Consciousness Shift - Opening & Expanding Perspective

This meditation zooms out and zooms in to give you a macro and micro perspective on the wonder of the multiverse and the mystery of your own body and cellular intelligence. This meditation is for the moments when you get caught up in details that make your head hurt, when you get swamped with worry, and other times when shifting your perspective towards a broader, bigger vision is necessary.

Transcript

Hello and welcome.

The following is a guided meditation by Renee Seals,

A somatic movement educator,

Energy worker,

And astrologer.

This meditation is intended to help support your embodied meditation practice.

If in the recording you are prompted to do something that doesn't feel good for your body,

Please adapt and modify to make it work for you.

Please also note that the content of this meditation sometimes explores deep and subtle states and memories,

And sometimes guided visualizations.

You are encouraged to work with discernment as you practice with them.

If any of the guidance Renee offers feels too activating or uncomfortable,

Please listen to your body's knowing and pause the recording until a later time if you wish to return to it.

These guided meditations range anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes and do not require any supplementary equipment to participate.

We hope you enjoy.

Hello and welcome.

Thank you so much for listening.

My name is Renee and I am going to be offering a somatic meditation.

Somatic meditation is a style of attunement.

Meditating is bringing our awareness and our focus into a specific space,

And the specific space is our body.

The way that I approach this kind of meditation is through invitations to visualize and imagine and feel into your visualizations and imaginings.

These meditations can be done anywhere.

For today's meditation,

I'm actually going to suggest that you do it lying down.

I know that this might cause you to fall asleep.

In fact,

I hear from people very often that they fall asleep during these meditations and I think that's great.

If this brings you into a dream space,

Then that's really one of the best uses for it.

If you can stay present with it,

But allow yourself to also be in a little bit of a liminal space,

Then that is delicious because then you can notice what's going on in a more conscious way and also get to experience and explore a little bit of the unconscious.

If you do fall asleep during this meditation,

I highly suggest that you write down any dreams that you have.

Alright,

So take your time to get comfortable and set up.

You do not have to lie down.

You can definitely sit.

You can move around.

This would be a great meditation to do outside in the woods or in nature somewhere,

But you can also totally do it when you're on the bus or driving your car or taking a walk through your neighborhood or something like that.

So make the choice for where you want to be and go ahead and get set up and the first priority will just be comfort.

So I'm gonna feel my own position here and make any little adjustments that I need to make and you can feel your position wherever you are and feel into your body and just notice like what is catching your attention if there's a weird fold in your clothing or some kind of lump underneath you and you need to move then do all of those things.

Make all of those arrangements and then once you've made those arrangements,

Let's greet ourselves.

So you can use your eyes and you can use your hands and kind of just look at your body and touch your body and if you're out in public and the best way to touch your body is by like you know rubbing your fingertips over your palm or scratching your nose or something like that,

That's great,

But do it with intention and do it with awareness and just bring some invitation to become more aware.

That's pretty much it.

So you look and you feel and you might even name and you go,

Hey body,

And in that greeting there's a recognition that this body is your vessel,

It's your vehicle for this human experience,

For the amount of time that you're going to call yourself by your name and you're going to feel connected to whatever layers of identity that are associated with your body,

Your size,

Your skin color,

Your gender,

Your style,

You know any kind of genetic inheritances that you have that affect your life,

Like these are always that your identity has been shaped by your body.

So you're saying hello to all of those things that have created the conditions for your understanding.

It's a pretty massive responsibility.

And then let's tune into our breath and let's take a couple of deep breaths in and in these deep breaths relax your belly as much as you can and let your breath grow into the sides of your body and into your back and all the way up into the front of your chest.

And feel free to sigh out.

I love sighing.

It's very relaxing and releasing so take some deep breaths and sighs.

And as you breathe and you feel the touch of your breath come into your body,

Be astounded like your body knows how to breathe.

It knew how to breathe from the moment you were born and the alchemy that your body performs every single moment is the translation of oxygen into energy.

Your body knows how to do this and it has known how to do this for ages,

For generations.

It is knowledge that's contained in the mitochondria of your cells.

