Deborah Lipp

This is part 2 of working with your meditation room. This room will become a place you can return to whenever you wish.

Ground and center.

Return to your outdoor place, and take a moment to settle there, and breathe in the peaceful beauty of it.

Now you’re ready to go to your cottage. It looks just as you remembered it. As you reach the door, you find the key in your pocket, and let yourself in.

Look around the room. You recognize it, and the sense of familiarity feels wonderful.

Your task today is to make a comfortable spot in which you will sit. It might be cushions on the floor, or a couch, or a rocking chair, or whatever you choose. Arrange the furnishings and cushions. Do you have someplace to rest your feet? Do you have a blanket to wrap yourself in? Make the colors pleasing, and the textures comfortable.

When your comfortable spot is ready, sit in it and find where your gaze rests. Now is the time to prepare a view to enjoy from your comfortable spot. Go to the closet and open it. You’ll find a painting propped up there. Take it and hang it up so that it is in view of your spot. What is it a painting of?

Return to your comfortable spot and look at the painting. What is it? What does it mean to you?

Meditate on the painting while you experience the relaxed comfort of being in this special place you have created.

In the future, you can find other paintings in the closet, and meditate on different images from your cozy seat.

When you are ready, leave the cottage, locking the door behind you and taking the key. You can return whenever you wish.

This is a meditation that will appear in a series, and can be used by you for future meditations. In fact, once you create the meditation room, you can come to it whenever you meditate.

Ground and center.

Find yourself out of doors, in a place that feels peaceful and relaxing. You are alone, and the location is private and secluded. It might be a field in the woods, or a beach, or a mountaintop. It is someplace that you feel safe and at peace.

Stay in that place and breathe in the peace. Breathe in the safety. Know that you are in your ideal place. This is a great spot for meditation. This is a great spot for being at peace.

Turn around and notice that there is a cottage behind you. It looks exactly the way a cottage should look. Notice how lovely it is as you go up to it.

At the door of the cottage, you find a key with your name on it. The key easily opens the door, and you step in and put the key into your pocket. This is your cottage, and your special place.

Look around the room, what do you see? Now is the time to freely explore your meditation room. Are there chairs? Cushions? A bed? Hardwood floors? Thick carpet? Be sure to have at least one table or shelf in the room, so that you have a spot to put things. Also add a closet, so that you can find additional things for the room in the future. Perhaps your special room is full of bookshelves, or perhaps it has big, open windows. Take the time now to explore your cottage room, noticing the size, shape, temperature, and how it feels to be there. You feel great as you are doing this, as though you are accomplishing a precious and wonderful task.

We will return to this room again, so when it’s time to end your meditation, notice that you have the key with you, and that you can return here any time.

I am busy. My neck hurts. My hand has gone numb. I have a slight hangover.

So. Not meditative. Sorry.

(Um…does anyone miss these when I don’t do them? Or like them when I do them? Because I can’t really tell.)

Take this meditation outside on a sunny day.

Ground and center.

Feel the sun where it touches your skin.

Feel the sunlight that penetrates through your closed eyes.

Breath in the sun.

Feel the warmth. Feel the energy. Breath in the energy of the sun.

The warmth of the sun is within your own body. It is a part of you. The power and energy of the sun are within your own body. They are a part of you.

Let the sunlight come into you, through your skin. Feel it reach into your very core. Feel how it warms you. It warms your heart, your feelings, and your hopes. As your heart is heated by the Sun, warm compassion flows forth.

Feel how sunlight energizes you. Feel it reach into your muscles and joints, and allow yourself to know the pleasure of movement that comes from being powered by the Sun. Feel the energy flowing into your thoughts. As your mind is heated by the Sun, inspiration flows forth.

Know that you are a solar battery. Your skin is solar paneling. You store sunlight within you and use it when you need it. Feel how the warmth stays with you, how the energy is a part of you.

When you are tired, you can draw on your solar energy. When you feel cold and distant, you can draw on your solar warmth. And when you need to renew yourself, you can return yourself to sunlight, and refresh your batteries.

Another “guest” meditation this week, I found this lovely piece by Mara Freeman on Beliefnet:

Close your eyes and send your consciousness down through the room, down through the floor of the building, and down, deep down, into the earth. Be aware of the mass of rock that lies beneath the soil- shale, quartz, sandstone, granite; the black, white, and red-shot through with bands of minerals, darkly glittering; crystals that shine like stars within the stones ..Let your consciousness become one with the mineral kingdom: You might choose to become a mountain as old as the planet itself, once part of the seabed, thrown up by unspeakable forces now stilled, enormously, timelessly rooted in the earth, its head in the stars…Or a minute grain of sand, one among trillions and trillions, endlessly shifting, sifting, with the ocean tides .Or become a stone. the stone people are alive – it’s just that their hearts beat slower than ours .

Now become aware of the plant kingdom: algae and seaweeds, forests of kelp, grasses blowing in a savanna wind, yellow and orange lichens on a rock in a wood, prickly pears, an oak wood, a rain forest blooming with delicate orchids, vines hanging with fruit . Become one with the plant kingdom now – soft green moss on a rock by a stream, a mountain strawberry, a wild rose…..what does it feel like to be blown softly by the wind..or to split your husk and feel your seeds fall to the ground?

And now become aware of the animal kingdom.. listen to the voices of the wild: the roar of the tiger, the belling of the stag, the howl of the wolf; the cries of owls and the tapping of woodpeckers, the whirring of birds’ wings, the padding of soft paws…become one now with the animal kingdom, with the salmon leaping upstream, the fox gliding through the night, or the snake shedding its skin.feel what your new body is like and what it feels like to creep, walk, climb, run or fly in free motion..

And now become aware of the human kingdom .you are standing on two feet .notice how different that feels: you can stand like a stone, grow like a plant, move like an animal, but you can now create with your mind and your hands and you can sing and dance and dream in your heart and make that dream real upon the earth .and when you are ready, slowly open your eyes and come back to the room.