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Taken from “Sky Above, Earth Below” Sounds True, Inc. ©1999 John P. Milton
Go out into a favorite place in nature; a place where you feel nature supporting you to decontract, relax, and let go; a place where you trust the Earth, plants, and sky to help you surrender into a deep union of inner and outer nature. If weather allows, go barefoot, or take off your rubber-soled shoes and wear cotton or leather-soled moccasins that let your feet feel as you walk slowly and softly. Allow your intuition to guide you to a spot that is level where you can recline comfortably. If needed, you can use a natural fiber (wool or cotton) blanket to lie on or cover you.
Recline on your back with your hands along your sides, feet slightly apart. If you find it helpful, place a rolled towel under your knees to give them some relaxed bend. Close your eyes, and relax your diaphragm and abdomen. Breathe softly but deeply into your belly, gently releasing all stress into Mother Earth. Let your stress be like fertilizer for her. Relax and breathe deeply in this way until you feel tensions melting away. Quietly shift your awareness to the crown of your head, and begin a slow, peaceful scanning of your whole body, from your head to the soles of your feet. As you scan, relax every part of your body where you feel contraction, tension, and anxiety. If you find it difficult to feel an area, simply direct your intention to relax there and trust it to unfold naturally. Over time, with repeated sessions of this practice, your awareness of deepening relaxation will become more and more refined. You will find yourself capable of feeling into parts of your body, from surface to core, that were previously quite insensitive.
Tranquilly scan down over your skin from head to feet, and then back up from feet to head. Now move deeper into a similar scan to relax the muscles, tendons, and fascia from head to feet and back again. Next, move still deeper into your organ systems. Softly scan with relaxed ease down through brain, spine, and nervous system; then repeat for the other major organ systems: heart/lungs and circulatory system; digestive tract from mouth/esophagus down through spleen, pancreas, liver, gall bladder, intestines, and bladder; the endocrine system and reproductive organs; the skeletal system and bone marrow; and finally, perform a relaxing scan down and then back up through the qi meridians and chakras. At this stage, rest into your whole body simultaneously. Allow awareness to gently release it - like a coiled snake unwinding itself. Quietly relax into inner tranquility as the tensions melt away. With practice, you will increasingly experience your bodily form, emotions, and thoughts dissolving into free awareness at this stage. Rest in that natural state for as long as you comfortably can. Ultimately, the practice of letting go reaches a threshold where the major growth challenge is developing trust. Developing trust in yourself and opening to the process of life expands the relaxation process, until you realize the final frontier of relaxation: surrender to what is. This deep immersion in pure awareness opens the second principle of spiritual practice in the wild: presence.
Taken from “Sky Above, Earth Below” Sounds True, Inc. ©1999 John P. Milton
Tonglen is a Buddhist practice, designed to create and radiate active compassion. It is a core practice of the Dalai Lama, and also of Avaokitesvara (Kuan Yin), the buddha of compassion. The word itself means "taking and sending." Tonglen offers us a powerful way to give - particularly to our sorely battered Gaia. By extending tonglen into as many different kinds of environments as we can, we send healing to all of nature.
The instructions that follow are based on traditional Tibetan tonglen practice. They have been expanded and adapted to reflect a particular emphasis on nature and the wild. In eleventh century Tibet, the nomadic practitioners of tonglen lived in nature all the time, year round. Their practice naturally reflected this lifestyle. The meditation described here is designed to recall that easeful relationship with the natural world - a world that is, too often, far removed from our daily experience.
Begin your tonglen practice with sitting meditation. With your head centered well over your shoulders and a general sense of uprightness and ease, feel your connection with the Earth.
Relax. Let vital energy gather in the natural center of your body. Rock back and forth and from side to side until you feel your spine aligned with gravity.
Once your body feels centered, move your focus to the air moving in and out of your nostrils. Breathing in, gratefully acknowledge the gift of oxygen freely offered to you by the trees and grasses. On the out-breath, feel your breath dissolve out into all of nature. Return to it your own gift of carbon dioxide: food for all the plants that need it. Experience your breathing as a direct exchange with the wild. Now shift your focus to the clear pure awareness that underlies your breathing. Recognize the aspect of your being that simply witnesses everything: sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Rest in simple observation of all the forms arising and dissolving. Because it is without judgment or interpretation, this witness state is at the very heart of unconditional love. Pure Witness and pure Source are one and the same. Recognizing this, breathe into the pure heart of yourself; where unconditional love radiates. Connect with the radiance of your own loving kindness in its purest form. Next, visualize that the atmosphere surrounding you is dark, heavy, and thick. On your in-breath, take this heaviness into your vast, spacious, pure heart. Take it in from every direction, through all your pores. When you breathe out, visualize that what you are sending out is light, fresh, and cool. Let this sense of freedom radiate from all your pores and disperse into endless space. Your in- and out breaths should be approximately the same length. Feel for a while the texture of dark, hot, and heavy as you breathe in; and the texture of bright, fresh, and cool as you breathe out.
