Post by robincragin on Nov 5, 2015 11:43:18 GMT -5
Guided imagery is the last magical meditation method that you will use in these lessons. Guided imagery is like a dream that someone else creates for you. Typically, the meditator begins by closing the eyes. A guide invites the meditator to visualize or imagine a series of images that channel the meditator toward a particular experience.
A skillful guided imagery meditation is one that will draw you near to a goal such as healing, evoking magical power, insight, or releasing old, limited ways of thinking.
Exercise: Finding Your Power Place
The guided imagery meditation that follows is the foundation for many other meditation presented later in our lessons. You can either try this guided imagery meditation by having a friend read it to you, or by recording it on a tape player for later use.
Reader:
Find a comfortable sitting position, or lie flat on your back on the ground. Close your eyes. Take several deep breaths. Mentally scan your body for tension, starting at your feet and working your way up to your head. With each exhalation, imagine that you release any tension that you have sensed in your body.
Once you have released any noticed tension, shift your attention back to your breathing. Begin to take deep, slow breaths. Inhale and exhale slowly. Imagine now that a bright white mist begins to form at your feet. With each inhalation, the mist is drawn up around your body and begins to spiral. As you draw the mist upward you feel warm and comforted. Continue to see the mist climbing your body with each inhalation until it envelopes you completely.
Once you are cloaked in this magical mist, you begin to feel weightless. Your usual sense of time and place slips away from you. All that is left is a feeling of floating inside this soft, glowing, white mist.
Soon you recognize that you are moving. You cannot sense the direction, whether forward or back, up or down, but you feel movement as the mist transports you across time and space. It is taking you to your place of power. Allow the mist to move you and it will stop when you have arrived at your power place.
(Pause for a moment)
When movement has stopped, the mist begins to clear to reveal a landscape. Where are you? Are you on a desert mesa? Are you stationed by a shady mountain stream? Are you on the beach near a sparking sea? Whatever your surroundings, note them in detail now. As you explore this place ou will find a particular spot in the landscape that draws your attention. Go to that spot and sit there.
This is your power place. As you sit here, you are able to regenerate your energy; you are able to relax and cultivate a sense of peace. You are safe here. You gather magical power here. This is your spiritual home.
Stay here for as long as you need. When you are ready to return, imagine that you gesture with one of your hands in a spiral motion near your feet. As you do this, the white spiraling mist will appear again and will climb your body. As the mist covers you, you lose the sense of time and place again. The feeling of motion returns, and the mist transports you rapidly back to the place where you began.
(Pause for a moment)
Once you have arrived back in the place where you began, open your eyes. Take a few moments to recount your experience. Make notes in your journal about this experience.
A skillful guided imagery meditation is one that will draw you near to a goal such as healing, evoking magical power, insight, or releasing old, limited ways of thinking.
Exercise: Finding Your Power Place
The guided imagery meditation that follows is the foundation for many other meditation presented later in our lessons. You can either try this guided imagery meditation by having a friend read it to you, or by recording it on a tape player for later use.
Reader:
Find a comfortable sitting position, or lie flat on your back on the ground. Close your eyes. Take several deep breaths. Mentally scan your body for tension, starting at your feet and working your way up to your head. With each exhalation, imagine that you release any tension that you have sensed in your body.
Once you have released any noticed tension, shift your attention back to your breathing. Begin to take deep, slow breaths. Inhale and exhale slowly. Imagine now that a bright white mist begins to form at your feet. With each inhalation, the mist is drawn up around your body and begins to spiral. As you draw the mist upward you feel warm and comforted. Continue to see the mist climbing your body with each inhalation until it envelopes you completely.
Once you are cloaked in this magical mist, you begin to feel weightless. Your usual sense of time and place slips away from you. All that is left is a feeling of floating inside this soft, glowing, white mist.
Soon you recognize that you are moving. You cannot sense the direction, whether forward or back, up or down, but you feel movement as the mist transports you across time and space. It is taking you to your place of power. Allow the mist to move you and it will stop when you have arrived at your power place.
(Pause for a moment)
When movement has stopped, the mist begins to clear to reveal a landscape. Where are you? Are you on a desert mesa? Are you stationed by a shady mountain stream? Are you on the beach near a sparking sea? Whatever your surroundings, note them in detail now. As you explore this place ou will find a particular spot in the landscape that draws your attention. Go to that spot and sit there.
This is your power place. As you sit here, you are able to regenerate your energy; you are able to relax and cultivate a sense of peace. You are safe here. You gather magical power here. This is your spiritual home.
Stay here for as long as you need. When you are ready to return, imagine that you gesture with one of your hands in a spiral motion near your feet. As you do this, the white spiraling mist will appear again and will climb your body. As the mist covers you, you lose the sense of time and place again. The feeling of motion returns, and the mist transports you rapidly back to the place where you began.
(Pause for a moment)
Once you have arrived back in the place where you began, open your eyes. Take a few moments to recount your experience. Make notes in your journal about this experience.