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A Grounding Meditation to Start Living From Your Heart
I would like to open with a grounding meditation. Feel free to listen to the meditation here or you can read along with the text below.
If I may, I’d like to guide you someplace warm. To an island not too far away. It won’t take much effort, just a few conscious breaths. And all I need for you to do is to stop. For this moment, stop seeking, stop solving, stop gritting and grinding. All you need is to close your eyes and receive.
Quiet now, like water or sand. Settle now, like dusk and dew drop. One breath in, one breath out. One breath in, one breath out. Reorient yourself to face toward what is immovable inside you. Just look now. Trust and you shall see. It is there, to the left of your right lung, tucked just under your left rib, a warm small island, beating like a drum. If you stand here long enough, you will feel the song inside being written, maybe even prayed over you. Moment by moment, it never stops.
Can you feel you are unlacing something? Or better, something is unlacing you? Can you feel the fight stopping? The fear quieting? Can you feel your edges becoming more like wind or water, rather than shale and stone? Can you feel the light coming? The waves of warmth rising?
Now move into this current of grace that your heart has created for you, and feel the great hush wash over you. Feel the substance of love holding your very atoms together. This is your heart, dear one. Never forget this is yours. Kneel here, whenever you are thirsty, whenever your feet are tired, or your hands are sore. Kneel here when you can’t see love any longer. Kneel here, dear one. Reorient yourself toward what is immovable in you.
My new book, Heart Minded: How to Hold Yourself and Others in Love, was written to help remind us, reconnect us, reorient us with our hearts. Through story and guided meditation, I lead you through the fraught and sometimes frightening places holding you separate from your heart. It is a journey of healing that teaches you how to see and feel not from the mind, but from the wise seat of your very heart.
Now more than ever, we are being asked to move into the consciousness of the heart. Where love, compassion, “at-one-ment” become our governing virtues. When we see through the eyes of the heart, when we become heart minded, we stand as a beacon of light, burning back the dark.
Please join me in the heart-minded revolution.
This originally appeared as an author letter to the Sounds True audience from Sarah Blondin.
Sarah Blondin is an internationally beloved spiritual teacher. Her guided meditations on the app InsightTimer have received nearly 10 million plays. She hosts the popular podcast Live Awake, as well as the online course Coming Home to Yourself. Her work has been translated into many languages and is in use in prison, recovery, and wellness programs. For more, visit sarahblondin.com.
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Into the Belly of Meditation
Into the Belly of Meditation
By Jeff Foster
You are weary, friend.
Sit.
You are thirsty.
Here. Drink.
You are hungry. Here. Take this.
A piece of bread.
A small bowl of soup.
See how God has taken form!
It is all I have but it will keep you alive.
I will light a fire that will never go out.
A sacred flame. Unconditional in its burning.
To illuminate us in the darkness.
Oh. I see you are wounded.
Bruised. Bleeding.
Exhausted from the world.
You have suffered much, I know.
Come.
Take off these dirty rags.
Don’t worry. It’s safe.
There is strength in your nakedness.
Here. Wash.
Rub this medicine onto your wounds.
Put on these robes, they are clean and dry.
Lie down. Close your eyes.
I will watch over us tonight.
Listen. You have not failed.
I see new life breaking through.
I see birth. An insurrection.
The sharp edge of hope.
I have no teaching for you.
No wise words.
I only want you to trust what you are going through.
To bring this fire inside of you.
Until the end.
I have known this pain. Yes.
This courage to keep moving. Yes.
This courage to rest, too.
The sacrifice of the known world.
Friend.
Drop into the belly of meditation now.
The place you were always seeking.
The vast silence at the Earth’s core which is your own core.
Breathing into the gut now.
The throat. The chest.
Irradiating the nervous system with unspeakable
tenderness.
Flooding the body with soft, warm light.
Drenching the human form with divine love.
And sleep.
And sleep.
I may not be here when you wake.
We may not meet again in form.
Yet I leave you with all you need.
Food. Water. A bed.
A chance to rest.
A touch of kindness.
And your unbreakable Self.
This poem is excerpted from You Were Never Broken: Poems to Save Your Life by Jeff Foster.
Jeff Foster shares from his own awakened experience a way out of seeking fulfillment in the future and into the acceptance of “all this, here and now.” He studied astrophysics at Cambridge University. Following a period of depression and physical illness, he embarked on an intensive spiritual search that came to an end with the discovery that life itself was what he had always been seeking.
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However you need to grieve, that’s the right way for...
Grieving a cat—or any kind of grief—is not a one-size-fits-all experience (as though any experience or emotion were?). Some people can’t stop sobbing, while others reflect quietly. Some are comforted by hugs and rituals; others need solitude to process their loss.
There’s no “right” way to grieve, and there’s no “right” length of time. In fact, I don’t see a loss as something we “get over,” but rather something that becomes a part of our life experience. When our skin is gravely injured, it doesn’t go back to looking the way it did before; it heals, and we have a scar.
Loss changes the fabric of our lives; it changes the way we perceive and interact with the world. And like a scar, walking through grief (not trying to circumvent it) makes something in us stronger, more resilient. Grief is something to be healed, not to transcend.
