Spirit Healer February, 2012

Imbolc meditation 2012

Imbolc is a celebration of the coming of Spring, and with Spring comes inspiration, creativity, and growth.  Imbolc is the traditional time of Spring Cleaning, both of our physical world, as well as our inner world.  We need to clean out old patterns of thinking and behaving that no longer serve us, so we don’t get stuck in a loop, chasing our proverbial tails and wondering why we aren’t getting anywhere.

For this meditation, you should have handy something to write on and something to write with.  Make sure you will be undisturbed for at least 20 minutes.  Consider recording your own voice reading this meditation so you can really get into it, or having a friend record it for you if hearing your own voice distracts you.

Make your body comfortable, and tell the nagging voices in your mind to shush.

Breath deeply, and pay exquisite attention to each breath.  How does breathing feel?  What do you smell and taste in the air?

How does the air feel as it enters your throat and passes into your lungs?

How do your lungs feel as they expand and deflate?

Relax with each breath.  Relax every inch of your body.  Relax your mind, and allow yourself to drift into that trance-like state just before sleep.

You are in a safe place, a sacred place, YOUR sacred place.  How does it look to you?

Take your time looking at your sacred space, and making changes to it with your will until it feels perfect for you in this moment.

When you are ready, find a door.  Know that when you open this door, you will find a wooded path, a path that will lead you to a cave.  No harm will come to you on this path.  You are safe, protected, and loved.

When you are ready, open the door.

Follow the path to an inviting, cozy cave, lit  from within by a hearth against the back wall.  The floor of the cave is soft dirt, and the walls are decorated with metal armor and weapons, beautifully detailed metal-work.

There are stacks of books by the entrance, and you know that they are full of poetry and prose, words that express and call to mind all the beauty and wonder of the universe and the experiences of life.

In the center of the cave, there is an anvil between the flames of the hearth and a simple well in the middle of the floor.  By the well stands a girl with long wild hair that shines with all the shades ever seen in  flame, and large swirling eyes that reveal every shade of water, from the healing tropical seas to the preserving arctic glaciers.  You know She is the maiden form of the Celtic Goddess Brighid, and you kneel before Her so that you and She are face to face.

Brighid the Child takes your face into Her hands and gazes into your eyes.  Her gaze fills you with unconditional love, the love a baby feels for her mother, and a mother feels for her child.  This pure love fills you, healing all the scars in your chakras and your aura, and fills every cell of your being, illuminating you from within.

When you feel like you can’t possibly take in anymore love, Brighid the Child opens Her arms for a hug.  You embrace Her, holding Her to your chest, resting your head against Her soft hair.

As you settle into the hug, you notice a warm sensation where your chest meets Hers.  The warmth gets hotter and hotter until you are sure there will be a scorch mark on your breast.  Though it doesn’t hurt, you are afraid that it will.

“You are safe,” Brighid the Child whispers.  “Let me kindle your heart with mine.  Let your passions awaken, and let your creativity flow.  Trust Me, and trust yourself.”

You whisper, “I trust You.  I trust myself,” and a spark ignites in your heart.

Your heart-flames burn away old frustration and anger, leaving only the fierce love of the Goddess and the will to create with Her.

Tears run down your cheeks, washing away stagnant emotions, the sadness, fears, and doubts that once blocked you.

Brighid the Child holds you and strokes your hair until you are balanced and calm, cleansed and filled with joy and gratitude.

As you dry your eyes, She offers you a drink of water from Her well, which you accept with thanks.  As you drink, savor the sweet flavor.  Know that the tears you cried left an empty space inside you, and that this water is filling that space with nourishment, confidence, and sacred knowledge.

You thank Brighid for Her gracious gifts, and ask Her what you can do to call this feeling back to you at will.

Listen for Her answer.  What does She say?

What does She show you?

When you are ready, give the Goddess a gift from your heart.  Then bid Her farewell, and leave the cave.

Follow the path through the woods, back to your sacred doorway.

Enter your sacred space, and breath deeply into your being.

Feel the air expand your lungs, and feel them deflate as you exhale.

Feel your diaphragm stretch and contract with every breath.

