Welcome to a guided meditation in the 12-step tradition.
Today we'll be focusing our efforts on the task of unity,
The objective of being in union with all things,
All beings,
And unity with the Divine Presence.
Our goal will be to move towards acts of compassion and love that are ever-present within us.
The life of mystics throughout the ages are wonderful examples of fully living into and expressing the mystery of our interconnectedness,
Which is always grounded in love.
For today's practice,
We'll be drawing upon the Center for Action and Contemplation,
Cynthia Bregot and Hilleman,
Who write,
The act of love is surrender,
Surrender of self into life as it is.
This is a love larger than our word love can contain or even express.
It embraces all of life and does not judge.
Through tragedy,
Through war,
Through separation and suffering,
We are led into joy and creativity through love.
Beauty and death and new life coexist.
As we move towards embracing life as it is,
Acceptance,
Forgiveness,
And healing naturally result.
As we begin our meditation,
We will take time to reflect from the depths of our being.
I will use I throughout the meditation.
You can use it as a form of affirmation and imagining your own path.
All that we do is simply a suggestion within this meditation.
All the words will be used from a safe space to lead us into the ideation of unity with all beings,
And hence move towards deeper and deeper compassion for those that we imagine are separate from us,
But in fact are united in the divine cosmic dance that we call love.
Please find a comfortable seated position with room and space to breathe deeply.
Beginning with a focus on your own breath,
We'll start at the sound of a bell by re-centering and move forward from there.
As you listen to the sound of the bell,
Allow the reverberations to move throughout your body and into your surroundings.
Listen till the end.
The principle of unity,
The act of love,
A surrender.
When we let go enough into the depths of our being,
We are in communion with all creation.
One becomes many.
The self reflects itself in another.
The mystery which surrounds and informs us is the depth of our own being.
We discover that our loneness informs and produces our bondedness.
They both exist.
Ours is an identity which belongs in all beings.
Herein lies our healing,
The recognition of our oneness and our connectedness with God.
In order to stay grounded,
I have to find other ways to honor the paradox.
I have to discover it in the simplest of ways,
The most minute of experiences,
Such as sitting here and breathing.
Only then do I find my home.
I belong.
All beings do this.
I belong while I'm walking,
Looking at a tree,
Listening patiently to someone else or to the wind,
Caressing a child.
Scraping carrots into a sink,
Weeping or laughing.
I belong,
As do everyone else.
Listen to the sound of unity in my breath and in the bell.
How do I practice this?
How do I become more connected and more vulnerable and open to this connection with others that I might act out my knowledge of unity?
First,
I learn to be tender with myself,
To tend the core needs of my own soul.
Imagine what those few needs are.
Then I begin to tend the other,
Which is also,
Like me,
In need.
If I'm not tending,
Caring,
In some small way,
For all living creation,
How can I commune with that creation,
Be it the earth or a child or myself,
All connected?
Then I learn,
In caring for another,
That we are all bonded.
A person who tends the land,
A small plant,
An animal,
Discovers that same bond.
These are not just moral niceties,
But they are part of the infinite mystery of creation.
They are the law of the universe.
We close this meditation in new recognition of communion with all life and union with the divine.
Insofar as we allow new languages to arise in our body,
God is with us.
These languages are love,
Awe,
Wonder,
Gratitude,
And joy that overflows as we share it with others and bonds us and softens us.
With gratitude and awe,
We are able to recognize more and more the beauty that shines forth in each day.
Even amidst the suffering,
The terror,
And the separation which we have around us,
We recognize that we are graced.
These are the languages of being alive.
This is a life lived in compassion,
Passion with.
This is the great mystery.
May we live in deeper and deeper unity so that we can serve and love with more and more grace.
And may peace be with you.
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