Your cells themselves know how to convert energy from oxygen from sugar into life.

That is astounding.

So as you breathe you might remind yourself that your body's breath,

The inspiration,

Inhalation and expiration that you experience with your lungs is a larger gesture of what is happening in smaller ways at all times in all of your cells and in all life forms completely.

So any living form is going through some kind of cellular process where it's taking in energy and it's transforming that energy into its material and that is so astounding I think.

As you breathe in feel your breath expand,

Greet your body,

Go,

Hey body you're all of those things that I can identify with and so much more.

Hey body you are the vessel and the carrier of cellular wisdom that is bigger and broader than generational wisdom.

It goes beyond your living relatives,

Beyond your known ancestors,

Beyond the unknown human ancestors and into the mineral realm are genetic ancestors of single-celled organisms all the way back there.

And then let's feel our relationship to the ground underneath us and even if you're on an airplane listening to this meditation you can feel gravity and gravity is a relationship that we have to our planet,

To our home,

The earth and the earth's journey is a journey.

So let's feel our gravity is a relationship that we have to our planet,

To our home,

The earth and the earth's gravitational field pulls us towards it all the time and the materials of our body are formed from earth.

What we eat,

What we drink,

Anything that we consume has its origin on earth and when we go and anything that we release before we go goes back to earth.

So all of our emissions they all go back to earth and become the stuff that makes everything else.

So as you exhale and you feel your weight you might feel the weight of clay,

This image of the earth as a ball of clay and all of the beings that have been sculpted from that same original source.

And let's take the next number of breaths appreciating the intersections and the interweavings of all of those ideas.

So stay present with your breath allow it to continue to draw in and fill up your body.

So deep breaths and you might even play with holding your breath in for just a moment at the top of the inhale and then holding your breath out for just a moment at the bottom of the exhale.

And I want to suggest that as you breathe there's no stress.

So if you're really trying to force yourself into a bigger breath take less but let your breath move into all of your tissues.

So it's rather than an inflating feeling you can think of like a seeping feeling and the breath moving through the density of the tissue layers all the way out into your skin and into the space around you.

And then just pausing in a moment of that full reception of your inhale and then allowing the exhale to release.

And as you exhale if it's possible to slow down your exhale it has a can have a calming effect on the nervous system.

Again if it creates stress drop it just breathe in a way that feels good.

So we'll keep breathing and in whatever way if your eyes are closed then you can just maybe feel your hands somewhere on your body.

If your eyes are open then you could look at your body you can feel like okay this is my home this is the place that I inhabit all the time.

As long as I'm here as long as I'm me I'm going to be in this body.

This is my space.

And in that recognition you belong to this space and this space belongs to you.

Your body is not everything that you are.

You also are all of your ideas and your passions and your ancestry and all who knows what else all kinds of stuff.

But your body is your home and in that home and in that recognition there's so much sweetness and so much tenderness I hope.

You just go hey body you're mine and I'm yours and here we are doing this thing called life.

And as much as possible appreciate yourself,

Appreciate this body that you live in.

And as you feel the movement of your breath feel how your body is a collection and a collecting place,

A merging space of everything that has ever come before you.

And this includes all of your actual ancestry,

The inherited DNA of your line,

Your people.

This includes the lineages of peoples that have all come from the same space so we can trace our ancestors back to a common ancestry.

One or two people,

Whoever they were,

The original mother on the African continent.

That's where humanity was born so they say.

So in your being if that is possible to imagine,

Imagine it.

If it feels impossible to imagine it,

Imagine it anyway.

Like you as a human hold all of the intelligence of the human species in your cells,

All of the development of the human species in your cells.

And then let's grow our breath and include all of the wisdom that's beyond the human experience.

So our human bodies are nourished and sustained by plants and other animals.

We eat them and we eat their byproducts.

In consuming their cellular makeup we become them.

You are what you eat.

So we eat their energy,

We eat their experience.

Relax your belly as you imagine that.

Relax your pelvic floor.

Notice if any emotions arise as you imagine that.

