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Guided Meditation: Meditating from Safety

Welcome back, those of you who are returning for morning meditation, and if anyone's new, a special welcome to you. The topic for the talks for this week is fear. Fear is one of the very important areas of life to be mindful of, to learn how to be mindful of. And so I'd like to start with a short story preparing us for the meditation.

There was a story from ancient China of a great painter who was working for a long time on a very realistic painting of a tiger. After some time of working on it, the painter stepped away a number of feet and saw the tiger from a little bit of a distance, and suddenly became afraid and ran away.

So we, and our imagination, will often create scenarios of all kinds, and then we run or we get afraid. One of the sources of our fears is our capacity to imagine—imagine the future, what might happen, what will happen. And our imagination plays a huge role in certain kinds of anxiety. Given how important and big a role imagination plays sometimes, it's useful for purposes of meditation to use your imagination to support us to be present in a mindful way.

So for this meditation, I'll begin with a little guided imagery that maybe some of you might work with. When people used to do guided visualizations when I was younger, I kind of found that it didn't work for me. It was hard for me to follow along until I imagined I was visualizing. As soon as I kind of dropped the need to actually see with my mind's eye and just imagined I was somehow visualizing, I tapped into some deeper, more relaxed place in the mind, and I was able to somehow follow along just enough. So this will be relatively brief, but I hope that even if you can't imagine yourself along, or in your own way, it might give you a little taste or flavor of how to sit with our experience in a way that is fearless, even without fear for the fear that might come as we meditate.

So taking a meditation posture and spending a little bit of time maybe swaying back and forth or forward, and maybe a big circular movement, or somehow stretching and opening as a way of beginning to enter your body. To certainly shift the focal point of our attention from the mind to the body, and to feel the touch points of where the body touches your chair, your cushion, your bed, your floor, wherever you happen to be. Where the weight of your body is received by some object underneath you.

And to take a few long, slow, gentle, relaxing breaths to also shift the attention into the body and to allow the body to release. To allow whatever can to let go. The muscles, the holding in tension in the chest, the holding in the belly. And to also, with the exhale, let go of any holding that's easy enough to let go of in the mind.

And then imagine that you're standing on the edge of a river, perhaps with a strong current, maybe even with some rapids you can watch and see. And you're quite safe on the bank of the river watching it all go by. And then you notice that there's a very secure bridge that goes over to a little island in the middle of the river. And it's kind of nice to walk over that bridge and see the water underneath you and see the flow. And you go over to that little island, and you go upstream on the island to a little place where there's a flat rock right at the upper tip of the island as it faces the incoming river that flows by on either side of this little point.

You can sit there and just look at everything that's coming and flowing by. And it's quite safe to sit there. A blue sky and clear day, all peaceful all around you. And then just imagine you sit there and you let everything just flow right by. There's no need to be afraid of any of the water that's flowing by, or if there's twigs or even logs that are floating by, you just let them float by because you're sitting there safe.

So in that same way, as we sit here, imagine that you are safe in the place where you're aware, where you're mindful. And that everything that comes, everything that appears, is in fact just flowing by. And even if there's a little whirlpool and something stays for a while, if you stay on your flat rock on the island, it's okay. You're safe. It's okay just to know it. Nothing needs to be feared, even fear itself. Nothing needs to be turned away from or avoided. Even discomfort, even the things that have been difficult for you to look at. Even the peace and the happiness that can be here, whatever it might be.

Sit on your island and let the river of life just flow by. See if you can stay close enough to a place within that's safe, that has no fear, a mindfulness and awareness that allows all things just to be there and to flow. And you might let the center of it all, or the main current of the river, be the changing sensations of your breathing. The movements of your body. The sensations of air against your nose. Your diaphragm going up and down, just expanding. These are all the river lapping up against the shore of the island. You can just feel and look and watch as the current, the water of the river, flows against the banks of the island.

As you're breathing, the sensations of breathing lap up against the shore of your body. All things just flowing by. Nothing you need to obstruct. Nothing you need to figure out. Just allow things to flow through. If anything doesn't flow through, chances are it's stuck in your imagination. It's stuck in your thinking about it. And even thoughts are a stream or a flow, a current in the bigger river. Sitting on your island, letting all things be as they flow by.

All things will flow by unless they get caught on some jagged rock or branch sticking out from the island. Perhaps you can pull back and just allow things to be, with no branches to grab a hold. Just let everything flow by. Let everything flow along with your breathing. Being aware of what flows by from whatever sense of safety, a safe place that's available for you.

And then as we come to the end of this sitting, to feel or imagine again what it would be like to sit here without any fear. For some people, that's with a strong feeling of safety. Maybe it's two sides of the same hand—a sense of safety and a sense of fearlessness. And so imagine whatever way that you can feel that, or think about that, or visualize that. You don't have to be that way completely, but touch into what is available.

And imagine how you can share your sense of safety or fearlessness with others in such a way that they do not have to fear you. In such a way that they also might begin to feel safe. They also might begin to shed their fear. One of the great sufferings of this world is to be living in fear. And this practice is to have a lot of respect for it, and care and kindness for it. But also to learn to meet this world in a way that we ourselves support others to have less fear, so they feel safe.

And may it be that this practice that we do, as we get ready to end the meditation, inspires us with the aspiration to go through the world with the greater gift of fearlessness. May it be that we ourselves contribute to a better world so that all beings may feel safe. So that all beings may find peace. So that all beings are not oppressed by oppression. That all beings may be happy. May it be that we're able to spread happiness and safety for this next period.