When you feel that your taking and sending is coordinated with your breathing, connect with an aspect of yourself that you find difficult. It may be pain over a past hurt; anxious anticipation of something in the future; anger that refuses to be quenched; or a pain~ longing for something you cannot have. Or you may, if you prefer, connect with the pain or anguish of someone you feel close to instead. Whatever form this suffering takes, feel into it softly. Connect with it as fully as you can; feel its hot, heavy texture. Begin to breathe it into your unconditionally loving heart.
Because your heart is open, and willing to take on the suffering we typically tend to reject, it is infinitely spacious. There is nowhere for the darkness and weight you are taking in to accumulate or get stuck. It simply dissolves in the spaciousness of the heart. Now feel into the compassion that naturally arises when your heart is open, as it is now. This is free energy, the quality of which is total bliss. Breathe out that bliss - let it go and give it away. Give away all your happiness, delight, enjoyment, and bliss to all the other beings on Earth. Breathe in their suffering with the wish that they might be free of it; and breathe out your own joy as an unconditional gift to them. Although our suffering often feels private and exclusive, the fact is that we share it with countless others. Whatever suffering you are connecting with, millions of other beings are experiencing exactly the same pain at this very moment. Recognizing this commonality, extend your tonglen practice to all the beings who are suffering just as you are. Breathe the pain in for all the beings of the planet. Breathe out to them the compassion and spaciousness continually arising in your open heart.
Nature in the wild: the plants, animals, streams, mountains, and forests. Extend this compassion to those beings of nature that are under duress. Feel into their suffering.
Breathe its darkness into your compassionate, loving heart, where it dissolves in space; breathe out to all of nature your own radiant compassion, light, healing, transformation, liberation, and bliss. Now feel the heaviness and darkness of abuse, war, incarceration, poverty, disease, loneliness, despair - all the physical and emotional plagues experienced by humans and other beings the world over. Breathe it in through all your pores, into your absolutely pure, stainless, unconditionally loving heart. On the out-breath, radiate relief and ease through all your pores and meridians; send it out to all forms and all beings on Earth. Feel all human beings and Gaia in a state of harmony, natural integration, and freedom. Now complete the practice by extending out to the entire cosmos. Feel out to wherever suffering and difficulty may exist - anywhere at all in space - and connect with it very tenderly. Feel the tendrils of compassion radiating like billions of small hands, sensitively touching wherever in the universe suffering exists. Breathe that pain into your compassionate heart and, finding there an endless wellspring of compassion and loving kindness, breathe that out as brilliant, clear energy that brings healing, transformation, liberation, and bliss. Continue this giving and taking practice until you feel complete and fully resolved.
When you intuitively feel your practice is complete, very gently bring your awareness back to resting in pure Source. In this undisturbed, spacious state, witness the resolution of all suffering. Allow breath to flow in and out of your nostrils. Delight in the sensation of oxygen flowing into you from the trees. Enjoy your gift of carbon dioxide flowing back out into all of nature. Completely feel that your gift, along with your love and appreciation, is being fully received. Rest until you feel complete. Then shift the energy back into the natural center of your body. Feel the steadiness of the center and your connection with Mother Earth. Sense your being as connecting the energies of sky above and earth below. As you gently bring yourself out of this practice, feel the place in your heart where you can carry this wonderfully compassionate relationship with life into the rest of your day. Allow the radiance of your heart to touch everything and everyone as you go about your ordinary activities. If you do this practice out in nature every day for twenty to thirty minutes, it will help your heart to open in a deep, enduring way. Gradually, you will develop greater skill in effortlessly bringing this state of being back into the city when you return.
Taken from “Sky Above, Earth Below” Sounds True, Inc. ©1999 John P. Milton
Begin in a meditation posture. Your back and spine should be straight, upright - yet relaxed; your shoulders relaxed, chin level, slightly pulled in. Get a sense of ease with erectness - “gold coins stacked vertebra by vertebra.” Your hand positions can either be in a classic Tibetan Buddhist style with palms down on thighs, or in a Dzogchen position with palms up on thighs, or in a Taoist style holding the “Sitting Dragon Mudra”. Place our tongue gently on roof of the upper palate or behind the upper front teeth. Find and maintain balance in the torso: keep to your body’s natural center in the tantien; find your natural, erect balance point by small movements rocking forward and backward from the pelvis - until you find a point where there is no exertion of extra energy to keep from falling. When you are centered, there is ease and warmth in the lower belly (tan tien). Keep your head above the shoulders, not jutting forward (ears aligned above the shoulders). Eyes are closed for visualization meditation - however, stay alert. Breathe from the belly; deep, relaxed, soft, smooth, slow and even.