Feel your heart beat in the rhythm of life, your rhythm.

What can you feel with your skin?

What can you taste on your tongue?

What do you smell with your nose?

What can you hear with your ears?

What do you see with your eyes?

How does it feel to be back in your body?

Welcome home.

Now write down any ideas that have come to you before they turn to ash or wash away!

Tags: imbolc, meditation

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Red Pixie February, 2012

Is Mediatation just another Form of Manifestation?

Almost everyone wants to be successful. And whilst the focus of success varies from one person to the next it is a basic philosophy that hard work and focus are the key to success. But very recently people have discovered a thing called manifestation meditation, a meditative process of making our goals materialize through a shifting of thought patterns.

Manifestation meditation is when you direct your thoughts towards what you want to achieve in life so that it becomes intimately aware of what you desire from life. This is very different from when you have so many random thoughts that your brain gets confused. With this form of therapy you are so far from the noise of society that you can easily focus your thoughts on what you want.

But manifestation meditation is not as easy as thinking about what you desire and just leaving it at that. There are steps that should be followed if anything substantial is going to come out of it. The very first thing you should do is go somewhere quiet and think about what sort of success you want. This will help to spell out to your mind exactly what you want. Write your vision of success down and then pin up the piece of paper on a wall of your room.

After deciding on your goal you should then detach yourself again and sit down to silence. Becoming relaxed helps to make your vision of success clearer than ever before. The mind works a whole lot better with silence and certainty; clogging your mind with random thoughts confuses the brain making it unable to manifest dreams in the exact manner you imagine them. Some people actually associate their success with an image or thought that fills them with compassion; the belief is that this burning passion has a powerful energy.

Once you’re relaxed and calm the next thing you should do is imagine your success. Be sure to eradicate any distracting thoughts that might offset your imagination. The vision you hold in your mind should be clear and you must think about that thought for the remaining period of your meditation.

To make the meditation more powerful you should clip out pictures associated with your vision of success. Cut out pictures of the car you want and attach them to your piece of paper. Another thing is that you must focus on your imagined success throughout your day as you take the necessary steps that will help you achieve your success.

Remember practise makes perfect and remember that you’ll never win the lottery through intent if you never buy a ticket to begin with!

Bright Blessings

Pixie

Tags: meditation

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Spirit Healer January, 2012

A Meditation on Meditation for Beginners

There are 1440 minutes in every day.  You can easily schedule 5 of them for yourself, right?

Did you find yourself thinking about how many things you are going to change in 2012 over the holidays?  Have you made resolutions, or set goals, to start on January 1^st?

Are you looking forward to starting a new year, or do you find yourself feeling down or anxious?

Meditation as a daily practice has been scientifically (medically and psychologically) shown to reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety.  It reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, improves the function of every cell, organ, and system in your body, and is apparently the best thing since sliced bread.  Sliced gluten-free bread, even.

Can you afford to give yourself five minutes a day?  Would you be willing to give up a single press of the snooze button, a cigarette break if you suffer that particular addiction, or five whole minutes of Facebook time?

Meditation doesn’t have to occur in a void.  You don’t have to be alone, in a quiet dark comfortable place with burning candle and incense.  You can meditate while you brush your teeth, or walk the dog.  You can meditate while working out, dancing, coloring, painting, or even mowing the lawn or cleaning dishes.

Meditation is a state of mind.  It’s not something you do, it’s something you be.

Many people fail at incorporating meditation as a daily practice because we are so used to thinking about our lengthy to do list, and it’s super difficult to make that inner ticker shut the heck up.  How can you relax and just be if every cell in your body  seems to be demanding you do something “productive?”

It is much easier to meditate while satisfying your left brain with action.  Some people have little labyrinths they trace with their fingers while they let their minds quietly lead them to solutions to a problem.  Some people have full size labyrinths they can walk for the same purpose.  Some people meditate while coloring mandalas or beating a drum.

You don’t have to invest in anything special to give meditation a try.  If you decide to make daily meditation a goal for 2012, here’s one effective way to start:

ñ  Set an alarm if you need a time limit, before you start your task.

