Slowing down, taking time for yourself and establishing new habits that will last a lifetime.
Theme – Playing Big
The focus this week is to open our minds to the idea that we humans are way bigger than we know and to experience the part of us that is infinitely more aware, unplugged, and compassionate.
What effects have you noticed that result from expanding into your most spacious self?
I have struggled a bit this week. It could well be because I have a nasty head cold and a hacking cough which is not conducive to … well anything really. I am tired as I cannot lay down to sleep without coughing, my ears are bunged up and my nose is running when I’m not sneezing. All-in-all though it is nothing serious just annoying.
The first questions were …
- In what ways are you still playing small?
- In what small way can you stretch yourself today?
I really like the Witnessing Presence guided meditation.
It is a little like Metta Bravana (Loving Kindness) one that I already practice but on a much more personal scale. Rather than encompassing the world this one concentrates on the touching on the edge of your own energy field, which will incorporate different people depending on where you meditate. I think it would be very useful if it was undertaken in places that you automatically feel uncomfortable, maybe for no reason. Maybe not on the same scale as the one below but on a smaller, more personal level.
Witnessing Presence Meditation
- Find a comfortable and safe place to sit and close your eyes
- Take a deep breath in and a slow easy emptying breath out (breathing out all thoughts and tension and breathing in pure awareness and possibility).
- Notice the sounds around you and allow whatever thoughts and feelings to simply arise
- Feel yourself going more relaxed, still and quiet
- When you feel centred evoke that which represents unconditional love (it could be a person, a divine presence, an animal).
- Whatever form this takes just visualise this energy in front of you radiating more love than you thought you could imagine
- With each in breath imagine that sparkly energy expanding towards you until it reaches and envelopes you
- Allow it to envelope you with pure unconditional love and warmth, and safety
- Notice what it feels like to be held in this way
- Now imagine an opening in the centre of your back behind your heart and allow this energy inside your body through this opening. Filling you up from the top of your head to the tips of your toes
- Ask that it clears out all that no longer supports your physical system
- Feel yourself deeply cleansed and pure of thought
- When you feel ready direct this clear sparkly energy outwards beyond your physical body from your heart
- Beam it out through each layer of your extended energy fields through the invisible layers that radiate out from you
- Feel the love expanding with every breath, out to the edge of your witnessing presence field. This is the part of you that is most compassionate and unattached.
- Boost the edge of this field with a big dose of spacious energy. Ask that it acts to filter out any negative influences that do not serve and support you for your best life
- Anchor this sensation with a gesture or one word or image to this feeling of being fully expanded and integrated. This touchstone trigger will help you access this state at any time life doesn’t play fair and you feel stuck.
- When you feel complete, take a nice easy breath in and a slow emptying breath out
- Wiggle you fingers and your toes and bring your awareness back to your now more expanded self, sitting in the room
- Notice your breathing and if you feel different now that before you began the meditation
- Open your eyes
I have to admit that I do not like being ill, well I don’t think anyone does to be honest but being incapacitated for any reason just annoys me. I find it such a waste of time and begrudge the fact that it stops me from doing what I really want to. Life is too short to mess about with the trivial stuff, like colds.
However, one thing that has come out of the stuff from this week is that maybe, just maybe mind … being ill is a chance to stop and have time for me. To rest and not be constantly on the go, to read and not just at bedtime, to watch television or films without knitting or sewing needles in my hand and, the most important thing is that I have found that I like the concept of down-time. I took naps in the afternoon, not always propped up in bed but snoozed on the settee or in the chair and didn’t feel guilty about not getting things done or finished … because I was unwell.
What I need to do is to carry this forward to when I am well.
To take time-out for me to just do nothing.