Welcome to your last session in this series,
Finding Joy.
Today,
For this session,
You can choose to lie down or to sit wherever you're the most comfortable.
Today,
I hope you change your worldview.
The universe is loving and it is really kind and filled with moments of joy.
You just need to look past conditioning and propaganda.
The world is based on hope.
You are surrounded by the energy of love,
Joy and acceptance.
Close your eyes.
Be still.
Enter the peaceful place within you at all times.
Enter the restful and quiet space of your heart space.
Listen.
Be still.
Open your heart space.
A gentle inhale.
A gentle exhale.
Allow your breath to calm you,
To allow you to know yourself as the pause between your breaths.
It is that pause,
That tender space,
That silence where you connect with your soul.
You will learn that you are not your mind,
Not your thoughts,
Not your ego.
The you,
The force deep within your non-doing,
Your essence,
Is your soul.
The eternal you,
The core energy of you.
Look now at the space behind your eyes.
Your little screen from the world.
Allow your breath to guide you.
Breathe in,
Pause,
Breathe out,
Pause.
In the next few deep breaths,
Relax your body even more.
Feel all of your tensions melting away.
Concentrate on only this,
The present moment,
The only moment.
With each breath,
You are becoming more present and more centered.
Our breath connects us all here together.
Breathe in,
Pause,
Breathe out,
Pause.
Deep breathe in and relax.
Exhale with an audible sigh.
Return to your normal breathing rhythm.
I want you to think back now to a time when you felt the deepest moment of joy.
It could be anything,
But it was a moment of pure joy for you.
Think back to that moment now.
Allow that sensation of joy to return to you now.
Pure joy,
Of course,
Is a form of energy,
A vibration.
On your inhale,
Imagine a white light is filling you with joy and optimism.
Inhale the white light and exhale the white light.
Inhale joy and optimism.
Allow yourself to float in the energy of pure joy for a few moments.
With each new breath now,
Dive deeper and deeper into yourself.
Feel how in this moment,
The here and now,
All is well.
We are all here together.
We are all connected,
But not by geography or language or religion or politics,
But by our connection to the universe,
The vibration of our energy.
We are here in these sessions to realign with ourselves.
We seek refuge from the world.
Deep breath in,
Deep breath out.
Let go of everything for a moment.
Surrender to peace,
Even though this life is not always easy.
We are here to take a moment to say,
I know I understand.
I know life comes with incredible hardship,
Tragedy and rejection.
I know when your heart was most open,
It could have been broken.
Someone could have been thoughtless or careless with your dreams.
We all have had this.
We can lash out from fear and hurt.
And we may have forgotten why we are here.
We are trying to heal our center by being here together.
This is why we meditate.
I hope after these series,
You have come to understand that there are all kinds of forms of meditation.
These are all leading us each to the same place.
Even in our worst moments in our pain,
There is a place of deep stillness and love in the center of it.
You are here to help yourself in the here and now.
Your true self holds hope and pure joy inside of you,
No matter what is happening outside and around you.
Today,
You have a choice.
You can choose to give your energy to fear or to love,
But your choices will shape your reality.
Choose love.
After today,
Take a moment to look for the generosity and kindness of each person you encounter.
Even if it seems difficult.
Even if they seem difficult.
Try and remember,
We really are all just walking ourselves home together.
Deep breath in and deep breath out.
Take a moment to feel gratitude for this moment.
For your higher self leading you here.
If you don't know what your higher self is,
Just believe that something more powerful than you has led you to this moment and in taking these sessions.
You arrived here inside of yourself.
Remember the connection you made with yourself.
When you leave this session,
Pause and look for the way the universe shows you love and joy.
The bird who is singing.
The little frog you can hear.
The sound of the wind.
The waves crashing.
Keep your energy in high vibration.
Avoid negative energy as best as you can.
Protect and cherish your heart space.
Don't forget to visit it.
To create space.
To be quiet.
To be still.
The world around us seems to be spinning too quickly and a bit off kilter at the moment.
If we are not careful,
This can be paralyzing.
The key is reconnecting to the hope that is your inner power.
Knowing that everything is going to be okay.
Always.
No matter what.
Look for the special moments.
The tiny messages all around you.
One day recently,
I was taking a little tea break while creating this series.