ñ  Choose a task you would be doing anyway, that you could do backwards in your sleep with one arm tied behind your back.  For this example, I arbitrarily choose the task of a morning shower.

- While you do your task, the first day focus one sense on what you are doing.  Being hyper-aware of how the water feels on your skin, for example.

- The next day, hyper-focus on a different sense, and every day after until you’ve covered the five senses.  What do you smell, taste, see, hear?

-  On the sixth day, let go and see what your sixth sense might be trying to tell you.  Allow yourself to receive messages from the Divine, from your guides, or your Higher Self.

ñ  On the seventh day, just breath.  Count your breaths while you do your task of choice, or just allow your body to move while your mind enjoys are few moments of blessed peace.

Tune in next month for a guided meditation on Imbolc. <3

Tags: beginners, meditation

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Spirit Healer December, 2011

Yule Meditation – Finding Your Light

The sun is reborn on the night of the solstice.  Each day until the Spring Equinox the days will grow longer, and the nights shorter.  Though it’s the middle of winter, each extra moment of sunshine brings us closer to the joyful blooms of Spring.

Guided meditation can be a powerful tool for healing, problem-solving, developing your intuition, and exploring your world.  Today’s meditation will help you unite your intuition, mind, and heart as you uncover your own personal seed of light – your hope for the coming year that will bloom for you come Spring.

Make yourself comfortable.  Consider asking someone to read the meditation aloud to you, or recording it in your own voice so you can listen to it while laying down with your eyes closed and your focus inward.

You are safe within a sphere of white light,

comfortable, peaceful, secure, relaxed.

A soothing rain of pure white light cleanses you.

You feel the glowing water, cool against your face,

washing away tension and negativity.

Your eyes relax and close.

Breathe deeply and let the light cleanse you.

Feel the soothing water pour over your neck

your shoulders, washing away the tension.

Breathe deeply and relax your chest,

relax your back,

relax your hips.

The cool light bathes your thighs,

relaxing your knees,

your calves,

your ankles,

your feet.

Your feet stand on cool stone at the entrance of a large cave.  Huge trees around you block most of the light from the moon and stars.  You can hear thunder, rustling branches and the whistle of the wind whipping around the mountain.  The cavern in front of you is silent, yet inviting.  It offers shelter, protection from the stormy night.

You step into the cave, safe and relaxed, allowing your fingers to guide you as they glide along the cool stone wall.  With every step, you rely more and more on your ears, nose, and skin to keep you from stumbling or walking into a wall, though your eyes strain for a hint of light, any light.

In the darkness, even though you know you are safe, that nothing can harm you hear, you can’t help but remember your fears and worries about the unknown, the things that are beyond your knowledge or control.  You acknowledge your fear, knowing that it is normal and natural, and you release it with love.  “I am no longer afraid,” you say.  “Because I know that beings of Divine love guide and protect me.  I ask my guides to illuminate my path, and show me the way to my spark of hope, and my infinite well of Divine trust.”

In the darkness you feel a blanket of warm energy embrace you, wrapping around you in a hug of encouragement and pure, unconditional love.  Your straining eyes pick up a hint of light, allowing you to see contrast of the bumps, boulders, and walls.

You walk faster, and each step brings more light, until you turn around a bend and see the flame of a single candle ahead.  You enter a room about the size of your bedroom, warmed by this tiny flame of hope and trust, dancing by itself in the middle of the cavern, suspended in mid air just before you.

You know the flame cannot hurt you, because it is a part of your spirit that you have traveled all this way to reclaim.  You cradle it between your hands, and as it dances in your palms, you remember how it feels to KNOW that everything is just as it should be, that you are fully capable of handling any problem or clearing any hurdle, and that you have the power to manifest for yourself any thing your heart desires.

The flame dances from your palms to your heart, seeping into your skin and filling you with love and joy.  You can see yourself a few months from now, overwhelmed with joy and gratitude as a long-cherished dream becomes your reality.  You KNOW that by recovering your hope and faith, you have planted a seed of manifestation, and that as long as you nourish the seed with positive energy and intention, come spring it will bloom, and come summer or fall you will be able to harvest its fruit.

