Take a moment to gather awareness in the field of physical sensation,
Letting thoughts be in the background,
Letting movement,
Sight,
Sounds,
And the environment be in the background of awareness,
Turning up the volume on sensation,
Brightening sensation by bringing awareness to sensation.
Feel this for a moment,
What is the reality of the activity of sensation of the physical body in this moment,
What's happening?
Don't answer that in your mind,
That's just more thought,
That's just more abstraction.
Stay in the sensation,
Stay open and curious through the sensation,
Let the movement of sensation be the response.
Feel the ground beneath you,
Feel the earth beneath you,
The food,
The nutrition,
The water,
Everything that sustains your life comes right from the earth,
Right from the ground beneath you.
It's your root bed,
Just take a moment to open up awareness wide open to this connection,
This communion,
What we call gravity,
Another abstraction,
As it's felt in sensation is like an embrace,
The earth holding us closely to her,
In her arms,
In her care.
Notice the breath now,
Like a swinging door,
We draw the breath in from the environment,
Enters our lungs,
Oxygenates ourselves,
We breathe out,
The breath returns to where it came from,
Expelling what is waste to us,
But what is food and nutrition for plant life.
And feel clearly,
Literally,
There is no boundary between in and out with the breath,
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
Breathing in,
Breathing out,
No boundary,
No barrier,
The inside is the outside.
Stay with this rhythm for a moment,
Feel the life force,
Feel vitality,
Sustaining you,
Animating you moment to moment.
By some mystery,
This planet that we're hurtling through space on at one moment in remote history came to life,
A film of organic material started to grow and proliferate on the rocks.
And the same vitality now quickens and animates you,
You are one,
You are continuous,
Seamless with this vitality.
The life in you is no different than the life in an animal,
A plant,
Another human being.
We are all expressions of life,
Nourished,
Sustained by the earth.
Feel the wetness of the mouth,
The moistness of the nasal tissues,
All making available to us the experience of water,
The water in the body,
The hydrogen,
The oxygen,
Of which we are made the same water that covers the entire planet with ocean.
You are continuous with the rains,
The rivers,
The oceans,
Phases of the moon pull on the tides as they pull on you,
One in the same movement.
There's no distance between you and anything,
You are nature.
Feel free to engage your visualizing capacities here,
The very same nitrogen in the soils of the earth that bring forth all manner of plant life,
Food,
It's the same nitrogen in your body that creates muscles,
Tissues,
The same iron that runs through the earth like ribbon,
The same ore of the earth is the same iron that runs through your blood,
The carbon in every cell that supports organic life,
That supports this life force as a vessel.
It's the same carbon that was cooked in the cauldron of the stars billions of years ago,
As near as we can tell,
All to say that there's just no distance between you and the body,
No distance between the body and nature,
The body and the earth.
You are the body,
The body is nature,
The body is the earth.
Rest here,
Rest in this boundless sea of vitality,
Of life,
Of matter,
Let a sense of reverence rise in your heart,
By what mystery are we alive,
By what mystery are we sustained?
As we bring this meditation to a close,
I want you to hold a question in your heart,
In your body,
What does this precious gift of life,
What does this reverence for life call me to do?
Open-ended question,
How can you express a sense of awe,
Reverence,
Gratitude for life,
For the support of the earth that sustains your life?
What does it call you to do?
Don't try to answer it,
Just let the question germinate like a seed deep within you.
