Taoist Water Meditation

A lovely and relaxing guided meditation using the Taoist principle of The Watercourse Way to experience yourself as moving like water down to the sea (Tao or Source). Become a water being and flow like a river flowing down to the sea.

Transcript

So here's a little meditation that will allow you to feel the sense of the water course way.

So what we're going to do is close our eyes,

Put our feet flat on the floor if we're sitting in a chair,

And just for a few moments just breathe.

Breathe in and out of our nose,

Tip of our tongue to the roof of our mouth,

Breathing into our lower dantian,

Lower dantian for those of you who aren't familiar with that term means the field of medicine or the field of elixir,

What Hua Qing Ni calls the alchemical energy factory or one other old Taoist text I read called it a one,

Let's see what did we call it,

Oh man,

A field of wonder.

So what we're going to do is sit here for just a few minutes just to kind of get centered,

Kind to disentangle ourself from what's been going on before the class,

What's going on after the class,

Just disentangle ourselves.

So we can spend the next few moments in our center,

Experiencing the world in our center,

Experiencing the outside world,

The inside world,

And where they come together,

Where they touch.

Feel like you're at peace,

Sit with a light heart,

With a sense of joy,

Openness,

Possibly even mild excitement.

Now imagine yourself lying on the earth beside a gurgling brook,

A little stream.

Relax close your eyes and listen to the water as it flows merrily along right next to your body,

So you're lying right next to the creek and you're really listening to the music that the water makes,

Because so much of nature makes sounds right,

The birds,

The wind through the trees,

The water,

The waves in the ocean.

If we really had an ability to listen very,

Very,

Very deeply,

We might listen to the plants growing up through the earth,

Of the trees around us breathing.

One of the chapters in Dronksa,

He said to really listen to the world,

Don't just listen with your ears,

Because listening stops with the ears,

But listen with your heart.

And then don't just even listen with your heart,

But listen with your chi,

Your whole body energy system.

So if you're listening to really beautiful music,

You're listening to the sounds that babies make of children playing out in the backyard,

Of the wind blowing through the bamboo,

Of the waves,

They're slowly come in and out of the beach.

And here in this moment of this beautiful burbling,

Googling creek,

Blowing past their body.

Then as we do so,

We allow the sounds of this dancing water to fill your whole being so that it's not just you here,

The water over there.

You and the water become much closer until the sounds of this water fill your whole being that perhaps you can even feel,

If not see,

If not hear the water of your own body,

All the blood and lymph and chi moving through your body 24 hours a day,

Seven days a week for however many years you've had,

For however many years you will have,

Just kind of identify yourself with this water.

Feel a sense of how the water inside of you relates and perhaps even communicates with the water flowing by you.

Let it's watery chi speak to your own watery chi or the watery being speak,

Sing to your own watery being.

So that we forget as in sitting and forgetting who we are just as the one sola la human being who is different and separate from the world of nature that loves to go out in nature,

But instead someone who goes out in nature and feels and experiencing their nature,

Dancing with the outside nature so that instead of being in nature,

We are nature.

And we're not separate from nature.

We're not a human being which is super,

We have been told and we have been led to believe that we are the apex of all living on this earth,

All living beings on this earth,

But realize and experience yourself as just another living being,

Just like the four-legged beings,

The two-legged beings,

The flying beings,

The crawling beings,

The stationary beings like mountains and trees,

And then the flowing beings like this water that's flowing beside us,

That's filling us with a sense of our own watery being.

And then we're going to slowly and gently allow your body to simply roll over and enter the current of the water.

And then we start feeling it carrying us along on its dancing way.

And we've,

But we're not in danger of drowning.

We're not in danger of sinking.

We're just able to feel ourselves as light.

You know,

In that old,

I don't remember who Christian writer said angels can fly because they take themselves so lightly.

We're just lightly,

Very light beings floating just on the top of the water,

Just flowing downhill past them,

Past all the stones and cliffs and trees and perhaps even villages.

And we're just flowing along with this water,

Not needing to know exactly where we're going to end up,

Not needing to be in charge and in control of where we're going,

Not even thinking or worrying about that at all,

Just being a part of this water that's flowing downhill towards what we will soon discover.

Feel the coolness and the softness of the water while at the same time feeling it holding you up,

Supporting you,

Embracing you.

Allow yourself to just let go and let the water carry you along.

As Bruce Lee said,

Be like water.

And we can hear in our ears the music of the water as we're flowing.

We feel ourselves as if we are actually dancing on the surface of the water.

