Spirit moves through us whether we listen to it or not. It moves through us in every moment that we exist. Spirit gives our unique expression its existence. How clearly, cleanly, completely we allow spirit to move through us is a matter of choice. Our choices may be predetermined by heredity or genetics or they may be deeply influenced by upbringing and conditioning, but when we allow ourselves to relax and know that spirit is moving through us, it can become more clear, more clean, more complete.
The first step is to relax. Begin to feel, or act as though the world is a safe place - that all that happens to us is by design, not by pure chance, luck or un-luck. Assume that your experience of life is intended to be as it is.
The next step is to feel a connection to the world around you. Strangely enough, it is our awareness of and connection to the world around us that allows us a stronger connection to spirit. Become aware with all your senses what is going on around you - tasting, smelling, hearing. In becoming aware with all your senses you are not just becoming aware with all your thoughts. You are bringing your awareness down from your head into your body as though you are sensing with all your body and not just with your mind. Feel with your ears. Listen with your eyes.
As you move into this state of relaxed awareness, your consciousness changes to one of greater allowing and acceptance. You can become aware of the glory of the little things around you. Feel how you begin to let go of tensions you didn't know you were holding.
Now, from this settled state, if an inspiration touches you on the shoulder, welcome it, notice it and then move back into your state of awareness. If you are struck by the beauty of something around you, notice it, feel grateful for it and allow it to move on into its next expression while you move back into a state of awareness. Feel the changes in your body. If you are inspired to speak, to draw, to move your body or hands in certain ways, then allow it to the extent that you are in harmony with it.
While using this meditation, and finding ourselves opening to the mystical, it is important not to be too quick to jump to conclusions. Mysteries are always moving, and as soon as we settle on what we think is a truth, we condemn the mystery to the objective. Wonder is a useful tool to begin to touch spirit and it can carry us beyond a desire to solve things "for once and for all". It is also important to see if we are so steeped in our own projections that we are seeing what we think should be there, or what we want to be there. This would be fun, but simply an exercise in imagination. One way to see if this is the case is to ask ourselves if what we have experienced in a connection with spirit us useful, practical and something we can actualize in our lives. If not, we may be leading ourselves down the garden path.
There are no right or wrong ways to do a meditation. The instructions are guidelines; adapt them to who you are and to your needs at that particular time. Be curious about the process itself.
Remember most meditations become richer the more you practice them. They reveal more of themselves. It can take practice to remember to do a meditation when you need to, and it can take practice to go through the steps. But that's why it is called practice, and for most of us, we practice for the rest of our lives.
