Friday, April 7: A deep and useful meditation

THE FIVE LINES
Here’s a deep and useful meditation. Sit in a chair, close your eyes and go through a trip around the world in your two arms and two legs. Start with the right foot. Sense it deeply, all the bones, muscles, nerves, fluids. Everything you can be aware of. Start at the toes and work your way to the ankle and then move your sensing awareness up your right leg to your right hip joint.

Where is the hip joint? This is pretty amazing to discover.

Then sense the entire right leg.

Keep sensing your entire right leg and begin to add of the fingers of your right hand. Slowly work your way in awareness and sensation, up your right arm. Then fully sense both the right leg and right arm, from toes and fingers up to hip joint and shoulder.

Keep sensing those two and jump across to your left shoulder and begin to sense down the left arm. Fill it with awareness. Fill you with awareness of your left arm, as you move slowly down to the fingertips. Then sense the entire arm along with your right arm and right leg.

Keep sensing those three and add on the left leg, sensing down from the left hip joint, slowly and sweetly through the leg until you come to the toes. Now sense all four, feel the right and left sides of you and then add on the spine, starting with the sacrum and working your awareness way up to the base of the skull. Now fill in the pelvis and the ribs and the head and the shoulder blades and sense your entire skeleton, but with the five lines as the guiding template.

Now keep sensing that and be aware of sounds coming in your ears.

And then, add to the five lines and sounds, light coming in your eyes, reflected light. To do this you will probably have to open your eyes. Now you have attention in and attention out. Get up, go about your day and see how often you can keep this animal-like state of heightened awareness..