Any senses of kinship or responsibility to these beings that you're made from or consume.

And breathe all the way out to the mineral layer.

So the rocks and minerals that are a really important part of all of our nutrition.

That are the building blocks for our bodies for their forms.

Breathe into the part of you that is mineral.

And breathe into the part of you that is water.

Your body is 70 some 70 percent water.

Thinking of the earth and all of its oceans.

I just learned that there is a secret ocean,

A mysterious ocean that's below the crust of the earth and in it is enough water to fill all of the oceans that we know on earth.

That really blew my mind.

So water is this really important substance and maybe you're familiar with the standing rock slogan.

We are water.

Water is us.

Water is we.

We absolutely need it.

And it's what allows us to evolve and continue.

It nourishes us on every level.

As you feel your breath expand,

Feel it expand into the water of your body.

And the way that water presents through all different kinds of fluid.

Through your blood,

Through your spinal fluid,

Through your lymph,

Even fat.

Fat is a fluid.

And then let's feel the exhale.

And as you exhale and you imagine how your exhaling breath disperses and spreads out into the air around you,

Imagine into space.

And as you feel space you can also feel gravity.

And call up your elementary school solar system model in your in your mind's eye and see how the earth is orbiting the sun along with the other planets in our solar neighborhood.

How we're all circling the star called the sun.

And the warmth of that sun is reaching us however many millions and billions of miles away.

And the warmth of that star creates all life.

And so feel your gravity,

The way that you're pulled to earth.

And then feel the earth's gravity from its center,

The way that it continues to orbit and be held by the sun.

And you might imagine out into our solar system like Saturn and Jupiter,

Mercury,

These planets that we know and can name all of us orbiting our sun.

Sometimes on a clear and starry night when I'm outside looking at the stars,

Especially if I can see the Milky Way,

I'm hit with this shock that I'm not just flying off of the face of the earth,

Because you know the earth is traveling through space like at thousands of miles a second.

But I just am sitting there like in my backyard lying on a rooftop or something.

It's quite astounding.

So in your body can you feel both gravity and space?

Can you inhale and exhale and feel gravity and space in both of them the way that you're held and anchored in this material realm on this earth plane?

And then this unknown and what is mostly unconscious or what's kind of super conscious,

Extra conscious,

Way bigger than anything we can imagine so we don't really see or remember that it's there,

This space that's all around us.

Now our solar system is part of the Milky Way galaxy.

You can see the Milky Way on a clear night and the Milky Way has its own center.

So you feel your center and you feel how your body is gravitationally held to the earth's center and how the earth is held by the center of our solar system,

By the sun,

And how our solar system is spinning in this larger neighborhood of super clusters in the Milky Way galaxy and the Milky Way is spinning around its own center.

So that's a lot to take in,

That's a lot to imagine and for me at least when I tell myself that story I get out of my body and I'm like,

I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to do that story I get out of my body.

So let's take it back in and let's talk about it in the language of our own bodies once again.

Every cell in your body is breathing.

It doesn't matter what kind of cell it is,

What tissue it belongs to,

What physical neighborhood it lives in.

Every cell in your body requires sugar and oxygen and it is breathing.

It is taking in nourishment,

It's transforming energy,

It's releasing the byproduct of that energy or waste.

Every cell is breathing.

At the center of every cell there's what's called a nucleus and the nucleus is taking in the energy,

And the sugar and the oxygen that it receives and it is transforming that energy.

So it's the energy center and it's why our bodies are warm.

It's because the production of energy creates heat.

Pretty cool.

Our bodies are forms of electricity or they are generators I should say of electricity and this is happening on the cellular level all the time.

So see if you can feel that a little bit as you breathe and you feel the movement of your breath spread from your lungs into the surrounding tissues and you might feel your breath like a wave even though your inhale comes into your lungs.

You can feel the movement of your inhale all the way down to your toes.

So do that a little bit like trace your inhale breath let it move into your legs,

Let it move into your arms,

Let it move into your hands and feet,

Your fingers and toes,

Up into your head,

Your face,

Your scalp.

