When we change the way we look at things,
The things we look at change.
Wayne Dyer.
Meditation is not so concerned with how much thinking is going on or even the content.
It is more to do with how we hold it,
How we meet it.
This practice is one for creating spaciousness,
Creating room,
Room in our own warm awareness.
This practice is also about holding steady,
Feeling our groundedness,
That sense of being part of the landscape,
Not the weather.
To take a clear picture,
We hold the camera steady.
To get a clear understanding of our inner world,
We also need to feel steady,
Take our seat and practice feeling into the landscape.
So bringing your awareness inwards in this moment and starting by feeling into the contact points.
So where your body may be touching the chair,
Perhaps the feet on the floor.
So getting a strong sense of the weight of you.
You know the weight of you but feeling the weight of you,
Feeling gravity.
Feeling the weight of you firmly connected downwards,
Ultimately towards the good earth below.
Feeling your physical body in this moment quite steady,
Grounded.
Taking a moment to feel into this inner stillness.
Imagining for one moment that in your hand you held a stone.
Feeling the weight of the stone,
So gravity in the stone itself.
And if you were to drop this stone into a river,
The stone would not struggle,
It would simply drop to the bottom of the river.
Sitting there,
Resting there,
Thanks to gravity and the weight of the stone.
And the stone would allow the water of the river to pass by it,
Sometimes fast and sometimes moving quite slow.
Sometimes the water of the river will be quite muddy and stirred up,
Containing a lot of debris and other content.
And sometimes the water of the river may be quite clear.
Regardless of this,
The stone just holds steady,
Resting on the earth,
That receptive basin of the earth itself.
So just as the stone drops,
Landing on the earth,
Settling there,
Steady,
Resting.
So feeling the weight of you,
Feeling your physical body in contact with the earth,
In contact with the landscape,
Holding steady.
And the weather all about is continually changing.
Just as the weather within us,
Ongoing changes of sensations,
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Emotions,
Forever changing.
But practising dropping into feeling the weight of you,
Firmly connected downwards.
Feeling that sense,
That quality of the landscape within you in this moment.
Perhaps opening to a bit of gratitude,
Gratitude for this gift of gravity,
Holding us steady.
And the gift of the physical body,
Which is always in the present moment.
Our human minds love to move.
They love to lean into the future.
They love to lean into the past.
A creative mind is often a moving mind.
And this is no problem if we can feel into the physical body for that sense of steadiness.
Allowing the mind to move and now allowing enough space for the mind to move freely.
But also being in tune with that sense of steadiness in the body.
Part of the landscape and not the weather.
Part of the vast and edgeless landscape,
Not confined to the envelope of our skin.
Allowing this contact with the earth to be like a touchstone in this practice.
A touchstone within your life that you can drop into,
Can anchor you.
The address of the physical body is always the present moment.
And this is the only moment that we can operate from.
The quieter you can become,
The more you're able to hear as Rumi quotes.
So resting here.
Being as part of the landscape and allowing the weather to move freely.
Whenever you notice you've been caught up in a bit of weather,
That's all part of the practice too.
All part of the noticing.
And then coming back to that touchstone,
Coming back to feeling into the landscape.
The steadiness in the body.
Feeling into this quality within you that is always there.
And where we rest our attention,
Grow stronger in our life.
Feeling the body steady,
Grounded,
Relatively still in this moment.
Bringing your awareness now to the room that you're in.
The sounds in the room,
Sounds outside the room.
And perhaps choosing to take this steadiness out into your day.
