Hello, beautiful soul, and welcome to Meditate with Mandy. I’m Mandy, and I’m so honored to be with you in this moment of presence.
Wherever you are, go ahead and get cozy and get comfy in your space. And when you’re ready, flutter those beautiful eyelids closed and take a nice, deep inhale in through your nose. Let it go through your mouth. And follow with another deep inhale in through your nose, out through your mouth. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Last one in through your nose, and slow and steady out through your mouth.
Beautiful.
Switch to your nose breathing, in and out through the nose. Your own pace, your own rhythm, your own volume.
As your body relaxes into your space, into your posture, an easy dropping of the shoulders. A smoothing of the forehead. A release of the scalp. No more gripping in the back muscles or in the palms. Fingers unclenched, toes unclenched if you’ve got them.
Everything slows down and arrives one by one in this moment.
Whatever the to-do list is, give it a little kiss and send it away for now. Whatever list of angst or issues, whether they be external or internal, is weighing on you, give it a kiss. Place it on the shelf just for now and arrive right here.
This moment is perfect.
It’s new.
It’s quantum.
It holds potential for infinite possibility.
It is intellectually undefined.
And it’s ours.
What a gift that we share a moment in human form on this planet orbiting the sun in the Milky Way galaxy, at this juncture in time-space reality.
And we’ve managed to concoct these stories about our identity and our purpose and our path.
And sometimes we get so locked into the micro that the big picture feels irrelevant.
And today we forgive ourselves for that.
We forgive ourselves for a fixation on our story, who we believe we are, who we believe we’re supposed to be, what a good spiritual person does or doesn’t do, what a good seeker does or doesn’t do, what a good healer, outcast, rebel, hero, or even villain does or doesn’t do.
Today we forgive ourselves for every single story, my sweet love.
Both the positive and the painful.
And we see ourselves proportionately, true to size, as a tiny blip on a floating rock orbiting a ball of fire.
Relax your shoulders if they’ve crawled up. Take a peek at your forehead, your neck, and use the breath to soften all of these areas again.
For it’s very natural for the nervous system to clench and tense and rebel when we bring up our stories.
Our nervous system is programmed by these stories.
It lives and dies on these stories.
It uses the story of someone’s facial expression at the market to ruminate and feel anxiety about for 30 minutes.
It uses the story we tell ourselves about our spouse, our partner, or our lack of a partner, to throw ourselves into a fight-or-flight response for an entire day.
So when we ruffle the feathers of this story, we activate the nervous system.
So with so much love and so much tenderness, we keep watching those shoulders and we keep dropping them consciously. We keep breathing easy, full breaths. We keep relaxing into the surface we’re on, feeling the support of the Earth.
We might even pop a tiny smile, just for a moment, as we forgive, forgive, forgive.
We may forgive ourselves for telling stories, for making them gospel truth, for holding on to identity as a mechanism, a vehicle for purpose.
We may forgive our caregivers and our ancestors for the stories they passed on about what success means, about what worthiness means.
We may forgive society for trying to create meaning out of circumstance and concocting stories about what it means to be this way or that way, and what that says about who you are.
We forgive any being who has ever felt like they needed to tell a story to justify their pain or their bliss, to justify their existence.
We forgive as we breathe in through the nose and out through the nose.
We inhale understanding of the need to feel relevant in this vast universe.
And we exhale.
Release.
Inhale understanding.
Exhale release.
Inhale understanding.
Exhale release.
Inhale:
I believed stories about myself.
Exhale:
That was the best I knew how to do.
Inhale:
I believe stories about myself.
Exhale:
I’m now open to a greater truth.
Let the shoulders drop. Forehead and orbital sockets smooth. Cheeks relaxed. Scalp and neck. Hands unclenched.
You’re so safe, my sweet friend.
Safe in the liminal space.
Exhale the stories and let them sparkle in the sky.
Let them become stars.
But you, you are that vast, endless sky.
You are space.
Akasha.
Ever-changing, infinite, undefined, just like the moment itself.
Bound by no story.
No identity.
Completely liberated.
Breathe in space.
Breathe out space.
Breathe in space.
Breathe out space.
In space.
Out space.
In infinity.
Out infinity.
For a few moments, witness the Earth orbiting the sun.
You can see it if you can visualize it, imagine it. Or if, like me, that capacity is not in the wheelhouse, perceive it. Smell it. Feel it. Sense it.
We’ll place our awareness, we’ll rest our awareness ever so gently on Earth orbiting the sun.
Over decades and centuries and eons.
The scale of our stories, and what truly is eternal and lasts.
And we’ll come back together in just a few moments.
Let’s meditate.
[Silent interlude]
Beautiful, my sweet friend. Beautiful.
Let Earth go and come back to your piece of Earth.
For you are the life force, the intelligent witness, possessing a little piece of Earth for a little snippet of time.
This is our planet right here.
And to honor your personal planet, take a beautiful deep breath in through your nose and let it go through your mouth. Another one in through your nose, out through your mouth.
Final one like this.
Make it count.
In through your nose.
Hold it at the peak.
Grin a big smile and release it through the mouth.
Beautiful.
Breathe easy, my sweet friend.
Nose in, nose out.
And when you’re ready, flutter those beautiful eyelids open and take the old peek, if you have eyes to see, at this world, this Earth.
The way it is now, it’ll never be this way again.
The way it smells and feels and sounds and tastes and looks.
The energy of the collective of humanity.
Even the energy of you.
It’s different in every moment.
So let’s gather this one up in our arms and give it the grandest hug we can, and thank it for the ride.
Until we meet again, my sweet friend, I am sending you all of the love that I’ve got.
It’s always more.
It’s never, ever less.
Because you, my dear friend, you are so very worthy of it.
I mean, you are.