Hello and welcome to today's meditation.
Today you are going to practice a kind of stillness,
Cultivating inner stillness that will bring you a sense of inner strength and resilience.
This meditation is normally done in a sitting position,
Either on the floor or a chair or a meditation cushion.
However,
If you are unable to sit for 15 minutes,
Please be however is comfortable for you.
However you choose to be,
Find now a position of stability and poise,
Preferably with your upper body balanced over your hips and your shoulders in a comfortable but alert posture,
With your hands on your lap or your knees and your arms hanging by their own weight,
Relaxed at your side.
Begin now to sense into your body,
Feeling your feet,
Your legs,
Your hips,
Feeling your lower body,
Then feeling your upper body,
Your arms,
Your shoulders,
Your neck and your head.
And when you are ready,
Allow your eyes to close,
Bringing your awareness to your breath,
Noticing the actual physical sensations of your breath and really feeling each breath as it comes in and goes out,
Letting the breath be just as it is without trying to change or regulate it in any way,
Allowing your breath to flow easily and naturally with its own rhythm and pace,
Knowing that you are breathing perfectly well right now,
There's nothing for you to do,
And allowing your body to be still and sitting with a sense of dignity,
A sense of resolve,
A sense of being complete,
Whole in this very moment,
With your posture reflecting this sense.
And as you sit here,
Letting an image form in your mind's eye of the most magnificent or beautiful mountain you know or have seen or can imagine,
Letting it gradually come into greater focus.
If it doesn't come as a visual image,
Perhaps just allowing the sense of this mountain,
Feeling its overall shape,
Its peak or peaks high up in the sky and the large base rooted into the bedrock of the earth.
Notice also its steep or gently sloping side,
Noticing how massive it is,
How solid,
How unmoving,
Noticing how beautiful this mountain is,
Whether from afar or up close,
Becoming now a little more aware of the detail of your mountain.
Perhaps your mountain has snow blanketing its top,
Trees reaching down to the base.
Perhaps it has rugged granite sides.
There may be streams and waterfalls cascading down the slopes.
Your mountain may have one peak or a series of peaks.
However,
Your mountain appears to be ready to you.
Observe it,
Note its qualities,
And when you feel ready,
See if you can bring the mountain into your own body,
Sitting here so that your body in the mountain in your mind's eye becomes so that as you sit here,
You share in the massiveness and the stillness and the majesty of the mountain,
You come the mountain.
Grounded in your sitting posture,
Your head becomes a lofty peak supported by the rest of your body and with a panoramic view.
Your shoulders and arms are the sides of the mountain and your buttocks and legs the solid base rooted to your chair or cushion or floor.
Experiencing in your body a sense of uplift from deep within your pelvis and spine.
With each breath,
As you continue sitting,
Becoming a little more like a breathing mountain,
Alive and vital,
Yet unwavering in your inner stillness,
Completely what you are beyond words and thought,
A centered,
Grounded,
Unmoving presence.
And as you sit here,
Becoming aware of the fact that as the sun travels across the sky,
The lights and shadows and colors are changing virtually moment by moment in the mountain's stillness and the surface teems with life and activity,
Streams,
Melting snow,
Plants and wildlife.
As the mountain sits,
Seeing and feeling how night follows day and day follows night,
The bright warming sun followed by the cool night sky studded with stars and the gradual dawning of a new day.
Through it all,
The mountain just sits,
Experiencing change in each moment,
Constantly changing,
Yet always just being itself.
It remains still as the seasons flow into one another and as the weather changes moment by moment and day by day,
Calmly abiding all change.
In summer,
There is no snow on the mountain,
Except perhaps for the very peaks or in crags shielded from direct sunlight.
In the autumn,
The mountain may wear a coat of brilliant fire colors.
And in winter,
A blanket of snow and ice.
In any season,
It may find itself at times enshrouded in clouds or fog or pelted by freezing rain.
People may come to see the mountain and comment on how beautiful it is,
Or how it's not a good day to see the mountain,
That it's too cloudy or rainy or foggy or dark.
None of this matters to the mountain,
Which remains,
At all times,
Its essential self.
Clouds may come,
Clouds may go,
People may like it or not,
But the mountain's magnificence and beauty are not changed one bit by whether people see it or not.
Seen or unseen,
In sun or clouds,
Light or dark,
Day or night,
It just sits,
Being itself,
No matter what is happening around it.
At times visited by violent storm,
Buffeted by snow and rain and winds of unthinkable magnitude,
Through it all,
The mountain sits.
And then spring comes,
Trees leaf out,
Flowers bloom in the high meadows and slopes.
Birds sing in the trees once again,
Streams overflow with the waters of melting snow.
Through it all,
The mountain continues to sit,
Unmoved by the weather,
By what happens on its surface,
By the world of appearances,
Remaining its essential self through all the seasons,
The changing weather,
The activity ebbing and flowing on its surface.
In the same way as we sit in meditation,
We can learn to experience the mountain.
We can embody the same central,
Unwavering stillness and groundedness in the face of everything that changes in our own lives,
Over seconds,
Over hours,
Over years.
In our lives and in our meditation practice,
We experience constantly the changing nature of body and mind and of the outer world.
We have our own periods of light and darkness,
Activity and stillness,
Our own moments of color and our own moments of drabness.
We may experience storms of varying intensity and violence in the outer world,
And indeed,
In our own minds and bodies,
We may endure periods of darkness and pain,
As well as moments of joy and uplift.
Even our own appearance changes constantly,
Experiencing a weather of its own.
By becoming the mountain in our meditation practice,
We can link up with its strength and stability and adopt them for our own.
We can use its energies to support our energy,
To encounter each moment with mindfulness and equanimity and clarity.
It may help us to see that our thoughts and feelings,
Our preoccupations,
Our emotional storms and crises,
Even the things that happen to us,
Are very much like the weather on the mountain.
We tend to take it all so personally,
But the mountain's strongest characteristic is impersonal.
The weather of our own lives is not to be ignored or denied,
Not at all.
It is to be encountered,
Honored,
Felt,
Known for what it is,
And held in awareness.
And in holding it in this way,
We come to know a deeper silence,
And stillness,
And wisdom.
Mountains have this to teach us,
And much more,
If we can let it in.
So,
If you find that you resonate in some way with the strength and stability of the mountain in your sitting,
It may be helpful to use it from time to time in your meditation practice,
Or indeed in your life,
To remind you of what it means to sit mindfully,
With resolve,
And with wakefulness,
In true stillness.
Now,
Slowly start to bring your awareness back to your breath,
Breathing in deeply and calmly,
And breathing out slowly and effortlessly.
And begin to bring your awareness back to your body,
Stretching your body as you like,
And then bringing your awareness back to the room in which you are in.
And whenever you're ready,
Slowly opening your eyes and coming all the way back.
Welcome back.
