Tonglen Meditation

Scarcity and prosperity - two sides of a sliding scale of experience that can throw us into ALL the feelings. How can we loosen the threads and liberate ourselves?

Tonglen invites you to reverse the habitual clinging around the good stuff - hmmmm, prosperity, you feel soooo good, give me more! Or the rejecting - ouch scarcity, you hurt and make me want to hide, don’t come near me.

We can turn these patterns on their head by inviting in the heavy stuff and sending out the light.

Transcript

Welcome. We offer these meditations freely and your donations make a real difference so thank you. This morning we're going to practice tonglen and we're working around the theme of prosperous. So tonglen is perfectly suited to our theme because the practice is giving away and receiving and of course being prosperous is everything to do with our capacity to give away and to receive, To be generous and receptive. Usually in life our instinct is to try to hold the positive experiences and to cling tightly to what we love. And to resist and push against the experiences that are more challenging. And of course that's totally natural, There's nothing wrong with that but with tonglen we get the opportunity to explore that and to feel into what would it feel like if instead we gave away what feels positive and we receive what feels challenging. And so we just experiment with sensation and breath for the next half an hour, How it would feel to give away prosperity. And you can kind of, We'll take a moment in a minute to locate that feeling of what it feels like when there's enough, You have more than enough, You're sufficient, You're held, You're supported. And then how would it feel to breathe in and take on the feeling of lack of scarcity? And that's, You know, We're really in the playground of all my worst demons here, So the feeling of lack and scarcity is super easy for me to locate. I'm sure it is for all of us, I think we're in a culture aren't we that supports the feeling of lack and scarcity, It's what motivates us and drives us to buy things. So there's a lot of people working with those emotions on our behalf. So you know to come into that sensation of what does it feel like when I feel like I'm on the edge, I don't have enough, I'm not going to meet what's required, I don't have the resources available. And are we able to breathe in and and generously receive that feeling that we usually push against. So before we even start, Just recognition that this is really deep work that we're doing here and sometimes the whole thing is really just an experiment and you may not even touch the sides with it, But let's see. Without getting tangled up in a, Oh yeah I did a really good practice or I'm a failure because I didn't do that practice, I achieved a feeling that I know is a good feeling so therefore I've done it well. And that again is all really natural and we all feel that but can we just see if this next 30 minutes can be a total experiment? I wonder, I wonder how this is going to go. So let's get ourselves comfortable. Ideally with your spine straight you're welcome to be sitting in a chair or lying down on your back or sitting cross-legged on the floor. A little smile to set the tone of loving kindness towards ourselves as we practice this. We will see what we will find. Noticing your breath, You're welcome to just drop your eyes, Your gaze down to the ground or to drop your eyelids completely. Resting your tongue up into the roof of your mouth, Allowing your jaw to soften. Sometimes that's enough, Just that action brings a softness all the way down through the shoulders and the spine. Letting the sitting bones feel heavy, The pelvis grounded. The pelvis grounded and the gentle current of an inhalation followed by an exhalation. And turning the awareness to the breath is usually enough to encourage it to expand and lengthen and deepen. We might take some very slow gentle circles with the head dropping here down to shoulder. Slowly taking chin down towards chest. Other ear across to other shoulder. Then coming up and over. Repeating. And then changing directions. And letting the shoulders slowly start to circle their own shape, Their own cadence. We might notice the ripple effect of those circles. And then circling the heart as if you were drawing a circle around the pelvis. And then changing direction. And coming to rest in stillness at center. Awareness dropping down into pelvis. Sensing relationship with the floor beneath you, Whatever it is you're sitting on. And beneath that, Maybe the foundations of a building, The sand, The soil dropping down into rock. The layer upon layer of rock until we feel the heat of the fire at the center of our planet. And having the spine to rise up tall from the pelvis. Awareness coming up to the occiput ridge at the back of your head where the skull rests on top of the atlas. Finding a sense of openness and expansion through the skull and the scalp. And though we might be sitting in stillness, There's anything but