Welcome.
So making yourself comfortable lying down in your bed or on the floor or wherever you can be comfortable,
Maybe putting a pillow of some sort under your knees.
Once you are comfortable beginning to allow your eyes to close and your body to just melt into the floor or the bed and allowing your attention to gently come into the body and to the flowing of the breath.
Experiencing a sense of the body as a whole simply lying here extended and breathing.
Taking a slow deep breath in through the nose to three,
Four,
Exhale,
Three,
Two,
One.
Inhale two,
Three,
Four,
Exhale three,
Two,
One.
Feeling with a slow rhythmic breath and allowing the muscles in the face to relax.
Feeling the weight of the body rest,
Be calm and still.
When you feel ready picturing in your mind's eye the image of a lake,
Perhaps a lake that you know well and frequent or one that you've seen in a photograph or an imaginary lake for that matter.
For a moment just seeing if you can bring that image into vivid focus in your mind's eye.
Understanding how it's an extended body of water held in a depression in the earth's surface and perhaps fed by a spring or a stream.
If you watch and observe the lake carefully you'll notice that it's always changing and yet it's also always itself.
It changes as the sun moves across the sky.
The light is reflected off the water in different ways.
It changes depending on the weather.
Sometimes on very calm days the surface might be like glass and reflect virtually everything with great precision that comes by.
Clouds,
Birds,
The trees that might surround the lake,
The sun as it makes its journey across the sky.
And for that matter the moon and the stars at night.
So there are times when the lake is extremely reflective and contains in a certain way everything that comes by or over it.
In different periods of time the surface might be choppy or royal and sometimes quite pronounced in the waves in which times the light might sparkle off the waves in different ways like a myriad of jewels.
Of course the lake changes through the seasons.
In the winter depending on its location it might actually be frozen over at least on the surface.
Through day and night and through the seasons and through the years the lake is constantly changing but always is its own essential nature.
Let's see if we can't invite the lake to become coextensive with our own body lying here so that our body becomes the lake itself.
We also feel held and embraced as we lie here.
Aware of the many ways in which our own mind is like the surface of the lake.
Sometimes highly reflective,
Sometimes choppy.
Getting in touch with the sense of the entirety of the lake,
The full body of water not only in the surface but down below.
As we lie here just experiencing the fullness of our own being so that even at times when our mind is choppy and upset or reactive or dealing with difficult things we can drop down beneath the surface of our own minds waves and find a stillness and a calmness that's always here and always available to us with each moment,
With each breath and certainly when we come to lie down in this way.
Lying here under the canopy of our vast awareness,
Experiencing the moment to moment changes in the body and sensations,
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Impulses,
Sounds and all the while lake-like.
Just simply lying here watching the play of the weather of the mind and body.
Allowing the awareness to hold it all.
Moment by moment.
Breath by breath.
In our own fullness.
In our own completeness.
Moment by moment.
Taking a slow deep breath.
Exhaling out.
Take another slow deep breath.
Bringing sense of awareness,
Calmness,
Strength.
Exhale releasing worries,
Tension,
Unknown.
Exhale faith,
Hope,
Joy,
Promise.
Exhale.
One more deep breath.
Always knowing that you can come back to this place at any time,
Any place.
Exhaling the breath and the mind.
Namaste.
