Deborah Lipp

Continuing from where we left off last week.

In a comfortable position, ground and center.

Return to the image from the first exercise, the tree or bonfire or whatever it is. Select a part of it to focus on. For the tree, you can focus on keeping a single tree in your mind’s eye. Or you can zoom in and focus on a leaf.

Your task now is to stay with the leaf (or whatever you have selected) for the entire meditation. If you wander away, gently come back. If you feel yourself struggling, return to the ‘wandering about the tree’ imagery of the first exercise, and gradually ease yourself back to the single image.

Never blame yourself if your mind wanders. You aren’t wrong or a bad meditator. It is a natural part of meditation to occasionally “lose it.” Just as you can sometimes be driving and look away from the road for a moment, and then look back, you can sometimes look away from meditation for a moment. Gently return your inner gaze to your meditation object.

Stay with the leaf for the full meditation period, setting extraneous thoughts aside. When you finish meditating, take a deep breath and allow yourself to return to ordinary consciousness.

Today is for those of you who think you’re not good at meditation, or “can’t” meditate. It is a sort of intermediary exercise; a baby step towards meditation, if you will. I was given this exercise very early in my Pagan studies, on a handout with a note that it was adapted from What Witches Do. I have further adapted it.

Pick something to meditate on. It should be something you can picture clearly, and something that will be pleasurable to spend your meditation time with. Here are some examples: A tree, a flower, a bonfire, fresh bread, a stream. (For the instructions, I’ll use a tree.)

In a comfortable position, ground and center.

Visualize the tree. Don’t concentrate on it, just see it. Engage all of your senses with the tree. Can you hear the wind rustling in its leaves? Can you feel the roughness of the bark? Can you smell the scent of woods?

You don’t have stay with any one part of the tree. You can visualize the tree in a forest. You can visualize bark. You can imagine yourself picnicking in its shade. Your thoughts can wander anywhere they wish to, as long as they stay with the tree. When non-tree thoughts arise, gently set them aside and stay with your tree focus.

By giving your mind permission to wander, you may find meditation much easier. Note that you are still going to eliminate off-focus thoughts, but you may find that in “wandering” mode, wandering back is easier.

The first time you do this exercise, your goal is to maintain this diffuse focus for five minutes. Continue practicing with your tree (bread/stream/flower/fire) until you can stay with it for fifteen minutes.

Today I’m thinking about focus; mental clarity; concentration. Certainly a weak area for me, I tend to be forgetful, kinda ditzy. I concentrate best when I’m juggling two or three thoughts. Which drives Arthur crazy, because he can only focus on one thing at a time.

In meditation, we try to focus on a single thought. Meditate on a tree. Meditate on a mandala. Meditate on darkness. Meditate on Lakshmi. And in the process of meditation, we discover how unfocused our minds truly are, how we get pulled into distractions and down random paths; how undisciplined and chaotic our thought processes can be.

So today I’m visualizing a meditation on concentration itself.

If you like, burn sage or rosemary (or inhale fresh rosemary). Both herbs sharpen the mind.

Ground and center.

Think about work you have to do that requires focus. Hold an image of that work in your mind. See yourself doing the work. Perhaps you need to write, or to balance your bank accounts, or organize your closet. See the work getting done.

See yourself completing the task. Visualize it through—from beginning to end. Observe yourself focusing on this work. If you like, go back to the beginning and see it through again.

Now acknowledge yourself for completing this work. Perhaps you felt distracted. Perhaps, during the course of visualizing, your mind wandered away. Notice also that it came back, that despite whatever wandering or distraction you experienced, you made it to the end. Allow yourself to enjoy the pleasure of a completed task, and notice that this is focus. This is accomplishment.

Stay with that feeling, of accomplishment, and notice it required focus in order to have that feeling.

Undoubtedly, you’re expecting your New Year’s Eve meditation to have a New Year theme. But I’m just not going there. I don’t know what happened this year and what happened last year. Ask me what I did in ’06 and I might well tell you something I did in ’04. The past is a blurry place, and I have no idea why it’s important to know a number. It’s just a number.

Here’s what I’ve been meditating on today (follow along at home):

In Wicca, on the darkest night of the year, we do a ritual about light.

On the brightest day of the year, we do a ritual about darkness.

Everything contains its opposite.

The dot in the yin yang is the sun on Winter Solstice, light in darkness.

Perhaps the light is in darkness because we need hope. Perhaps the darkness is in light because that’s when we can best face it.

Today, meditate on opposites, on light in the darkness, darkness in the light, and your own personal yin-yang.

Take a moment today to notice the state of being loved.

No matter who you are, someone loves you. It may be your family, it may be an appreciative coworker, it may be that you have abundant friendships, it may be that a stranger from time to time notices you with an open and compassionate heart.

No matter who you are, you are loved.

Allow yourself to take that love in. To let it touch you.

Often, we let love wash over us, rather than drink it in. Today, drink love in. Visualize the last person who did something nice for you. Drink it in. Picture the last time someone looked at you with kindness in their eyes. Drink it in. Remember the feeling of your last hug. Drink it in. Remember opening a present. Drink it in.

Notice a world around you, full of available love, and allow yourself to experience being a part of that world.