And I was scrolling through some posts online.
I came across a poem someone I don't know had posted.
For some reason,
I started to read it.
I had a little moment.
Some of you will know what that is.
You see the poem on a deeper level aligned perfectly,
Energetically with what this series was all about.
I was actually kind of impressed with how perfectly it did.
I read the poem several times.
Then I did something I normally might not do.
I contacted the author via messenger,
Introduced myself,
Described what I was creating and asked if I could include his poem by reading it into one of the sessions.
I didn't really expect an answer back.
That afternoon,
I became immersed and lost in typing up program content.
I forgot about it.
It was later that day when I saw I had a message.
The author of the poem had written back to me.
I just looked at the message for a moment before opening it.
I was thinking how small our world really is now.
The author told me he would be honored to be included in this program.
I still think of this as a kismet moment.
For you listening,
This was a small thing or a huge thing.
It really depends on your perspective.
The author's name is John Rodell.
You can look him up at John Rodell dot com.
I think he is one of those pretty cool guys you often read about.
He started out as a stand up comic,
Had the moment to answer a dream and picked up his pen to start writing poetry.
He is an extremely talented poet.
I hope you look him up and if you get a chance,
Check out his poetry.
As you are floating there,
Listen carefully to his poem as I read it to you.
After all of your experiences with all of our sessions together,
See if you can get the subtle real meaning behind the words.
My brain and heart divorced a decade ago.
Over who was to blame about how big of a mess I have become.
Eventually,
They couldn't be in the same room with each other.
Now my head and heart share custody of me.
I stay with my brain during the week and my heart gets me on the weekends.
They never speak to one another.
Instead,
They give me the same note to pass to each other every week.
And their notes they send to one another always say the same thing.
This is all your fault.
On Sundays,
My heart complains about how my head has let me down in the past and on Wednesday,
My head lists all of the times my heart has screwed things up for me.
In the future,
They blame each other for the state of my life.
There's been a lot of yelling and crying so lately,
I've been spending a lot of time with my gut who serves as my unofficial therapist.
Most nights,
I sneak out of the window in my ribcage and slide down my spine and collapse on my gut's plush leather chair that's always open for me.
And I just sit,
Sit,
Sit,
Sit until the sun comes up.
Last evening,
My gut asked me if I was having a hard time being caught between my heart and my head.
I nodded.
I said I didn't know if I could live with either of them anymore.
My heart is always sad about something that happened yesterday while my head is always worried about something that may happen tomorrow.
I lamented.
My gut squeezed my hand.
I just can't live with my mistakes of the past or my anxiety about the future,
I sighed.
My gut smiled and said,
In that case,
You should go stay with your lungs for a while.
I was confused.
The look on my face gave it away.
If you are exhausted about your heart's obsession with the fixed past and your mind's focus on the uncertain future,
Your lungs are the perfect place for you.
There is no yesterday in your lungs.
There is no tomorrow there either.
There is only now.
There is only inhale.
There is only exhale.
There is only this moment.
There is only breath.
And in that breath,
You can rest while your heart and head work their relationship out.
This morning,
While my brain was busy reading tea leaves,
And while my heart was staring at old photographs,
I packed a little bag and walked to the door of my lungs.
Before I could even knock,
She opened the door with a smile,
And as a gust of air embraced me,
She said,
What took you so long?
Thank you again for sharing with us,
John.
Connect with your breathing for a moment.
You know now the magic math of your inhale,
Pause,
Exhale,
Pause that you can always connect with to slow your nervous system down to calm.
Open your palms and face them up to the sky.
Let the universe fill them with love and let it spill into your heart space.
I invite you to take these sessions again as much as you like.
That was the purpose in making them a free offering during these troubling times.
Take what resonates for you.
But I hope you take this with you.
Remember to slow down.
Remember why you are here.
Be vulnerable.
Love.
Be courageous.
Be creative.
Be less reactive and more the observer.
Listen more.
Be happy.
Be grateful.
Kinder.
Be more alive.
Remember to breathe.
And most important,
Remember to meditate.
When you are ready,
Come back into your physical bodies,
Wiggling your fingers and toes.
Be present.
Take a moment and then open your eyes.
Until we meet again,
Namaste.
Namaste.
Namaste.
Namaste.
Namaste.
Namaste.