Although one part of us is in the water,

Of course,

And we feel we are not in any danger of sinking,

We feel this water just like when we're lying on the earth and the earth is supporting us.

When we're floating in this water,

We feel the water supporting us,

Embracing us.

Feel yourself become a water being just like the fish and otters and other water beings that inhabit this water along with you.

Remember when Mole was living underground in a cave and decided to go out one day just like the Buddha to explore the world,

He came to this huge body of water that he had never seen,

That he had never experienced,

That he didn't even know existed.

And it was a river.

It was like a living thing he could see.

And then he met this really cool guy,

Rat,

Who lived on that river.

And Rat tells him there's nothing like a river.

Rat feels comfortable and at ease and safe on the river.

And Mole has to learn how to do that.

At first,

He feels very unsafe,

But eventually he becomes a lover of the river as well.

So feel yourself flow along with the stream,

Flowing continuously downhill,

Down to the sea,

To the source or dhow.

Feel it as you flow over the sand and stones of the stream.

Sometimes you may encounter an obstruction like a beaver dam or a large rock.

But when this happens,

Just allow the water to slowly raise its levels until it can flow over the obstruction or around the rock,

Always joyfully moving along in its own unique water coarse way.

And then at some point,

Feel it enter into a larger stream.

So there's all these streams,

There's all these states of being,

All these spiritual paths,

All these mystical visions that are starting to flow into each other.

So the stream becomes a little bigger,

A little louder,

A little more forceful,

Perhaps even a little faster.

Feel the water picking up as it flows down to the nearest river where it joins with that even bigger body of water.

Now all the little brooks and streams have starting to all come together into this river,

A much larger body of water,

A much larger body of experience,

Of knowledge.

And feel yourself again,

Still feeling very safe,

Very enveloped,

Very supported by the river.

Now you can sense a state of more strength and power in the water.

So you might feel a little of that power of that river going down,

Down,

Down to the sea.

And you feel yourself perhaps expanding a little too,

Your sense of self expanding to be larger than you were when you were just in a small creek.

Now you're a river being.

Feel the water in your own body blend with the water you are in so that you yourself become a water being.

Feel the current picking up a little more,

Though still gentle,

Still supportive.

And now feel your river,

Feel your river or even of yourself as a river entering the ocean,

Returning to the source to Tao.

Feel your water being expand greatly as you merge with the endless ocean,

The eternal source of all life.

So take some time here to glory in the feeling of expansion and the warm embrace of the mother ocean from which all life came.

So now we are not just a water being,

We are an ocean being.

We are big as a planet now.

And we contain,

Like Walt Whitman said,

I contain multitudes,

All the fish and all the strange creatures and the whales and dolphins and all the plants that are growing and flowing through this giant ocean all become a part of you.

So that these,

These fish,

These other beings are almost like they're swimming through you.

And in some esoteric Buddhist teachings,

They talk about the Buddha as the world.

And we are all living in this world,

This body of the Buddha.

And after a time,

Feel the warmth of the sun shining down upon you,

Drawing your water being up into the sky.

The water starts going up into the sky with the sunlight,

Right?

Whatever joins with other water beings,

Other clouds,

Other beings that are having the same exact wonderful experience that you are.

You become like a cloud being floating gently over the earth.

Where other shape or density,

Everyone has their own.

Some clouds clumped together,

They become cumulus clouds,

Different kinds of clouds,

But they're all beings that have lived their life and have flowed down this water and become ocean beings and now become cloud beings.

And then eventually these cloud beings are then going to drop their water in the form of rain.

They're to be joined once again with the brooks and streams and rivers and oceans of the world.

So it's this beautiful great circle of life,

They say in the Disney movie,

You become this ocean,

Your being starts going up into the heavens towards the sun,

You become this cloud being amazingly light and fluffy,

But able to stay up into the atmosphere all on its own.

And then at some point you're ready to let this water back down in the form of rain,

Back down to where it can sustain all of life,

Where it can create more of these creeks and rivers and oceans.

So it takes some time,

Especially when you have more time,

But this meditation going at your own pace,

Let yourself really feel each step in a truly sensuous way.

And of course,

If you find yourself in so-called real life by a stream or a river or even an ocean,

Even better,

But if you're not physically by a body of water,

You can always conjure one up in your mind or else you can play some music,

Some CD of the sound of water to help you through this.

Reviews

Delightful, unpretentious, and kind of magically refreshing ! Thank you!

Brillant Taoist embodiment practice with wonderful quotations thank you

A very nice meditation. I love the symbolisms . Light-hearted with a powerful message. Thank you🙏🌻🐟🌧️🐬🌅♥️