Jess

Telluride, CO, United States

Explore the dance of humanity by balancing mindful witnessing with deep engagement in the world around you.

English

This meditation explores the intersection between being our own witness and being fully enraptured in all life has to offer. One common yogic teaching of cultivating the ability to respond instead of react to the world can sometimes seem to be at odds with the teaching to allow oneself to be fully present. The truth is in the dance between both: intertwining our spirituality with our humanity, our presence and observance. We are made whole by creating our own personal flow between these two states. 
This meditation is inspired by the teachings of Mark Nepo and The Vedas.

Moving Between Presence & Witness: Exploring Your Humanity

Welcome. Today we are going to be doing a little grounding meditation exploring our humanity and what it means to be here fully. So go ahead and just take a few grounding breaths wherever you are. This can be seated, lying down, standing up. Just taking a few slow deep breaths right here. Inhale through the nose and exhale out the nose. Good. Just go ahead and gently close the eyes from top to bottom now. You can also just hold a gentle gaze. We're just starting to really presence ourselves. Starting to tune into the breath. Where is the breath going to today? Where in the body is it easy for the breath to flow to? Where is it a little harder to feel the breath? Just watching, noticing where it travels to. Noticing the texture, the length. Just observing. Releasing any stories, any judgment, any pride around the quality of the breath. And just exploring what it's like to only witness the body today. And perhaps now you can notice that the breath has shifted and changed just by bringing your attention to it. Perhaps it's slow or deepened. And just taking a moment to notice what's shifted inside of you. And starting to gently now presence yourself with this moment. Tuning in now to all of the sounds around you. The sound of my voice, the music, perhaps the sound of birds or cars outside your window. Your cat, your dog, your roommate in the kitchen. The sound of your breath. The sound of your breath. The sound of your bones creaking as you find an even taller spine. And just noticing that when you tune into these sounds, you go to them. What's that like? That same attention, that same witness, that same observer goes to the sound. To hold it, to label it, to decode it. And that's perfect, that's beautiful, it's part of the magic of being human. It's part of the magic of being human. And I invite you to try to soften in this space, in this moment, to stay in your center while all of these sounds proceed around you. Imagine gathering yourself up from all of these other sensory inputs and bringing all of you back into this body, into this tall spine, into your center, wherever your calm lives, where that witness lives. Can you soften so much now that the sound of my voice just passes right through you? I'm not holding on to my words, releasing the need to make meaning from them. Releasing yourself from the need to be anything other than present. There's an ancient yogi question that essentially asks what within all of us is the same? The answer to that ancient yogi question is our witness. That same part of us you've already explored. It can be the one who watches everything unfold, no matter what life we are born into, no matter what labels we put on ourselves or what others put onto us, whatever goes on externally beyond our body and mind. Whatever goes on in the mind and the body too, the witness also watches that. This is the ancient, yet still extremely potent and true unifier of humanity. Our capacity to be the one who watches. Now as you continue to be that one who watches your breath, staying centered and calm in the body as my voice just moves through you, can you start to soften the body and the mind so that you imagine or perhaps even feel that connective thread to the rest of humanity? Beginning in this piece of you that is always accessible, that resides within your attention, just like the breath that calmed once we turned our inner gaze to it. There is this strength, this connective tissue that exists within you. There is this strength, this connective tissue that exists within our capacity to be our own witness. And it also serves as the separation from the rest of the world. When we witness, there is this sliver that comes between us and everything else sometimes. Yes, this witness state is so helpful. It's beautiful. Cultivating this space is how we allow ourselves to start to interact and not just react to the world. We can start to choose to show up as ourselves every day. Not being enraptured by everything that happens around us, but by finding calm in that storm. And there's this connective piece where this enrapture with the world is so important also to our human experience. How can we at times remove this sliver between us and the world? Us and all of the stimulation that comes in through our five senses. Letting go of metaphor. The wind is not like the voice of God. What if it is the voice of God? What if this blooming peony is not like my heart, but it is my heart? Opening up to the world, letting it in, letting you pour out. This constant beautiful dance between being enraptured in the world, being a part of the world, and always knowing we have that ability to take a step back when we need to assess, to witness, to observe. Making choices and decisions that are best suited for the version of ourselves that we want to be enraptured with the world. This is the dance, this totality of you, the diversity of your own humanity. This witness that pervades all of humanity in almost this back-end way. We get to remind ourselves of its accessibility to our relatedness, to our union. And then this forward momentum and rapture with the world as it unfolds, as we unfold with it, alongside it, inside it. This overt engagement, the dance. And that is the dance by which I invite you to move through the rest of your day today. Go ahead and take three more slow, deep breaths in and out of the nose to integrate this into your system. Setting an intention for the rest of your day. Can you bow to this dance? Can you invite your witness and your enrapturing in to today? And gently tucking your chin to chest. Taking another moment here to thank yourself for making it here today. Whenever you're ready to rejoin the day, gently, slowly, knowing there is no rush. Inviting some light in to the eyes. And raising your chin to meet the world in dance.