Thriving In Your Life

Connect more deeply with your natural awareness, transcend old difficulties, and choose and manifest a renewed sense of purpose, focus and joy in your life. By using this practice daily you will find that your intuition and ability to respond in every area of your life opens up, allowing you to access your wholeness, and to have greater thriving in your life, relationships, work and finances.

Transcript

Welcome to this meditation which is designed to help you in every aspect of your day-to-day life,

Moving with love,

Intuition and direction.

Please allow yourself to be seated or to lie down and allow yourself to start becoming present.

Wherever you are allow yourself to be here right now,

Taking a look around the room or the space that you're in,

Allowing yourself to be comfortable and letting go of any idea of achieving anything in meditation.

Let go even of the idea of meditation.

We have to begin in this moment not from a fixed idea of something.

Meditation is not something that we achieve,

It's part of the natural state of our being.

We meet life in this moment in presence and then life begins to move more and more our way.

So just becoming aware of your body,

Noticing your feet against the floor,

Just noticing the feeling of your feet against the floor and really just allowing a feeling of feet and floor.

Not so much a thinking about but just a feeling.

Being aware of your lower legs,

Your knees,

Your quads and thighs,

Being aware of your buttocks against the seat and your spine rising up quite naturally,

Allowing yourself to be nice and upright,

Allowing your neck to be long,

Allowing the whole spine to be long as if there's a string connected to the crown of your head and it's just lifting you ever so slightly to be open in your own being but with no effort.

Allowing your eyes to be soft,

Allowing your eyes to gently close if you want to or if you have a tendency to get lost in thoughts and mind streams.

You can keep your eyes half open and gently gaze at the floor five or six feet in front of you.

This will help keep you more present.

Allowing your jaw to be soft,

Allowing yourself to be aware of your throat centre and being aware of your right shoulder,

Your left shoulder,

Your right upper arm,

Your left upper arm,

Your right forearm,

Your left forearm,

Your right hand,

Your left hand,

Whole arms,

Aware of the upper chest,

Your whole chest,

Your abdomen,

Awareness of your whole body,

Just the feeling,

The physical feeling of your whole body.

Not forcing your mind,

Just a general sense of lively awareness,

Not worrying about your mind or your emotions,

Not trying to change them but just tuning into your body,

Physically grounding in awareness.

Now simply allowing your felt sense,

Your easy attention to settle on your natural breath.

Notice that your abdomen is moving of its own accord,

That your breath is breathing your body,

A kind and restful attention on the breath,

Checking in with the state of our mind,

Noticing from this feeling of awareness how your mind is.

We usually comment and judge and try to change things in the mind.

Some thoughts we like and wish to sustain,

Some thoughts we don't like and wish to get rid of.

We're always looking around and things get labeled and marked and judged without us even realizing it.

And so we're not trying to stop that,

Not trying to stop the mind,

But we're just allowing ourselves to notice the action of the mind from our sense of awareness.

Just noticing the ebb and flow of the mind,

How the thoughts move across the screen of your consciousness and you're noticing this from awareness.

Just allowing yourself to enjoy this deepening sense of awareness.

And you can be aware of your thoughts with a gentle openness and curiosity.

And now noticing the emotions in the same way,

Just bringing your attention to your emotional state.

Your emotion may be moving,

It may be static,

May be something you wish to move towards,

May be something you wish to move away from.

It may feel that there's something that really needs dealing with in your life,

Your home life or your work,

Maybe some kind of pressure in the emotions or the mind.

And just acknowledge that if there is something there like that.

Acknowledge that and allow ourselves to understand that by meeting what needs to be met in our practice,

In our meditation,

We are doing our very best for ourselves and everybody else in our lives.

Creating space,

Awareness,

Reconnecting to our greater wisdom.

Allowing yourself to feel safe in your practice,

Safe enough to let go of the grip for a few moments.

And it's this turning up each day,

This movement into awareness so that we can see.

And this letting go into awareness that helps us develop greater clarity,

Greater love,

Greater authenticity,

Wisdom and a greater ability to respond.

Thank you.

If at any time you're jarred out of practice or there's a sudden gripping in the mind with fear or thought or an emotional pain,

Not fighting to get back to where you were,

But just noticing as soon as you can what has taken place.

Letting go of any judgment,

Any should-be's and just meeting the natural breath again in the abdomen and allowing your awareness to see what has happened and gently settling again.

Just re-entering awareness from wherever you are at this moment.

Your breath gently moving in your body,

The feeling of clarity,

Of deepening awareness.

Notice that you are not creating the awareness that you are.

But they're like love,

Like compassion.

Awareness is a natural aspect of your nature.

And as we move into the stiller,

Clearer,

Calmer part of our natural being,

Our authentic self,

We can allow ourselves to gently drop a question in as if we're placing a leaf onto a still pool of water.

