We've just added the Breath in the Heart meditation to our podcast. It's a variation on meditations in which you follow your breath. In this case, you maintain awareness of the breath and the heart area at the same time. This helps open and enliven the heart chakra. The heart is the seat of love and connection. Attention on the heart helps to awaken the energy of love. This meditation can be especially soothing as you connect into the energy of the heart. At the same time, it can bring our awareness to any emotional pain which is present in the heart chakra. The pain may be from past hurts or from our current situation. If we are grieving, bringing attention to the heart will help facilitate the feelings of grief. By allowing these feelings to be present, they can move through and resolve.
"Relaxing into Healing" guided meditation podcast
I just added an episode to our Meditation Oasis podcast called "Relaxing into Healing". It's a very simple, direct approach to healing, and probably quite different from most guided meditations for healing.
The meditation is based on the idea that healing is in the nature of life. The natural intelligence of the body and psyche is always moving in the direction of healing. We can cooperate with this natural process of healing by being open to it, relaxing so that the maximum energy is available for healing, and allowing whatever needs to be healed to come fully into our awareness.
Being open to healing -- In the beginning of the meditation, we set the intention to open to healing. This way we become more receptive to the process of healing.
Relaxing to free up energy for healing -- We relax by letting go of resistance to whatever we are experiencing in our body, mind and emotions. Resistance takes energy, and we want to let that energy be used for healing.
Allowing what needs healing into our awareness -- Finally, the guided meditation encourages you to allow everything to come into your awareness that needs healing. The idea isn't to start thinking about it and analyzing it, but to simply experience it. Our attention is a beam of intelligent energy. Simply having something in our awareness brings energy to it. It may be a situation, an emotion or something in the body that needs healing. The meditation encourages you to simply allow yourself to experience whatever needs to be healed without judgment. In this way you hold a compassionate space for yourself to heal.
Finding love in surrender to death -- the ultimate meditation on YouTube
The YouTube video of Father Bede Griffiths speaking of his surrender in the process of almost dying created a profound state of meditation for me. There's really nothing I can say but watch it! Note: Father Bede Griffiths, Swami Dayananda, was a Benedictine monk who became a sannyasi in India. You can read his inspiring biography here.
Relaxation as the ultimate spiritual state
I used to feel that relaxation was a somewhat insignificant by-product of meditation. Although I desperately needed to learn to relax when I started meditation, I needed to see myself as a seeker of enlightenment rather than the stressed out person that I was. For years I thought of meditation in very "lofty" terms. It wasn't until I was recording our Pure Relaxation CD that it began to dawn on me that to be able to be totally relaxed is the ultimate sign of spiritual maturity. Being able to relax is a reflection of everything that we seek spiritually. Think about what you are seeking on your spiritual path. How would relaxation fit into that picture? When I reflect on what I've longing for over the years, they are all the same as the ability to be totally relaxed. I've wanted to feel a sense of trust. How can you relax without trust? I've wanted to feel peace. If you are at peace, you are relaxed. I wanted spontaneity and freedom -- can these occur without relaxation?
Relaxation happens when there is an absence of tension and holding. It happens in surrender. It happens when we let go. The sense that we have to defend ourselves or be guarded in any way is gone. When we are really relaxed, we are open and intimate with everything. There is no more self and other, there is only one.
Can you remember a time when you were totally relaxed? Would you see that as a spiritual experience?
Discovering ancient meditations in present awareness
My guided meditations arise out of my own meditation practice and exploration. When I sit to record a CD or podcast, I close my eyes and enter a meditative state and see what comes. Currently I'm working on a CD of meditations using the breath. In the process of doing this, some entirely new meditations have come up. As I explore my own inner landscape, new ways of meditating are called forth. I try to assign names to the meditations that capture something of the essence of them. Inevitably, if I Google a meditation name I've come up with, I discover meditations online from various traditions that use similar names and work in similar ways. Often the meditations are based on ancient traditions. It is fascinating to see how in the freshness of my own consciousness the same meditations are born again which arose in minds in the past and became part of long-standing traditions.
This has made me appreciate the saying that "there is nothing new under the sun". We may learn meditation from a tradition or we may discover it within ourselves. The fundamentals of human consciousness and experience don't really change. Things such as clothing, language, technology, and lifestyle may change, but the inner reality doesn't change. Human consciousness, which is where we live our lives, doesn't change. Past and future meet there as the present moment, and the present moment is all there is.