Jumbo,
Dear traveler.
Karibu Welcome.
This is Reshma of Safari and Soul and I welcome you tonight to join me on the savannah during this full moon.
As you settle down.
Perhaps you're seated with your legs crossed,
Or perhaps as you look to fall asleep and rest during this meditation.
You are lying down.
Whatever feels most comfortable for you.
Gently move your shoulders.
If you're lying down,
Stretch overhead in two directions.
Let your eyes gently close.
And let the weight of today settle into the mattress beneath you.
With your eyes gently closed.
Check in with yourself.
Perhaps one hand on your heart and another on your belly.
Check your heart.
Take a deep breath in.
And exhale all the tension for beauty.
And another deep breath in.
And exhale.
With your eyes closed.
Acknowledge that above you tonight An ocean of sky stretches to the edge of the world.
And in that sky tonight there is a radiant light shining.
As the moon is full.
With your eyes still closed,
Watch with your mind's eye.
This radiant moon clearing the flat top of a thorn acacia.
And as it does so,
Everything below it is changing.
Gold has drained out of the grass to make way for silver.
What was green at noon is also silver now.
What was brown before is now bone white.
The savannah does not lose its color at night,
But rather it changes the color that it agrees to show.
Shadows that had no length at midday now stretched long and cool across the ground.
And that single acacia.
Small under the sun.
Throws a shadow the length of a river in this new lit night landscape.
Nothing here on this savannah has resisted this change.
The grass did not desperately try to hold on to gold and the shadows did not refuse to lengthen.
The land simply let the light that arrived became the light that it wore.
And in this moment,
Hold true this affirmation to yourself.
With this full moon I can let this light change what it touches when it touches me.
Under a moon this full,
Back on the savannah,
The grass is not the only thing.
That can see.
A female impala lifts her head at a hundred meters and sees clearly what darkness would have hidden.
A zebra's ear is turned toward a shape before it has fully become a shape.
On a night like this,
Illuminated and lit,
The ones who are usually hunted can see the ones who hunt them.
So the lions do not move the way they move on a black,
Moonless night.
They lie low in the pale grass.
Not resting yet,
But waiting.
Patient choosing.
A predator under a full moon does not stalk by accident.
Every step it takes,
It takes on purpose because it knows it can be seen.
And high in a fig tree,
A leopard lies motionless along a branch,
Paws hanging loose,
Waiting for the sliver of true dark that comes later,
After the moon has set.
She's not hiding from the light.
She's simply choosing her moment inside it.
And with these two,
There's something here for us if we want it.
The worries that stalk us like those predators don't usually announce themselves.
In the blur of an ordinary day that can get close before we notice and startle us before we're ready to meet them.
But here,
In this stillness,
Under this much light,
You can see what is approaching.
Not as an ambush.
But as information.
A worry seen clearly at a distance is already different than a worry that catches you in the dark.
You do not have to fight it tonight.
Only notice it.
Name it if you want to,
And decide with intention the way the lion decides whether tonight is the night to meet it or whether it can simply wait in plain sight while you rest.
And so hold with you the affirmation,
I can see what approaches.
I do not have to be ambushed by it.
The fullness of this moon will not last.
And it was never meant to.
Tomorrow the moon rises a few minutes later and a sliver less than whole.
The night after,
A little less again.
Across the coming weeks it will thin to almost nothing.
And none of that thinning will be a failure of the moon.
It is simply the other half of the same motion that filled it.
Waxing and waning are not two different things.
But rather their one long unhurried breath in,
And out.
That takes almost a month to complete.
Your day had its own fullness.
Whatever filled it,
The tasks,
The conversation,
The small frictions,
The things still unfinished,
That was your waxing moon.
And now,
Lying here,
It's time for the other half of the breath.
You do not have to hold today at full brightness any longer.
With your eyes still closed,
Let it begin gently to wane.
And a wean is not an ending.
This same moon has pulled the ocean's tides for longer than there have been eyes to watch it,
To fill and empty back and forth.
Tied in and tied out.
Each low tide is not a loss,
But simply a gathering before the next fullness.
And your body knows this rhythm too.
The deepest hours of the night are not empty hours,
But really they're when the quiet work happens.
Cell by cell,
Thought by thought,
The parts of your day worn down being gently put back together.
And so hold the affirmation.
I'm not only resting,
I'm being renewed.
I'm being renewed.
There is a kind of medicine in this full moon light and it has nothing to do with magic.
Somewhere out in the pale grass,
A dung beetle is finding its way home by the moon alone.
No map,
No memory of the path,
Only the polarized light spreading across the sky.
And it trusts that light completely to carry it in a straight line to where it needs to get to.
And small creatures move more boldly on a night like this.
They travel further,
Forage longer,
Cross open ground they would never risk to in true darkness,
Because for a few nights each month,
The moon makes the world briefly legible again.
And this same light,
The one guiding the beetle home,
Is doing something quieter for you.
Moonlight is only borrowed sunlight,
Reflected,
Softened a hundred thousand times dimmer than the sun has lit your day.
It has never once told a body it was time to be alert.
It has only ever meant that it is safe and you can rest now.
This is the healing that your body was built for,
Not effort,
Not fixing anything,
Just this,
The gentlest light that there is,
Asking nothing of you except to let it in.
And so hold with you the affirmation,
This light heals by asking nothing of me.
This light heals by asking nothing of me.
Picture the moonlight moving slowly the way it actually does,
Sliding across the grass,
Over a termite mound,
Across the curve of a dry riverbed,
And everything touches silver.
It does not force anything to change.
Let that moonlight move like that over you now.
Feel this light Start with the top of your head.
Feel the light come down over your eyes.
Moving to your jaw,
Letting it unclench just slightly.
The way grass loosens when wind passes through it.
And then down to the shoulders that have been carried too high today.
Let the light settle there and let your shoulders feel that they can drop down.
Moving on to your hands.
If you need to wiggle them,
Uncurl them,
Let your fingers rest open the way they would if nothing in the world needed holding right now.
Moving to your chest and your heart center,
Your breath slows to meet that light.
Perhaps you feel a warmth within as well.
From your chest down to your belly and onward to your legs.
Let your legs feel silvered and heavy and still.
And hold to you the affirmation.
I let this light from the moon change what it touches.
And as we get ready to go to full slumber.
The lion is still resting in the pale grass.
The leopard has not moved from her branch.
The moon keeps crossing the sky.
Patient,
In no hurry to arrive anywhere,
But simply to fill you with light as you rest.
Rest well friend with this light.
And as you wake tomorrow morning,
Feel rejuvenated.
Feeling silver and moving to gold as the sun comes up.
Lala Salama.
Allah hafiz.
Sleep well.
Lala Salama.
