Meditation From Writing My Father's Obituary

This week I'm saying goodbye to my dad. It's been an honor, and impossible, to write about him. He was such a gentle and loving soul. He was here for 87 years but what's that, but a blink in time? Or at least that's how it seems to me.

Dad measured by how well he listened. He taught me that, or I should say, he did his best. It might have begun to stick...about 50 years in. He measured by how much he laughed. I tried to learn that from him, too. I'm definitely still studying.

And he measured by how well he loved all of us: without question, judgment, or criticism. This was, for me, his most powerful teaching. He showed me how to do it, and he modeled it, but of everything he taught me, this one is the hardest. This one is the teaching of a lifetime, the one I'm still learning. The one I'll remember about him the most: is how well he loved, and taught me to love, without question.

Transcript

Let's say.

So beginning by finding the posture that most supports you today.

And beginning with that earth element of feeling the body sitting or standing or lying down,

That sense of solidness,

That earth element,

The bones,

The flesh,

The heaviness that is the body.

In whatever posture you find your body in.

Sensing into how the body and the earth are not different.

They're made up of the same elements.

They are elemental.

We are elemental.

And another element we can pay attention to in this body is water.

Just the simple sensation of the mouth.

The mouth is wet.

Sensing into the element of water in the mouth,

In the eyes.

My eyes have been wet a lot lately.

But even on a day of no consequence at all for you,

You can feel the wetness in the eyes.

Most of the weight of the body is water.

Feeling how the body is full of fluid.

We're really mostly fluid.

The more grounded we can be and the more fluid we can be,

Probably the better.

So sensing into those two elements,

Earth and water.

Another element is fire.

How warm are you right now,

The body,

Or cool?

We have an internal heater in our bodies that keeps us warm,

Keeps us cool.

And I also think our emotional body is warm and cool by turns.

So just taking a couple of moments to explore the fire element in the body for you right now.

And then the fourth element,

The element of wind.

The breath,

Paying attention to the breath flowing in and out of the body.

And also the way that we could be buffeted by the winds in our lives.

And also by the way that sometimes maybe we feel like we are becoming a whirlwind or modeling that calm,

Gentle breeze.