Your breath is moving through a living being and all the cells in your body are breathing.

They're recipients of your breath and somehow all of your cells know that they're you.

Now this is kind of a crazy idea right like how do you know that you're you?

How does your body know that it's yours,

That it belongs to you?

We've learned fairly recently about dark matter and the amount of space that's contained everywhere.

So within every cell I think it's something like 67% is unknown.

Dark matter,

Empty space potentially.

You don't know what it is.

But for whatever reason we collect around ourselves.

We pull the materials of our body towards us.

We grow ourselves and even though my cells are in some ways like floating out in empty space,

They're also connected and contained in my own sphere in the identity of Renee and your cells are collected and contained in your identity.

They group towards you.

How do your cells know that they belong in your sphere?

Maybe it's like gravity.

Do you even have a choice to leave the Earth's atmosphere or gravitational force?

Maybe if you're an astronaut.

Most of us,

There is no choice.

This is where we live.

This is what we're a part of and because we live here and we're a part of it,

We can't really imagine anything else.

This is just what reality is.

Maybe it's similar for each of ourselves.

If you can take the space inside of you and imagine it expanding to become the space all around you,

Maybe then you can imagine the multiverse.

So the multiverse is a concept.

It's an idea that as science is finding that there is not just one solar system,

Our solar system,

Our solar system is part of many solar systems that exist in the universe.

It's part of many solar systems that exist in the Milky Way galaxy.

Then scientists find not only are we not the only solar system,

We're also not the only galaxy.

So there are hundreds of thousands of other galaxies all spinning around these neighborhoods of hundreds of thousands of stars and planets and comets and asteroids.

They're all existing.

And all of these galaxies are also spinning around a central point and we don't even really know what that is.

So astronomers and cosmologists and physicists,

They're theorizing all the time,

They're finding things out,

They're taking pictures,

They're building models.

But what this is is so far beyond anything that any of us can really comprehend or explain.

Just like the mystery of ourselves and how they know that they're us is so far beyond what any of us know or can explain.

It's beyond knowing.

It's a feeling.

It's a sense.

Before it's a feeling or a sense,

It's unconscious,

Right?

It's part of our unconscious habits,

The 99.

999% of everything that is unconscious.

It's just happening.

It's happening beyond the realm of our conscious mind.

So somewhere out there beyond you,

Beyond your neighborhood,

Beyond your country,

Beyond your continent,

Is the horizon of the earth.

And the earth is contained in its own atmosphere.

And the earth is orbiting the earth's surface.

And the earth is orbiting the surface of the earth.

And the earth is orbiting this star called the sun.

And the earth has lived through billions of years.

And the human race has only been around for a small fraction of how long the earth has been alive.

And in the time we've been here,

We've evolved greatly.

And in the time before us,

The earth evolved greatly.

And the earth is in a constant state of evolution.

And the galaxy is in a constant state of movement.

And the sun that we're orbiting around is growing.

And it's expanding.

And one day the sun will get so big that the earth will be absorbed by its heat.

And that day might be some billions amount of years away,

But it's coming nonetheless.

And before that,

The earth might be struck by something coming in like a comet or an asteroid.

It might change our orbit.

There could be anything that could happen on the trajectory between now and then.

And someday the great unknown will claim your body.

And your body will be absorbed.

And it will cease to exist as a collection of cells that know themselves as you.

Whatever the unifying principle is that keeps your heart beating and keeps your skin together,

That will stop.

That will cease.

And what binds you will begin to separate.

And all the stuff that is you will then dissolve and disperse.

You're already an ancestor.

What kind of lineage are you leaving?

What kind of vibration are you a part of?

What kind of harmony are you creating for those who will come next?

So we live on earth and we live in a time when human specialness is exalted.

We think that we're really something great.

And this idea of our own specialness includes knowing.

So the feeling of like I need to know.

When I know,

Then I'll somehow be immune to death.

If I know,

Then change can't happen.

If I know,

Then I can avoid suffering.

And that of course is untrue because you will die and you will change and you will suffer.

But you will also experience awe.