Begin with Taoist-style Smiling down practice:
Generate a warm, gentle inner smile and a relaxed outer smile - feeling very comfortable and internally alert, bring this smiling energy into your eyes and then flow this warm, friendly, loving feeling through your whole body, starting with the crown - moving slowly down to the soles of the feet. First guide the smiling energy with thorough awareness down over the surface of your skin, then repeat again, moving deeper into the tissues and muscles. Continue by smiling lovingly into all the internal organs, the endocrine glands and other internal structures, the skeletal bones and finally into the bone marrow itself.
Now, visualize a brilliant light in the sky above you:
- With a radiance like billions of suns all put together, this light radiates with an extraordinary brilliance filling all the Universe realms with it’s rays of white and all the rainbow colors
- See the light as the Light of the Great Spirit
- See the light as one with the Essence of God and Goddess
- See it as the same light as the enlightened essence of all fully liberated beings, particularly those you have a close heart connection with.
- See the light as the unified Heart and Wisdom of all the Buddhas, Taras and Bodisattvas manifest
- See it as no different than the light emanated by the fully liberated Beings of Christ, the Virgin of Guadalupe, Krishna, Kali or Shiva
- You can see this brilliant radiant light as the same as the Source essence of all the great enlightened teachers who have ever existed, and all those compassionate beings who have committed to helping liberate humans and all other living beings
- See this light as the natural, radiant Essence and pristine Source of your human spiritual teachers of this lifetime.
- Lastly, realize this light as identical with your own fundamental Source and deepest true Nature - within you and all other living beings.
You experience this Light radiating out and filling the sky with amazing luminosity - with a powerfully compassionate quality filling all of space. You see many light filaments with the qualities of both light rays and liquid drops or particles coming down - manifesting in all the rainbow colors mixed with white light. The rainbow light rays and liquid particles come down and touch the crown of your head. If you are in a circle of friends doing this meditation, see all of you experiencing the visualization down - manifesting in all the rainbow colors mixed with white light. The rainbow light rays and liquid particles come down and touch the crown of your head. If you are in a circle of friends doing this meditation, see all of you experiencing the visualization together simultaneously as you sit together in the circle. If you are sitting alone in Nature, see all the beings of Nature in your immediate surroundings being touched by this light.
Once you are grounded in doing this Rainbow Light visualization with a circle of friends and with immediate Nature, expand the circle to include all Earth’s living beings. Now the Light pours down and touches the crowns of trees, animals, birds, plants, mountains, stones, rivers, streams, lakes and oceans and all the other beings with whom we share this Great Earth.
All Nature’s forms experience this meditation with us as our partners, friends and lovers.
Purification Phase:
Visualize liquid rainbow light with brilliant pure white light in it. We see this Light coming down to purify - touching the crowns of our heads and all other beings of Nature along with us - we see it purifying:
- All forms of illness and disease;
- All obscurations of perceptions, emotions and thoughts;
- All of our difficult circumstances from past and present;
- All of our Karma, particularly in our attachments, aversions and ignorance;
- Totally purifying all negativity in all forms.
The light moves over the surface and down through the crown of our head, then washes through the surface of the skin, the fascia, the muscles, the ligaments and the tendons. Again, as this is happening for us this is also happening for all those beings joining with us. See this light flowing from the crown of the head down over our forehead, the face, the eyes, the nose, the cheeks, lips, mouth, and gums; it moves down and through: the chin, down the sides of the head and through the ears, down over the back of the head, on down into the front and the back of the neck. This luminous, brilliant, purifying light moves down and out the left shoulder, down the upper left arm, the left elbow, down the left forearm, down the left hand and out through the left palm and fingers. Now we see it move out and down the right shoulder (repeat same sequence).
Now the light flows through the skin and muscles of the chest and abdomen, then moving down the upper and middle back. The light flows down the sides of our body and into the lower back, pelvis and hips. Moving down, it washes the skin and soft tissue and muscles of the thighs, knees, calves, ankles, heels of the feet, all the muscles of the arch and instep and the skin and muscles of the toes.
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