Or perhaps,

Gently throwing a small pebble into a lake and we watch the ripples moving out.

And there's a sense of the ripples in ourselves without any attachment.

We can simply drop a question into the lake of our being.

We might ask,

How can I be of service today?

And then we simply let the question go.

No force,

No repetition.

Not framing it as an affirmation or intoning it as a prayer,

But simply dropping it into awareness.

How can I be of service today?

In my own life?

To the people that I care about?

To the people that I work with?

To my community?

To the world?

And then simply letting it go,

Not searching for any answer in the mind.

If you keep a journal,

Perhaps you can reflect on this question later.

But rather than forcing or looking for an answer that fits in with our previous patterns,

The things that we've learned in our lives through conditioning,

Instead,

We just surrender.

We surrender the question with love.

We offer it to the still pool of our awareness.

You might find that in a few hours or a few days,

There's a movement or an intuition within your awareness,

Something brighter,

A little inspiration.

We might see our path more responsively,

More clearly.

And as you commit to this practice each day,

It will allow you to move with real love and authenticity towards what is right for you in your life.

And if we move towards anything out of the old ways,

Out of ego,

Out of the old patterning or the unconscious,

Out of reactivity,

We begin to notice the difference and be able to make better choices.

Meet things with greater openness,

Aligning with the truth of our being.

And so,

Gently resting in awareness each day,

Letting go of our old frameworks and offering a motion of service towards ourselves and towards others.

We find that we are both of service and we begin to genuinely thrive in our lives in every way.

Now simply letting go of the question,

Meeting your natural breath in your abdomen and feeling the deep,

Clear awareness and space within you.

You may notice the space in the breath,

The beginning of the breath,

The end of the breath,

The subtlety of the breath.

You may even feel the space behind the breath,

The space that the breath arises from.

And your own awareness,

Aware of itself,

Behind the breath.

You recognize your fullness there,

Your wholeness,

The beauty of your life,

Your unique life,

Just natural and authentic.

You're not separate from the world in any way,

But fully present and part of all things.

Able to move with love,

Able to respond to each thing with awareness.

In a moment,

This meditation will end.

And we simply let go of all thoughts of meditation for the rest of the day.

We don't try to hold on to awareness.

Don't try to be mindful.

Just simply go into our ordinary lives.

Just meeting each thing,

Each person,

Each situation with your greater clarity and awareness and love.

And as you work with this practice day by day,

Awareness will simply be present with more and more naturalness in every situation.

And you'll find that your practice lovingly supports you by caring for yourself in kind and appropriate ways in all sorts of areas.

From the food you eat,

To the space that you live and work in,

To taking a walk in nature,

To allowing yourself space both inside and outside,

That you will be thriving in your own life.

And that everyone will benefit from you living your fullest life.

And so this meditation ends.

Thank you for sitting with me.

Have a beautiful,

Beautiful day.

Reviews

Truly extraordinary and supportive; thank you ❤️💫🙏

Thank you for such a beautiful reminder of who I really am. 💜🙏🏼

Definitely one to return to for cultivating equanimity. Another tender and wise meditation from John.

Damn near perfect.
Raw, beautiful, yet poised and graceful...everything I wanted and didn't know I wanted in a meditation.

John,

Your loving concepts here
found me
at the precise time
I was
able to listen
with adroit awareness.

You are touching lives my friend.

Lovely and soothing. And such a calming voice. Thank you 🕊🙏🏼

Excellent guided meditation. I will definitely listen again.

What a beautiful message shared by such a soothing voice. Thank you 🙏💕

Awesome practice! I’ll revisit it again. Thank you 🙏🏽

Thank you for sitting with me🙏🏼 what a wonderful meditation. Namaste

This was a perfect way to start my day. Thank you.

Thank you for this offering. I found it really helpful to have a lot of silence with some gentle nicely toned and phrased reminders to bring me back to awareness and focus.

Bearing in mind there’s so much silence within it, may I suggest a gentle bell to mark the formal end of the meditation would be helpful, for me at least. Each time I’ve done the meditation I’ve drifted off so a definite end would clarify.

Thank you so much for your hard work and inspiration. I am very grateful to have found this meditation.

Very soothing, thank you.

Thank you, John, came back to this special meditation of yours as a Sunday treat - it resonated deep in my heart and being. Thank you for sharing your light and voice and clarity, it’s so deeply moving for me to follow your guidance and find my very own light and voice and clarity. Much love to you 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Another gem. Thank you, John.

Thank you John. Half an hour passed so quickly and feel so serene and happy- ready to start my day. How will I be of service today?

Thank you for helping me see my wholeness.

A practice I will return to, many thanks 🙏

Thank you for being with me John have a beautiful beautiful day 🙏❤️

So simple, so great! Namaste!🙏