feel, observe and absorb meditation
- Feel: First feel what you are feeling in the body. First, the whole body feeling – is it tense or relaxed? Do you feel like you’re holding yourself in, holding yourself together; or are there restless energies, a feeling of wanting to move, a feeling of rushing out of yourself, not being able to rest in yourself? Just feel it, in a gentle, calm, neutral, accepting way. Check the places where we normally hold tension – the belly – is it soft or hard, is it tight or contracted? The chest – is it tight, constricted, closed, or is it soft, open, relaxed? The point behind the eyes – is there tension, contraction, as if you’re trying hard to see something, figure something out, or trying hard not to see something? Can you let go of any knot, tightness, you find there; soften, let the tension melt, let go, be open, receptive? Feel the sensations in these three places in a gentle, calm, accepting way, without judging, resisting, or trying to force them to be any other way; just gently accepting them, giving them space to show themselves. [This is a gentle invitation for the feelings just to be in this space, without either acting them out or suppressing them. Let them show themselves, fully, freely, and be received by this space of unconditional acceptance.]
- Observe (make space): Now, from the center of your heart, imagine a feeling of gentle, loving acceptance, emanating, radiating out, into the space all around you; wider and wider, until it is like a big sphere of loving energy permeating and surrounding your body. This space of love and acceptance is both inside and out; it both surrounds you, holding you, gently and safe, and suffuses your body; it is both inside you and out, within every cell and also everywhere around you. Feel again into the points of tension in your body, from this space of loving acceptance, and feel them suffused, permeated by this space – [the belly, the chest, the eyes, or wherever you might still feel tension]. Let the energies held in these tensions soften, flow, open up, release into this space. Feel them embraced, welcomed, received into this space.
- Absorb (embrace): Sense this radiant spaciousness of loving acceptance interpenetrating your very being; absorbing, embracing your body, your edges, your tensions, your energies. Feel it bathing every cell, connecting the inside of your body with the space outside you: this flow of energy between your body and the whole field around you. Relax into this gentle space of loving energy that is holding you; feel yourself as this space, absorbing the tensions, the edges, the sense of separateness of your body, into it, letting your small, enclosed self melt into the greater space of love that is all around you, and in you, and through you, that is your true nature. However you perceive this, (now, and know that this will deepen and grow) know that the small self and this greater space of your true nature are not-two, whatever relationship you may feel them to be in in this moment – whether they are dancing in blissful unison, simply co-existing, flickering back and forth between each other as you sense one, then the other; or melting in perfect union. Whether the small self melts in that loving space, resists, or struggles, that greater love is always there for it, its mother, its own true Source.
“what am i?” meditation
What am I? This is not a verbal question with a verbal answer, but something to feel and experience. Close your eyes and feel into the “I, sense into the “I”, get directly inside it and feel its boundaries. Then bring your awareness outside its boundaries. Feel how your awareness now is not just inside your body, but encompasses your body and everything around it. Then sense your body again, sense how your consciousness is not just in your body but everywhere around it.
Realize that this is in fact the normal state of affairs. The true “I” is this consciousness, in which both your body and the whole world around it appear. Feel how your consciousness weaves you and the world together, is the very basis on which you and the world, together, appear. Feel into this consciousness itself, and how when you do this that the distinction between you and the world disappears.
These are the two faces of consciousness, emptiness and interdependent form. The emptiness is perfection, absolute Stillness, pure potential. The interdependence of this pure, unconditioned potential with form – our body and the world – is the basis of the power of co-creation, our power to change the world.
suggestions
- Meditation: Focusing on the third-eye or your heart, invoke the light that interpenetrates this dimension. Don’t strain your eyes to see it, but deeply relax them, softening so that the light itself begins to suffuse you, shines through you. Feel it in every cell of your being, and everything around you. Let it bathe you in its love, and melt the boundaries between yourself and everything around you.
- Meditation: Begin by feeling the Divine love for yourself, embracing all your darkness, then as yourself, your true Self. Then feel it embracing all others, feeling into their vulnerability, like yours, and loving them, even despite the wounds they may have inflicted on you out of their own woundedness and lack of love.
- Meditation: Know that at a deep level not yet visible to you, that you are perfect, whole, untouched; you are safe, loved, all is perfect. (It was only ever a dream that you were separate and suffering.) Feel this dimension of your perfection and Wholeness as light and rest in it in your heart. From there let it spread through your whole body, suffusing every cell of your body, and blending with the whole field of light that equally permeates everything around you. Let go of mental control, mental images, any tension in your mind or eyes, and let yourself go, melting into this infinite bath of light.
- Meditation: Think of an issue in your life that is troubling you. Visualize or verbalize to yourself briefly this issue. Then closing your eyes, follow this route from the outer story to its Source in pure Consciousness:
