Now, we will be preparing for meditation.
I will be leading you in a dharana,
a centering technique.
Take a comfortable seated posture for meditation.
Allow your sitting bones to ground you.
Feel your spine gently elongate.
Your neck is soft and free;
your belly is relaxed;
your chest is open and expansive.
Your eyes are softly closed.
Let the palms of your hands rest downward on your thighs
with thumb and forefinger touching in chin mudra
or, if you prefer, folded,
with the palms upwards, in your lap in dhyana mudra.
~
Become aware of your breathing.
Your breath.
Watch steadily now
as this most trusted guide, your breath,
deepens and relaxes.
This breath is like a wheel of light,
a scintillating, golden-white flow of light,
that moves downward into your heart on the inhale
and rises upwards and out from your heart on the exhale,
and then returns again on the in-breath.
Watch this wheel of light—the breath.
If you listen carefully,
you can hear the steady pulsation
of the mantra within its flow.
Om Namah Shivaya.
Om—
the primordial syllable.
Namah—
I bow to, I honor, I worship.
Shivaya—
Shiva, my innermost Self.
Breathing in Om Namah Shivaya.
Breathing out Om Namah Shivaya.
The soothing song of your own breathing.
There is nothing to do
but to calmly observe the gentle flow of your breath
infused with the syllables of the mantra dancing with light.
Om Namah Shivaya.
~
Sitting, watching, and listening,
you start to notice that between each repetition of the mantra,
just as the breath turns—
there is a pulse,
a beat,
a moment of stillness.
For the breath is moving within a still, serene space.
The space of Awareness.
Om Namah Shivaya.
Om Namah Shivaya.
Every syllable of the mantra emerges
from this profoundly still ocean of silent Awareness.
Open, receptive, watchful, loving—
this Awareness is the source and ground
from which your breath arises
and into which it returns.
It is the heart,
the hub,
the great Temple.
It is eternal, impossible to lose,
suffused in every particle with the loving presence,
the sure protection, of Bhagavan Nityananda.
In this immortal realm
of pure and loving Awareness—
be calm.
Be joyful.
Be still.
Be silent.
Meditate.