We tend to think that who we are is the physical self enclosed in our skin. This meditation can help us think a bit bigger.

How to Practice

Close your eyes. Concentrate on on your right thumbnail. Experience its size, its boundaries. This is not new to you, you know how it feels.

Now expand your awareness of that thumbnail as far as you can, still feeling that it is your thumbnail.

Extend this further beyond that familiar sense of “this is my thumbnail”. You may notice that you whole “self” fills that space too. You are expanding your boundaries of this familiar self without losing the sense that it is you.

Our sense of self is constantly changing and expanding, exploring new limits and defining itself in new ways. It is not a fixed, unchanging, unmoving self, but an activity. A verb, not a noun.

Notes

It goes without saying that you can use a finger or toe instead of your thumbnail. It can also be fun to use a sense of your heart or head instead of a tactile body part. Experiment. It can be illuminating.