Your hope and faith lights you from within.  Your entire body radiates peace and love as you leave the cavern and make your way back to the entrance of the forest.

The cool stone beneath your feet glitters with your light until it gives way to the earth and mulch of a primal forest.  The ground is soft and damp, refreshed from the storm that has already passed.  With each step, you come back to your body.  You wiggle your toes and stretch your ankles, your calves.

You stretch your thighs and move your hips.  You stretch your back, and become aware of the rise and fall of your chest with each breath.  You roll your head, stretching your neck and shoulders, blink your eyes, and allow the peace and love, the hope and faith, to fill your mind, heart, spirit, and body.

Welcome home.

Tags: finding your light, meditation, yule

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Literata November, 2011

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

As the Wheel of the Year turns to winter, it is natural for us to turn inward as well, using the increasing darkness to help us concentrate on internal matters and to work with trance states and meditative journeys. Progressive muscle relaxation is a simple but useful technique for quieting the body so that the spirit can engage in these experiences without being distracted by external influences. It can also be used as part of a larger meditative practice to help us recognize where we tend to experience stress physically and learn to release that tension.

Describing stress as a feeling of pressure or tension isn’t just a figure of speech; most of us have particular muscles that we tend to tense up unconsciously when we’re worried about something. Some people “store” stress like this in their neck or back; others in the legs or abdomen. After too long, a muscle kept tense will feel achy and stiff. That feeling is annoying in and of itself, and can be tremendously distracting while you’re trying to engage in inner work.

It would be easy to say that if we just removed stress from our lives, we wouldn’t get tense, stiff, and sore muscles as a result! Since totally eliminating the cares and concerns of a normal life isn’t likely to happen anytime soon for most of us, progressive muscle relaxation is a way to work backwards from the effects to the cause. By relaxing, calming, and stilling the body, we make it possible to do the same in the mind and spirit.

Being able to relax the body to a comfortable, neutral state is also essential for doing trance work or guided meditations that involve a lot of detailed visualization or action. In these experiences, you want to be able to “leave your body behind,” and it’s much more difficult to do that when achy muscles are clamoring for your attention and intruding on your awareness.

To do progressive muscle relaxation, you first tense and then relax each group of muscles in your body. You’re using pairs or groups of muscles because you want to keep your body mostly still while you’re doing this. Where there’s a pair of muscles that have opposite functions, like your biceps and triceps in your upper arm, or your quads and hamstrings in your thigh, you tense both of them at the same time so that your limb doesn’t actually move at all. For areas like your feet and hands, you’ll be using whole groups of muscles.

Starting at your feet, first try to point your toes or to curl them inward, and while you take a slow breath in tense all the muscles there at once, then relax as you exhale. Now imagine that you’re pressing hard on a pedal with the ball of your foot, and tense and relax in sync with your breath. As you relax, that part of your body may feel heavy or warm; go with that feeling and let yourself sink into it, bit by bit.

It can actually be hard for us to identify tension or to know what really loosening up particular muscles feels like. By tensing the muscles first, we kick-start the relaxation process: if it can’t get any tenser, there’s nowhere else to go. Once that starts, we can go with the flow and let it keep going to relax out the initial tension we were storing there. As you become more familiar with what it feels like to be truly relaxed in certain parts of your body, you’ll be better able to identify tension and start the process of relaxing.

Do not hold your breath while tensing your muscles! That will raise your blood pressure and actually create more stress in your body; let the timing of your breathing determine how long you are tight, and then feel the strain and tension flowing out as you exhale.

As you progress from your feet up your legs and through your core, you will know when you get to the muscles where you tend to store stress because there will be less difference between the starting feeling of the muscle and the really tensed state – it will feel already tight when you get to it. As you let it relax, the looser state will feel even better than where you started out.

Keep going up through your core, to your arms and hands. Tense your hands in two different ways, like you did your feet – once in a fist, and once with your fingers spread out as wide as you can move them, pressing your palm down. Then work through your shoulders, neck, and face. Yes, even your facial muscles can feel tense and benefit from some relaxation!

