Heart Meditation
Step 1: Get Comfortable
Find a comfortable place to sit with your back fairly straight and your chest area open. Now close your eyes and take a minute or two just to settle and tune in to the environment around you.
Step 2: Fan the Flames of the Heart
Begin to focus the breath into the middle of the chest in the "Heart Center" to the right of the physical heart. As you spend a few minutes focusing the in-breath in this way and allowing a gentle sign on the out-breath, you will notice the Heart Center beginning to change. to glow or radiate.
You may find it useful to imagine that you are fanning the
flames of the Heart with the in-breath and allowing the warmth of those flames to travel through the shoulders and down the arms into the hands and down the chest into the belly on the out-breath.
Step 3: Mount Form on the Breath
Once you feel the Heart radiating in this way, you can start to imagine the Heart Center as a window into the emptiness or vastness which is your true nature. You might even have the sense of being limitless and looking out through this window into the world of name and form.
Now you can imagine breathing in form through the window of the Heart and allowing it to dissolve into formlessness, and then breathing formlessness back out through the window of the Heart into the world of form.
Step 4: Mount Thought on the Breath
Notice thoughts now as you continue to breathe form through the window of the Heart into the formlessness and breathe formlessness out through the window of the Heart into form. You may also begin to notice the way that thoughts arise and fall spontanenously in consciousness.
Sometimes we suggest seeing them like little children playing, sometimes squabbling, sometimes running, sometimes slouching. You can begin to use the in-breath as a vehicle to carry thought back through the window of the Heart into silence, into formlessness.
Try it now: with the in-breath absorb thought through the window of the Heart into the infinite silence that is free of thought; with the out-breath allow the same silence to burst forth and permeate the field of thought.
Sometimes people like to visualize this as waves on the shore. A wave breaks on the shore and then falls back into the ocean, drawing with it whatever is on the beach; then another waves breaks and floods the shore again.
Continue to absorb thought back into silence with the in-breath, and allow silence and formlessness to permeate the field of thought with the out-breath.
The feeling is like a mother standing at the door of the house welcoming her children home at the end of the day.
With the in-breath you open your arms wide, as if to say, "Come home, thought. It's okay to come home to that which gave you birth."
Whether the children have been fighting or playing, lazy or productive, it doesn't matter, for they are all children
of emptiness.
With the in-breath you can bring them home to rest and
dissolve like so many streams and rivers brought back to the ocean from which they originated. You are embracing thought with the in-breath, kissing it, hugging it.
With the out-breath you are allowing vastness,
silence and the mystery of formlessness to burst forth once again as Lord into the field of thought: fresh, original, spontaneous.
Step 5: Mount Emotions on the Breath
Take all the time you need to allow the previous step to become natural, like the waves breaking and disappearing on the shore. Now continue in the same way with emotions. First notice the way the emotions shift and change.
Then with the in-breath absorb theemotions back into the stillness of love, and with the out-breath allow the vastness, the security, the warmth of the Heart of permeate the field in which emotions arise. You may find your own images to represent this process.
Step 6: Mount Physical Sensations on the Breath
Now continue in the same way with physical sensations. With the in-breath absorb all sensation back into the blissfulness of the Heart. With the out-breath, allow that same blissfulness to radiate into the body.
You will need to allow yourself plenty of time with each step to start to feel this becoming real.
Step 7: Mount Everything on the Breath
Now you can continue to absorb with the in-breath and bless and radiate with the out-breath without making any distinction between thought, emotion and physical sensation. All form is absorbed and dissolved back into formlessness.
All vibration is dissolved back into stillness.
With the out-breath the Heart itself is radiating its fullness back into form, permeating form with formlessness.
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