And you can also experience yourself as part of this magic or this kismet,

The force of whatever it is that's creating life,

That's radiating out through the earth materials and potentially through time and space.

And when we get into places of needing to know and thinking that we know and wanting to control,

We block energy.

We become perverted.

And the definition of perverse is like going the opposite direction,

Right?

It's like rubbing the cat's fur backwards like,

Oh,

It doesn't feel good.

Take a deep breath in,

Take a deep breath out.

Can you feel into the mystery that you came from,

That you're a part of?

Like you don't know what's going to happen in the future.

You don't know what's happening all around you right now.

There is some kind of flow,

There's some kind of energy,

And what that is is bigger and more massive and totally beyond anything that you could ever comprehend.

So how do we shift our consciousness away from needing to know and into a space of flow,

Into a space of openness and receptivity and guidance where we're not working against the natural rhythm or against the direction but we're actually working with it?

And that's a question.

But what I'll offer is that when you're in a space of thinking that you know or needing to know and being controlling,

Typically you'll exhibit behaviors like that.

So you'll try and make things happen.

And when you try and make things happen,

You have the feeling of trying and making things happen.

And that feeling is aggressive and it tends to be very small,

It forgets how big everything is.

It has like really,

You know,

Specific tangible goals.

And there's a hardness that comes in around the mind.

And this is a space that causes suffering for all of us.

It causes suffering because it decreases relationship,

It decreases presence.

When we're in spaces where we don't know,

Where we feel open,

Where we're relational and breathing and curious and in awe.

And awe means like a little bit struck with terror and it's not terror about what someone else is going to do to you.

It's like,

Oh my god,

This universe is fucking huge.

We're so small.

Like,

Whoa.

It's this feeling of the awesome power of what we're in and what we're made of.

Take a deep breath in,

Take a deep breath out.

When we're in that space,

We can remember that we're not so special.

When we're in a space of thinking that we need to know or that we know and that we have the answers,

Then we're in a space of specialness.

And in the space of specialness,

We're always committing violence.

We're always imposing our rights and our values are always committing violence.

We're always imposing our right ideas on each other.

We're trying to make things happen.

Sometimes we are making things happen,

But the things that we're making happen usually are not happening with consent of everyone involved.

They're not emerging organically.

If we can let ourselves rest and sense,

You feel when energy can open.

You feel when gravity pulls you a certain direction.

You feel when you need to stop and rest and receive nourishment.

You listen to your body.

You feel the pulse of bodies around you,

And then bodies come into harmony with each other.

When we're relational,

We're infinitely more effective than when we're isolated.

This is one of the,

I think,

Most important little gestures of a consciousness shift that I can practice right now.

It feels really important to me at this moment to be remembering that not only am I not special,

But humanity itself is not so special.

And that we're here for a moment and that what we're creating is our choice.

We're in choice around it.

And individuals on their own may not have so many choices,

But collectively we have a lot of choice.

And when we tune in to the magic that's all around us,

For me at least,

The choices become very clear.

Like we live on a beautiful planet that gives such abundant gifts.

Why would we not choose to work with the planet in its natural processes,

With its flow?

Why would we not choose to protect it and to nourish it and to celebrate it?

So I'll end there.

If you have information that comes to you through this meditation,

If you have anything to offer to it,

If you have anything to offer to it,

Please feel free to reach out to me.

Please practice this dropping in to your infinite knowledge and your vast experience as often as you can and teach it and offer it to everybody around you.

And again,

Teach it as an offering.

So this is what I offer with humility and with curiosity and suggestion.

Thank you so much for listening.

Thanks for supporting this podcast and these meditations.

I hope that they're useful for you.

I know it's kind of a scary and intense moment on the planet.

We're facing a lot of changes and there's a lot of trauma.

So I hope that collectively we can remember what we're made of and remember what we're part of and shift.

Shift our awareness away from greed and scarcity thinking and remember we come from a gift and this planet is a gift.

Thank you so much for listening.

Until the next time,

Bye for now.

Reviews

Powerfully freeing...

Incredible!

Such an insightful perspective, thank you!! 🙏🏻💫😊