When you finish, go back to your feet and slowly check on each group of muscles. If any of them have tensed up again, squeeze and relax them, slowly, until your whole body feels open and calm. If you want to do a trance exercise, do this while laying or sitting down, and as your muscles feel warm and heavy, imagine that they are sinking down into closer contact with the floor or chair. When you’re ready, you can let your attention drift up and away, gently moving out of your body to begiin your trance.

Calm the body and the mind will follow; still the body so the mind can roam.

Tags: meditation, muscle, relaxation

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Willow Winterborne October, 2011

*The Hedgewitch lives in the space between the Village and the Forest. Between the mundane and the magical. S/He lives with a foot in both worlds.

Tags: halloween, holiday, meditation, mindfulness, samhain, thining veil

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Literata October, 2011

As October rolls around, many Pagans begin preparing for Samhain, the Celtic festival of summer’s end, when the veil between the worlds of living and dead is especially thin. For Pagans today, this is often a time for acknowledging those who have died in the previous year and telling myths about death and rebirth. For all who may be grieving or remembering grief at Samhain, I would like to offer some suggestions about how meditative techniques can help you experience and move through those feelings.

Concentrating on these emotions, especially the ones we usually seek to avoid, may seem like the very opposite of the calm peace and even detachment cultivated through meditation. I have often written that when other thoughts or concerns arise during meditation, you should acknowledge them and then return your attention to whatever you’ve chosen to focus on. It’s true that this is the best course to take when your distractions are relatively simple, everyday sorts of matters. But deep emotions, like grief, cannot be dismissed as easily, and forcing ourselves to do so can become an unhealthy form of repressing our feelings.

If deep emotional issues are a concern for you as this Samhain draws near, instead of treating the emotional experience as a failure in your mediative practice, you might try embracing the emotion and allowing yourself to feel it fully as a necessary part of letting it go. This is tricky; you don’t want to be overwhelmed by the feelings or reinforce their presence in your life. As a result, the rest of the suggestions I give in this article will be fairly general ones that you have to adapt to your own situation. I strongly suggest trying these kinds of techniques as part of a steady meditative practice, and taking other actions to work through your grief at the same time, especially talking with people you can trust. Above all, be compassionate with yourself.

Grieving is a long and complex experience, and every situation is different. In the process of coming to terms with a death, many different emotions can play a part, including fear, anger, remorse, and resentment. Allow yourself to acknowledge any and all of these in turn, even if they seem paradoxical or difficult to explain to others. What you are feeling does not make you a bad person – it’s how you handle the feeling that matters. You may want to read about the stages of grieving; these are not a simple linear sequence, but they may help you understand that you are not alone in going through a lot of different, difficult feelings while grieving.

Facing these feelings, acknowledging them, is the first step to beginning to move through them towards acceptance of what has happened. Accepting the current sitation does not mean that you have to like it, but it enables you to turn your attention to the future again.

As you go into your feelings and begin to acknowledge them, the same meditative techniques of self-monitoring that you use to direct your attention can help you stay in the feeling, rather than turning away to some more desirable topic. You might use these while doing an activity you’ve chosen to help you express the emotion, such as a creating a piece of art. Mediatively centering yourself on the emotion can keep you engaged with the purpose so that you fully explore the emotion and can release it into the activity as much as possible.

On the other hand, if you feel like you’re drowning in the emotional current, you can use that same approach of self-awareness to help you identify when you’re getting in over your head, so you can take steps to turn your attention elsewhere. Again, these two approaches complement each other: you don’t want to repress your feelings during the grieving process, but you don’t want to stay stuck in them forever, either. Use your best judgment and ask those around you or a trained counselor for help in striking the right balance as you move through the process of grieving.

I have found that the best time to engage with, experience, and begin to release an emotion is when I can move my attention back and forth between the emotion and the calm, compassionate self-awareness that I usually occupy during meditation. This usually happens only after some time has passed since the event that caused the emotion. As needed, I switch my focus in a way similar to the technique I suggested for meditating using opposites.