Grief is nonlinear, too. Our human minds would love to make grief into a process that has a distinct beginning, middle and end…but in my experience, that’s just not true. Grief, like life, is messy and unpredictable. As Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, “You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”
We all grieve, and for each of us, our grief is as unique as a fingerprint. If we try to avoid grief, it will redouble its strength and burst forth anyway. However you need to grieve, that’s the right way for you.
An original post by Sarah Chancey, the author of P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna, the first gift book for people grieving the loss of their feline friend. This originally appeared on morethantuna.com.
Sarah Chauncey has written and edited for nearly every medium over the past three decades, from print to television to digital. Her writing has been featured on EckhartTolle.com and Modern Loss, as well as in Lion’s Roar and Canadian Living. She lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, where she divides her time between writing, editing nonfiction, and walking in nature. Learn more at morethantuna.com and sarahchauncey.com.
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A Personal Message from Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush
Dying is the most important thing you do in your life. It’s the great frontier for every one of us. And loving is the art of living as a preparation for dying. Allowing ourselves to dissolve into the ocean of love is not just about leaving this body; it is also the route to Oneness and unity with our own inner being, the soul, while we are still here. If you know how to live and to love, you know how to die.
In this book, I talk about what I am learning about death and dying from others and from my getting closer to it. And I talk about what I have learned from being at the bedsides of friends who have died, including how to grieve and how to plan for your own death as a spiritual ceremony. I talk about our fear of death and ways to go beyond that fear so we can be identified with our spiritual selves and live more meaningful lives.
I invited my friend Mirabai Bush into a series of conversations. Mirabai and I share the bond of being together with our guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and over the years, we have taught and traveled and written together. I thought she’d be able to frame the conversations for you, the reader, and also draw in some of what I’ve said in the past about dying, while keeping my current words fresh and immediate. And I wanted to discuss her thoughts on dying as well.
From Mirabai Bush . . .
This is a book about loving and dying and friendship. It is a conversation between old friends, in which we talk about love and death in an intimate setting. I hope we’ve captured Ram Dass’s wisdom, expressed in a new way now that he is 86 and close to death himself.
“It’s about sadhana, spiritual practice, and I want both our voices to be in it,” he said. “I want it to be a conversation.”
“But I need to ask a basic question,” I said.
He nodded.
“Why are we writing this? Who are we writing it for?”
“I want to help readers get rid of their fear of death,” he answered. “So they can be,” a long pause, “identified with their spiritual selves and be ready to die. If you know how to live, you know how to die. This will be a link between my teachings about Maharaj-ji and about death. And people who are living who can see that they are dying each day, that each day is change and dying is the biggest change—it could help them live more meaningful lives.”
After a while, Ram Dass continued, “I’m also thinking about people whose loved one has died, who may live with grief, or guilt and regret, and I’m thinking about those beings who are sitting bedside with the dying . . . this could help them prepare for that role. And people who are dying, who could read this book to help prepare them for dying more consciously, more peacefully, being in the moment.”
Okay, I thought. This will be a good book to write. We’ll be exploring the edge of what we know.
From Ram Dass . . .
I have had aphasia since my stroke 20 years ago. Aphasia impairs a person’s ability to process language but does not affect intelligence. Sometimes I pause for long periods to find a word or figure out how to express a thought in just the right way. I like to say that the stroke gave me the gift of silence.
When I thought about the best way to write a book on dying while having aphasia, I knew it would be important to express these ideas and experiences clearly, subtly, truthfully. I realized that these days I have been expressing what I know best when I am in dialogue with another person—someone who is comfortable with silence and listens for new ideas as they arise. Why not create a book that way?
I like that this format for the book draws you into the room with us, into this conversation that we all need to have. I invite you to watch this video of us talking together, to give you a sense of how our conversations unfolded.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=3Tq7kLnYqIs%3Fautoplay%3D1%26utm_source%3Dbronto%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_campaign%3DR180831-Dass-Bush%26utm_content%3DA%2BPersonal%2BMessage%2Bfrom%2BRam%2BDass%2Band%2BMirabai%2BBush
With love,
Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush
Brainspotting
Tami Simon speaks with Dr. David Grand, a pioneering psychotherapist, lecturer, and performance coach. Dr. Grand is best known for his discovery of the internationally acclaimed therapy called Brainspotting. He’s the author of the book Emotional Healing at Warp Speed, and with Sounds True he has released his book on Brainspotting: The Revolutionary New Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change. In this episode, Tami speaks with David about what Brainspotting is and why it represents a new evolution in brain-based therapy. Dr. Grand reveals the central insight of Brainspotting—that where you look affects how you feel—and offers a simple practice that you can try right now. (60 minutes)
Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev: The Immensity of “I Don’t ...
Sadhguru is a yogi and mystic who created the Isha Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to exploring the outer limits of human potential. Belonging to no specific tradition, Sadhguru has taught at many international gatherings, including the United Nations and World Economic Forum. With Sounds True, Sadhguru has created an audiobook version of his New York Times bestseller Inner Engineering. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Sadhguru about his teachings, their foundations, and why he considers nonprofit work an expression of his devotion. Sadhguru shares the tale of his awakening experience on the Chamundi Hills outside Mysore, India—specifically of the dimension of memory that opened for him and how this shifted his perspective forever. Finally, Sadhguru and Tami talk about connecting with Adiyogi, the first yogi who is said to have begun the tradition more than 10,000 years ago. (69 minutes)