaze,
That inner gaze.
Your eyes are closed and you're looking straight ahead into that soft velvety darkness behind your eyelids.
Just lift the eye gaze slightly as though you're gazing between the eyebrows but not going cross-eyed,
Just lifting it a little bit as though you're looking toward a light in the far distance.
And feel that you can try to maintain that position of your eyes which is really going to enable you to stay awake for one thing and to connect with that divine consciousness that is found within that spiritual eye,
The eye of divine perception.
So just be gentle about that.
If you're not used to it,
It'll come.
Now feel your body relax completely.
Feel your body relax,
The shoulders drop,
The arms relax,
Letting go of any sort of reaching out or grasping at anything.
Just feel that your hands are resting there softly,
The fingers curl slightly.
And then bring your attention back to your face.
The lower jaw drops,
The tongue softly spreads in the mouth,
The teeth are parted.
And feel the throat relax,
Feel your throat relax and the shoulders drop.
Be aware that your whole torso can be relaxed.
You don't have to hold on to tension,
Rather allow yourself to let go of it and relax completely.
It feels good to relax.
And when the body is relaxed,
Of course you feel content.
You feel that beautiful virtue of contentment and quietness within yourself.
Your mind is less restless now.
Even if thoughts do invade that space of quietness,
Just let them go.
You don't have to answer back to anything that crops up.
Rather just see those thoughts as clouds floating by,
Disappearing,
Leaving you with that thought which develops into a knowing that there is that still quiet place within yourself,
That soul,
The depths of your true nature,
That true divine nature that is within.
And so feel now that you're resting within a temple of quietness and feel that peace fills your body,
Peace fills your heart and dwells within the love that you have within your heart.
Know that infinite peace surrounds your life,
If you allow it of course,
And that's where you're going with this,
Learning to allow that peace to be present in your life,
Despite perhaps many challenges or demands.
And that peace can permeate every atom of your being.
Let that be now.
Let that peace and contentment be totally present within yourself and it feels good.
Peace can be everywhere.
You can even send that feeling of peace and love and contentment to a loved one or out into the world or both.
It feels good to relax.
You are actually nourishing your whole body,
Mind and soul as you relax in this way.
Meditation will come,
But first relax,
First feel the presence of stillness in your body and as you continue to practice,
That stillness within your body will expand.
One can refer to it as an expansion of consciousness,
Feeling the consciousness of that stillness and the first sign of peace that you truly sincerely feel within yourself is the presence of the divine.
So just rest there for a few moments.
Rest there in the stillness.
Coming back now,
And I give you this quote from the Bhagavad Gita,
Which is the Hindu Bible.
The state of tranquility is known as yoga,
The pain-free state.
The practice of yoga is therefore to be observed resolutely and with a stout heart.
Now that stout heart is really a beautiful quality.
It is one that is undisturbed,
Undisturbed by likes and dislikes,
The ups and downs of life and the negativity that swirls around the world.
Don't tune into that,
But rather tune into that still quiet place within yourself.
So I'll leave you now and I hope to be with you again very soon.
Thank you for tuning in and have a lovely day or night and feel that contentment within.
Many,
Many blessings to you.