If this is too difficult for you, another approach is to visualize an interaction between different aspects of your self. Let one part of yourself give voice to the emotions and struggle you’re experiencing while another part of you listens as attentively and compassionately as you would for your closest friend. If you are familiar with the way Starhawk talks about different parts of the self, you might consider these to be your Younger Self and Talking Self, respectively. Or they might be the person you were before and the person you are coming to be in the present. Regardless, the goal is not to increase the separation between parts of yourself but to make healing and wholeness more possible by allowing yourself to go through the emotions to be able to return to your center.

Ultimately, as the immediacy of a feeling diminishes, you will be better able to apply these techniques and to come to terms with your emotions. Remember, above all, that these emotions are not a failure of your meditative practice or an impenetrable barrier. They are not separate from you; they are part of you. Using meditation to help yourself cope with and reconcile them can be a valuable part of returning, again, as always, to your center.

Tags: meditation

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Literata September, 2011

Meditation Moment: A Practical and Magical Skill

I’ve spent the last few months discussing different ways to meditate; this month I’d like to focus on why meditation is such an important skill for both practical and magical purposes. Research is revealing more and more health benefits to a regular meditation practice, but the ability to direct your own attention and shift your focus as you wish is incredibly valuable in everyday life, not just while actively meditating, and also an essential part of working magic.

As a practical skill, meditation can help us deal with difficult times in our lives. Many people who have depression experience being stuck in negative thoughts, going around and around the same issue or problem over and over again. This “spin cycle” can produce feelings of helplessness and despair. Meditative practice at redirecting your attention can help you break free of these traps.

This “thought stopping” is a difficult skill to develop. It requires a kind of self-awareness that allows you to monitor your own internal monologue so you can recognize when you’re getting stuck in repetitive thoughts and feelings. It’s very difficult to develop this ability while you’re in the midst of a stressful or painful time. Meditation practice gives you a chance to cultivate that skill so you will be able to use it when you need it most. Exercise helps you develop and maintain the physical skills and strength you need for other activities; meditation is mental and emotional exercise.

It is a bit misleading to talk about “thought stopping,” though, because it’s not so much stopping as redirection. Just as in meditation, you don’t so much stop thinking about one thing as choose to direct your attention elsewhere. And like in meditation, you have to be gentle with yourself when you do this. It’s counterproductive to blame yourself for thinking or feeling the way you do; what matters is moving your focus to something else of your choosing. If you’re spending time and energy blaming yourself, worrying, or suppressing those thoughts or feelings, you’re still focusing on them. You can acknowledge them, then refuse to let them occupy center stage in your mind. Gently let them go and redirect.

The same advice applies when you’re trying to change a mental habit. If you identify a negative idea about yourself that you’re trying to change, maybe by replacing it with an affirmation, you need to redirect your attention away from the negative idea, not suppress it. Many admonitions to just “Think positive!” make people feel like it’s their fault if they think negatively, which makes them feel worse, which gives them even more negative thoughts and feelings to try to ignore. I call this the backlash of positive thinking, because the harder you push down those negatives, the more energy you give them to throw back at you, often subconsciously or from an unexpected direction.

To avoid that backlash, don’t treat an affirmation as a magical incantation that will banish your hurts, fears, and doubts all by itself. Acknowledge those feelings or your negative beliefs about yourself and gently redirect yourself away from them towards the new mental habit you want to cultivate instead.

Where this becomes a magical skill is when you use the same techniques to improve your visualization and focus on your intent for a spell. We do magic because we want something to change, but in visualization, we need to concentrate on our desired outcome rather than the current state of affairs.

This is the “Don’t think of a pink elephant!” problem. If you’re trying to help heal a friend, for example, it is easy to be distracted with concerns about how she was sniffling and coughing this morning. That’s the reason you’re doing the spell, after all! But you’re not raising and sending energy towards the idea of her staying sick; you want to concentrate that energy on her being well, so you have to catch those thoughts and change your focus to your visualization or affirmation of her as healthy and happy.

