Welcome everyone to this short guided meditation.
The intention is to cultivate the capacity to abide here and now,
In and with and through the whole body,
Taking our place,
Taking our seat more and more fully.
And we will do this through cultivating attention to the body and breath.
And in this practice I will offer some poetic suggestions and ways of looking and attending to the body that may support this cultivation and gathering and collecting of our attention so that we can abide more fully.
Okay,
So please join with me fellow human fellow human to take your seat.
Take your seat,
Let your belly be soft,
Relaxed,
And let the palms of your hands be soft.
Invite your body to assume a posture that is at rest,
That is dignified and awake.
Let your attention be soft and open,
No need to focus too hard on something in particular.
Let's begin by inviting your body to receive whatever kind of in-breath he,
She,
They would like to receive right now.
So sit back,
Invite your body,
What kind of breath would you like to breathe in right now?
And witness,
Sense,
Marvel at whatever kind of breath is offered,
Short or long,
Rough or smooth.
And attention soft and open as your body breathes out.
And lightly having that question in the background as if asking your body,
What kind of breath would you like to breathe in right now?
And let them show you through the very in-breath and then again through the very out-breath that they would like to breathe out.
What kind of in-breath would you like to breathe in right now?
And you as the sensitive witness as your body breathes out and breathes in.
Now imagine with me if you will,
That your body is an outcrop of the earth.
How would your body breathe in right now if she knew she was an outcropping of this earth?
Sitting back as a sensitive witness,
How does this outcropping of the earth breathe in?
How does this outcropping of the earth breathe out?
So very lightly,
Dropping that idea into the body.
Body is an outcrop of the earth and staying close with a soft attention.
How does this outcrop of the earth,
How do they like to breathe in right now?
How do they like to breathe out?
In a way you're adopting the posture of a host,
Of a kind host.
Who is receiving the guest.
You're not jumping on the body or the breath but opening to this one who is arising as this outcropping of the earth as they breathe in,
As they breathe out.
Letting that idea recede and sense and imagine with me if you will that this body and imagine with me if you will that this body is a creature of this earth and knows they are a creature of this earth and they don't just know it through their head,
They know right now through their bones,
Through their sensitive sensing and feeling out the environment around them,
Through their fine-tuned attention and their awakeness.
It goes right to their skin and beyond.
So sense and imagine with me that this body is a creature of this earth and they know they are a creature of this earth.
Sense what happens to the sense of your body if anything at all,
To your breath,
To the quality of your attention,
Perhaps to the quality of knowing in with the body,
Through the body,
Around the body.
Just notice any perceptions that arise as you try on this idea that this body knows they are a creature of this earth and that this is home base.
Let this creature breathe how they want to breathe,
How they want to breathe.
Perhaps feeling the weight of this creatureliness as they sit on the earth.
There's nothing special that you have to experience.
These are ways of gathering and collecting our attention and opening up our sense of our own location.
Spending a minute with this sense,
This idea,
This image,
This possibility.
The body has intelligent creature on the earth.
Imagine,
Sense,
Feel into with me if you will,
That this body knows themself as beloved on this earth.
Imagine that your body,
Your heart,
Your mind,
Everything that you bring to the sea knew themself as beloved upon the earth.
You're not asked to believe it or disbelieve it,
But to try it on,
To let the heart already perhaps feel their way to their recognition,
A language that they may already speak under the noise of our familiar senses of self.
Imagine this body and this heart,
Mind knew themself as beloved.
How might your heart breathe out if they knew themselves as beloved?
How might the heart in your body breathe in?
How might you take your posture and take your seat and assume your meditation seat if you knew to your bones that you were beloved upon the earth?
And as we come to the end of the practice,
Recollecting if there were any ways of looking,
Any ways of conceiving of the body,
Poetic suggestions that supported the gathering and collecting of the body,
That supported the gathering and collecting of attention,
Then remember that,
Come back to those.
