Today we're going to be doing a 20 minute meditation on sound and silence.
So find a comfortable seat,
Giving yourself permission to have these minutes for yourself to drop into the deep nourishing silence where all creation springs from.
Today we're going to be focusing on sound as our object of meditation while resting in our inner stillness.
So as thoughts come to you,
You will think to yourself,
Thinking,
Acknowledging the thought,
Its presence,
And then let it go away.
Don't attach to the thought,
Don't follow the thought.
And go back to your object of meditation,
Which is simply the sounds around you,
All sounds being welcome.
Nothing is distracting or messing with your serenity.
We're accessing our innate curiosity,
We're getting curious about the sounds around us.
And curiosity is another important quality as a writer.
So I invite you to find a comfortable position with a nice regal,
Elegant,
Upright posture,
Whether you're sitting on a cushion or a chair.
Let's start off with three nice deep breaths,
Just to arrive in the space,
To check in with ourselves,
To separate this time from the rest of our busy lives.
Taking a nice breath through your nose and a nice deep breath out through your mouth.
Here's the first one.
In and out.
In and out.
In and out.
Nice.
And I invite you to close your eyes for this meditation,
Let those lids softly close.
Ursula K.
Le Guin says that to hear,
One must be silent.
So to hear our stories,
Our characters,
Our muses,
We have to get quiet.
We have to develop the capacity for deep,
Deep listening.
And this is the work we're doing today.
So I'm going to ring the bell,
Just allow yourself to follow that sound,
The richness of it into the meditation.
I'll be guiding throughout,
But I'm going to leave a lot of space for silence.
Tuning into the sounds around you,
In your room,
Outside the building you're in,
Voices passing cars,
Water moving through pipes.
Perhaps you have sounds of digestion in your own body.
A dog barking,
A plane flying,
A bird tweeting,
All sounds are welcome.
So just for a minute,
Let all of the sound be present.
Just listen.
This is your object of meditation.
Breathing through your nose,
Just regularly,
Nothing special.
Your mind might be racing,
And that's fine.
That's normal.
So just let the thoughts come,
And when they come,
Just identify them by thinking the word thinking.
And then let them float away like a cloud across the sky.
Don't catch them.
Return to your object of meditation,
Which is the sound around you.
You can follow an individual sound and its path until another sound takes its place.
Or you can just let all the sound wash over you.
Allow this to be a safe harbor,
This harbor of stillness and silence.
Acceptance of what is right now,
Even if it's a loud sound like a lawnmower.
All is welcome.
Get curious.
You're not doing it wrong.
Just sit here,
Listen.
That's all you have to do.
Isn't it nice?
It's all you have to do.
That's all you have to do.
That's all you have to do.
That's all you have to do.
If you're feeling any anxiety or boredom,
Frustration,
Just breathe.
Take a nice breath if you need it and sit and listen.
The Gertotli says that all true artists,
Whether they know it or not,
Create from a place of no mind,
Of inner stillness.
To find that inner stillness,
Which is just simply accepting what is and requiring nothing else of yourself right now,
But to just sit here and breathe and listen.
We can have inner stillness even if the thoughts are coming.
Just breathe and listen.
Nothing to do,
Nowhere to be.
Let the silence nourish you.
Just sit.
Take a moment to yourself.
Always come to in the noise of worry and fear about publishing uncertainty creative blocks this is the place that you come come to the stillness and it will have answers for you the sun The best art happens when it's just you listening,
Embracing the blank page,
Embracing all of the uncertainties,
Allowing the mystery to be accepted,
Giving yourself permission not to have all the answers,
Giving yourself permission to move slowly,
To not be concerned with what others are saying or thinking or doing,
To allow it to just be you and the work in the stillness,
In the silence,
To give yourself opportunities like this to nourish and quiet yourself.
We're also working on not being precious.
There might be sounds around you that feel less than elegant,
But in order to do the work that we need to do,
We have to sit whether we're tired or have the right chair or as much time as we want.
And here,
We're building that muscle of accepting what is and working with it,
Embracing it,
Embracing the silence,
Embracing the noise,
But not being swayed or run by the noise.
It's just noise.
In these last few moments,
Really let yourself sink into the silence to give up control.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Marie Oliver says,
Just pay attention,
Then patch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate.
This isn't a contest,
But the doorway into thanks and a silence in which another voice may speak.
I'm going to ring the bell.
Just allow yourself to follow the sound from the silence and back into the rest of your day.
Okay.
Okay.