Working with different types of meditation can help you identify your strengths for magical practice and improve your abilities in areas where you’re weaker. If you like meditating with a physical object to focus on, then you can use the same techniques to direct your intent towards a spell component like a candle, stone, or herb. If chanting or prayer works well, make the most of that by designing spells with verbal elements. On the other hand, if you are good at concentrating when you have your eyes closed, you can work on meditating while gazing at a physical object to make it easier for you to concentrate on an object for magical purposes.

These are just a few examples of how awareness of your own thoughts and feelings and the ability to redirect your attention are both practical and magical skills. As your practice deepens, you’ll find even more ways to apply the benefits of meditation in everyday life.

Tags: magic, magick, meditation

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Literata August, 2011

Washed Away

If meditating in motion wasn’t really your thing, here’s another approach to meditation that also takes advantage of summer’s more temperate weather!

Most of what I wrote about in terms of beginning meditation was about how to reduce your distractions: quiet time, calm space, and one simple thing to focus on. The approach I’m suggesting this time seems like it’s just the opposite: it’s all about your senses. It’s about letting your senses be your focus, but not any one particular sense or object, the whole flow of things it’s possible to be aware of, all around you.

There’s a constant stream of sense-data that we are capable of getting. Most of the time we aren’t even aware of it. In order to pay attention anything at all, we have to block out the vast majority of all the potential impressions coming at us. One way to meditate, especially in connection with nature, is to turn those potential distractions into our means of meditating. We can let our usual thoughts and concerns be washed away in the constant stream of physical awareness by opening ourselves to more of it than we usually perceive. This is another way of applying the skill of forgetting in order to be truly present in the single moment and single space you occupy right now.

To try this, find a place where nature is present in all your senses. It doesn’t need to be isolated or totally insulated from obvious examples of human activity, like road noise, it just needs to be a place where there’s at least as much nature for you to see, hear, touch, and smell as there is constructed stuff for you to sense. It should also be a place where the sense impressions you get are ones you can at least mostly enjoy. And finally, it should be a safe spot for you to sit and close your eyes for a few minutes: not in poison ivy, not on top of an anthill, not where you’re going to get sunburned if you sit longer than you thought or fall in the river if you go to sleep.

When you find a spot, settle yourself there however is comfortable for you. It will probably help at first to close your eyes, since vision is a very focused sense. Try to start with your breathing and relax, and gradually open yourself to your senses.

Start with touch: what do you feel? Let yourself be absorbed in your sense of touch, all over your skin. It’s not just whatever you’re sitting or standing on, but the flow of the air around you, the warmth of the sun or the cool of the shade. As you grow more aware of what you’re sensing, don’t just focus on each individual thing in turn. Let all the impressions flow through your awareness; let each impression go as soon as it forms, so that you continue to be receptive to what you’re feeling. Open your awareness to as much as you can all at once. Any time you start to focus on one sensation, let go of it and relax, opening yourself to all the other sensations.

Add in other senses and forms of awareness gradually. Start noticing how humid or dry the air is, how it feels and how it tastes, and what scents it carries. Listen to the world around you; don’t try to block out any sounds, even the annoying ones. Just let your awareness of them go, as you do with all the awarenesses. An annoying one may come back time and again, but don’t give it any more attention than you do the pleasant ones. Treat them all alike, as things simply to be observed in turn, but not concentrated on, even by trying to ignore them. Let that awareness go so that more impressions, each fleeting in their turn, can form.

Concentrating on any one thing, like looking at something in particular, is an active behavior. It’s something we do, with purpose, with intent, even subconsciously. For this meditation, try to let go of that intent, that purpose, and be a passive observer. This is why it’s very hard to do this with your eyes open, especially at first. We automatically focus, literally, our vision on things around us.

If you want to try it, you might let your eyes drift slightly out of focus, or try to look into an indistinct place in the middle distance, so that you’re not looking at any one thing in particular, simply gazing and being aware of as much in your field of vision as is possible. If that’s too difficult or gives you a headache, do this meditation with your eyes closed instead. You might be amazed at how much information is available to you through your other senses, even while you’re sitting still. We depend so much on our vision that it often blocks out our conscious awareness of senses like touch and smell.

