In our daily life, body, mind and consciousness exist together.
Ayurveda says that heaven is in the heart and it is therefore in everyone.
Carried by and intimately connected with our breath, Prana (life force) is the very essence of the bodily soul and sits as witness to all experience, within the heart pulsing in our chest.
Developed in utero long before the brain and providing a tender rhythm to live by, the heart is the very seat of consciousness and when compassionate care and love are revealed here, heaven is unfolded in ones life.
When when the heart stops, the breath ceases, the pupils dilate and consciousness leaves the body.
Without the pulse of the heart there is no life.
Meditate on this.
Marma Therapy from Dr Vasant Lad - Cologne Germany
Meditate to reveal the nature of LOVE within your heart as love equals awareness, freedom, clarity and compassion. Love is not the opposite of hate. Love is LOVE and love pervades all.
Meditation is a necessary pathway to access the deep wealth of relaxation within the tender beating human heart, for the body is innocent and the mind is not ! Beyond any physical suffering a psychological suffering that is far deeper and wider resides.
Meditation can therefore be the grandest adventure in the life of a human being. It is the journey of going inwards and engaging completely with the pulse of the whole.
Without meditation our life manifests as a series of problem after problem. A macroscopic vortex of myopic sight. Without meditation life becomes hell and with meditation life becomes heaven; both of which are not geographical places. In and through every experience, can be found deep grace.
story medicine
Earlier in my life I ventured through the Himalaya’s. It was a wonderful journey that severed any attachments I had to material comforts for the time, and awakened an inner resiliency of witnessing that I could survive with only basic supplies, shelter, food, water and the deepening whisper of compassionate love. It was tough.
At one point on the way up to Mount Everest Base camp, I felt incredible pain in my hands and feet. They were frozen cold, fast turning blue and painfully numb. My mind was screaming “Why have I done this ?! Get me a f#^k’ng helicopter out of here !”
And yet with a face of steely resolve, I knew I had only one choice and that was to go. go. go. and so, I continued to trek solo across the uneven white spattered grey, SO MUCH PAIN.
Biting back the bitter cold and suffocating on a lump of dry in my throat, the body just kept going. But how ? My senses were frayed and the driver in my head was a complete mess !
Hearing the crunching of snow beneath my every step, feeling the pounding of heart in my chest; so fierce and yet so tender, knowing, dedicated and sweet.. I looked up and in that moment I saw it.
Grace.
Pausing on an altitude of 5000+ meters with laboured breath, a stream of sunlight peaked over a mountain and lit up the path not too far from my stride; splashing it with sparkling reflections of its might and glittering icicles like diamonds.
The ominous shadows of my mountainous perceptions only moments ago, transformed into the bright white robes of bejewelled princesses. Goddess Saraswati supremely beckoning me into her luminescent embrace.
I walked on and crossed that very real line from dark to light. In one step all my pain melted away and like a river, warm tears defrosted the face of my experience to reveal the heaven that was always there.
Pure awe engulfing grace.
From one moment to the next, night surrendered to day.
Mount Everest Base Camp
Nepal October 2004
Exalted, I kept climbing, and I keep climbing all ways. The experiences change however, by the blessed beat of my heart, by the meditation on her; what remains, what this fallible human must maintain is a surrender to the knowledge and experience of that deep all-pervasive love.
Pure awe engulfing GRACE.
With SHERPA - the true hero's of the Himalaya's. Neima, Dolche and Mingma.
Here is what my teacher Dr Vasant Lad has to say about going on big outward journeys of self discovery vs the actual power of real Meditation.
“Your Himalaya is your heart, your home, your life, what is the use of a big pilgrimage if you still act stupid when you come back !? If you really meditate it should change your life.”
Dr Vasant Lad Summer Intensive 2018 - Cologne Germany
So what is meditation ?
Meditation is the moment to moment awareness of what is.
YOU are what is.
If anger is passing through, THAT is what is.
The moment we see what we don’t like and create what it ‘should’ be, an idea is born which sends us chasing an illusion of what should be, of what could be and so feeds an experience of discontented misery.
Meditate at any moment in your day to day life. Meditation is relating with what is present, wether it be as an embodied dance between body and breath on the Yoga mat, or within the relationship between Husband to Wife ! Within all interactions, drop into the heart space and connect to the reality that is present.
Recognise your emotions and when you notice anger or fear is passing, give complete attention to the passing.
Awareness is love.
Can you love your fear ?
Can you love your anger ?
Love is contagious, anything that touches love transforms, it becomes love !
Love is not the opposite of hate.
Love is not the opposite of anger.
Perhaps the fear or anger comes to you to open the doors of love !
We live in a society where love is viewed as the opposite of hate. The context of this conversation however, is something different entirely.
Experience your anger or fear each time as NEW, fresh and alive. Negate the tricky tendency to label the sensation from a past memory, marking it as anger or fear - can you watch your emotion without labelling it ? Can you go with your anger or fear without using the words anger or fear ?
Words are nothing more than symbols that we use as a language for communication, which is something I have witnessed so intimately watching my two little boys grow. My husband and I both are so careful with the broadening vocabulary we speak around the boys (in two languages) because each word acts as a symbol, a gateway to a new world of imagination and emotion which can lead their developing minds one way or another.
The malleable mind
Meditation therefore is watching emotions without labelling them, allowing them to fully pass whilst being the loving witness to the enormity of the human feeling.
Quite the task ! But if you are doing this, if you can keep-on-keep-on this path, then what happens is that everything is new and fresh. Old knots are untied from the subconscious mind and it becomes easier and easier to dwell within the heart.
Giving full awareness to the moment becomes like a sun beam on a tentative blossom; the touch of your awareness gifts the flowering of anger or fear to become love.
Is that what you want ?
Be bathed in the soothing balm of knowledge that meditation is with you all the time. Grace is with you All the time. Accept that you have some choice.
Enjoy your postural meditation for sure - yet realise that like the breath, meditation is happening to you and can occur anywhere.
With Love,
with Meditative Awareness,
with Grace,
Amber
Footnote:
Meditative awareness - LOVE - is the intention held within this webspace as well as each and all of my personal and professional places; for it has been my experience that mutual respectful and loving relation over time, ignites positive and lasting change.
Upon the Yoga mat, we practice to bring strength and flexibility to not only the body, also to witness the nature of the mind. It's enjoyable and it's beautiful. Similarly within the Embody Happy coaching program and the propagation of plant medicine for all. If I can be of service in anyway, please reach out.
Additional inspirations for this writing:
Personally written notes from the lecture; 'Meditation for self healing' - Dr Vasant Lad Summer Intensive 2018 Cologne, Germany
Photo credit; Himalayas, Nepal 2004 - Linda Baker