stillness in this space. There's this current, This tidal current of breath washing through the body. The tidal current of the fluid body moving through the spine, The skull, The bones. And so we are gifted this playground of sensation and experience and feeling. Let's start to play with that. So begin to explore a sensation of feeling heavy and feeling light. As you inhale, Breathing in the sense of heaviness. And as you exhale, Breathing out a sense of lightness. And touching into a palette of sensation that's available to us and noticing how we can choose to move between polarities. And let's change it. Let's bring it to breathing in a sense of tiny and cramped and small. And then breathing out expansion, Openness. And then coming to our practice for today, Breathing in the sensation of lack. And breathing out the sensation of prosperity. And you're free to play with this as you choose. So the words I use, If they don't resonate with you, You can go back to what does. Maybe heavy and light is more easy to access, Maybe cramped and open. So feel free to play with this in your own way. My words are just suggestions. The words I'm going to use, Inhaling, Lack, And how that feels in your body. Exhaling prosperity and how that feels. So so noticing sensation, Bringing courage to the experiment. As you breathe in lack, Where do you feel that? How does it express in sensation in your body? And as you breathe out prosperity, How is that felt? So and let's experiment with this in connection in relationship. So let's begin with someone whom we care for deeply, Someone who we utterly adore. It's effortless to love them. It might be an animal, It might be a human. As we picture this person in front of us, Or this being in front of us, Know that it's part of the being experience to feel this range of sensation and feeling. The stories may be wildly different but the experience is the same. And as we inhale, Can we take their experience of lack, How it feels in their body, And breathe it into the very deepest part of ourselves. Taking it in, Offering to hold it for them, Knowing that we can take it and transmute it. And as we exhale, Can we offer them our experience of prosperity, The feeling of prosperity? Can we send it to them on our breath almost like a ribbon going from our nostrils to theirs, Exhaling out all the spaciousness, The expansion of prosperity. Inhaling all the heaviness, The closeness, The smallness of lack. Drawing it right down to the depths of your belly and exhaling out from there, Prosperity. So so so so and then can we move the practice across to somebody else? And this time choosing someone to whom we feel quite indifferent towards. We don't dislike them but perhaps we cross paths with them in the day, They might be someone we see and say hello to but we don't necessarily have their phone number, We don't know their circumstance, So someone we feel neutral towards. Picturing them in front of you. And as you breathe in, Breathing in their experience of lack and how that feels. Drawing it down into your belly where it alchemizes, It transmutes and breathing out from the very heart of your belly, The feeling of prosperity you're offering to them. Here let me give you this, Take it. And with the in-breath here let me take this from you, I can hold this. So so so so And then moving the practice to someone whom we find a challenge. The person that really brings out our less than gracious selves, A person who we find difficult to be around, Who's possibly created all the obstacles, All the learnings. Picture that person in front of you and let's experiment. As that person's circumstances may be very very different to yours but they will know the feelings that we're playing with. So as you inhale can you open yourself up to receive their sensation of lack? And as you breathe out can you offer your sensation of prosperity as a gift to them? So so so And opening up the practice to include all beings across the entire globe. Everyone knows the sensation of lack, How that feels in their body. And everyone knows the feeling of prosperity. As we inhale drawing in the entire world's experience of lack, Taking that into the very core of the navel where we are able to transmute that. And exhaling out the gift, The offering of prosperity in all its felt expressions to the entire planet. So letting the practice go and noticing how it feels. How does it feel to be in your body now? Has anything changed or shifted? How does your heart feel? Tonglen is a practice in loving kindness and compassion, Empathy. Helps us to realize we're not alone, It's impossible to be alone. We're so in connection. Helps us to realize that there's another way that we can hold it all, That we don't crumble and collapse because we have so much resource inside of us. And helps us to remember that there's less othering and there's more sameing in this world. So I hope that practice felt good, That it touched the love inside of you and we offer the fruits of our practice up to all beings. Namaste.