Even without vision, the amount of information flowing through our senses is tremendous. By letting go of every impression as soon as it is formed, we let that flow proceed smoothly, like sand through an hourglass or water through a calm river. Opening ourselves to more of that flow means that we can use it to help dislodge persistent thoughts or worries, just as water can move obstacles out of its way. Just for a little while, let yourself be overwhelmed, in a good way, by your senses, so that you can reconnect with the world around you. Let yourself be washed away.

Tags: meditation

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Literata May, 2011

Bringing the Outdoors In

Last month I wrote about how being deeply present in a single moment helps us relate to all moments; this month, I want to extend that approach to thinking about space as well as time. As Pagans, we tend to cultivate our connections to the world around us, especially the natural world. Meditation can help us deepen that connection.

Many of us practice in urban areas, but still want to connect to the rhythm of the seasons and natural cycles. It can be ideal to find a location outdoors in which to meditate, but few of us have the luxury of doing that every day. So we need to find ways of bringing the outdoors in for us to connect with during meditation.

The goal here is to be present in a particular place, just as last month we talked about being present in the particular moment. We want to be present with this individual stone, or shell, or flower, or twig; not with all stones, or all flowers, but this one, in particular, in all of its uniqueness. It is an example of the place it came from, a connection to that one spot. But just as being present in each unique moment helps us connect to all moments, narrowing our focus to a deeper contemplation of this one location can paradoxically help us appreciate the totality of the world we live in.

Meditation’s connection between the minuscule and the majestic – now and all time, here and everywhere, myself and all living things – makes this contemplation of nature much more than a decoration, more than a superficial acknowledgement, and into a deep act of awareness. When we want to have a more meaningful relationship with the web of life and the natural cycles that support it, we can start small. Recognizing the uniqueness of one thing and the richness in one small corner of reality helps us appreciate that each corner is similarly rich and full.

If you can make meditating outdoors in a particular spot an occasional addition to your regular practice, that can help you establish a relationship with a specific place. Then taking a small reminder – a stone, a leaf – back to your usual meditation space is part of an ongoing process of connection anchored in that location, not just a scattershot series of one-off connections with a multitude of places. Even if there’s no special place where you can go and meditate, maintaining a connection with a particular spot is a better way to anchor yourself in the rhythms of nature; connect to one tree or one group of living things in your area, and use reminders of them as your focus for meditation.

If you really want to connect to the seasons in that place, make sure to change your focus on a regular basis. Take your reminder back to the place you got it, and return it to nature with your thanks, then find something else, something new, to focus on, to help you experience the constant change and wonderful variety found in your particular location. Especially at this time of year, when flowers are blooming and trees are unfurling their leaves as fast as possible, don’t let your focus get fixed on a single object to the extent that you ignore the changes taking place in your little corner of the world.

Get physical about your experience of place, too! The physical world engages our senses in ways that an abstraction like time can’t. Feel the texture of trees’ bark with your fingers, taste the tart sweetness of blackberries later on, listen to the birds and the wind in the leaves and the patter of the rain. And yes, stop and smell the roses – and the honeysuckle and lilacs and everything else, too.

I mentioned that a connection to place can serve as a kind of anchor. Just as the ability to draw one’s attention to the present moment can be a part of grounding and centering, the deep awareness of a particular place can also be a form of grounding – the literal meaning behind the metaphor. That familiarity with a location can be a touchstone, a reminder of the relationship that we hearken back to every time we pause over a meal or give thanks for coming home safely after a trip.

And since you know that by connecting to your one place, you are also connecting to all places, even when you are in unfamiliar surroundings you know you have the ability to ground yourself there as well, to tap into the connection to the same deeper reality, and if you need to, to become familiar with this new place as well.

The beginning of this month is the celebration of Beltane; it’s time to fall in love again. One of love’s amazing qualities is that it takes us outside of ourselves. By engaging with someone else, we gain a whole new perspective on the world, and on ourselves, and we gain the opportunity to change and grow in ways we could hardly have imagined alone. This Beltane, consider falling in love with the land. When we do, when we bring the outdoors in, if we fully engage with it and start to develop a relationship, it too, like all good loves, will take us outside of ourselves.

Tags: meditation, outdoors

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