Summer Solstice Guided Meditation

Four times a year the solstices and equinoxes remind me of the cycles of change. As a lover of light, I always look forward to the long days of summer. And yet, when the solstice arrives, things are turning the corner. After this longest day, the days will get shorter as darkness increases.  This, plus the fact that we have listeners from all over the world, and half of the world is experiencing the shortest day, caused me to wax philosophical. What started as a meditation to celebrate the light of summer morphed into a meditation reflecting on change and how we can relax into it. Our latest podcast - Summer Solstice Guided Meditation - is an opportunity to relax into change and view our current life situation from a broader perspective.

Whose is the face of Meditation Oasis?

When we were looking for an icon for our Meditation Oasis podcast in the fall of 2006, we kept coming back to the face which not only became our icon, but part of our website banner. We found the picture in an image library of software we were using. The expression is so compelling. It captures meditation so perfectly. None of the other images we considered came close to the power of this image. It's intriguing to think about how once upon a time a young woman posed for a photo, and the picture ended up in an image library and then became the now familiar face associated with Meditation Oasis. Who is the woman who posed? Who took her picture? What was the intention of the picture? How did it end up in the image library?

Just recently someone on Facebook asked if the woman in the picture is me. When we chose the photo, we realized that some people might think that, but decided it didn't matter. It was the expression, the feeling of the picture that mattered, not the features of the face. And besides, we have never wanted to put a lot of attention on ourselves as individuals. What we are interested in is an inner experience, a universal human experience. We are also most interested in YOUR experience, in your discovery through meditation.

Whose is the face of Meditation Oasis? The face of Meditation Oasis is all of us. The icon could easily be a picture of any one of us deep in meditation. The picture could easily be you. When we are at peace, it shines through. No matter how we look, when a person is at peace, that is what everyone sees. It's unmistakable. It's a gift to everyone around. We are thankful for the gift of this photo that came in such a serendipitous way. It's been a gift to all of us who feel the peace that comes through the image.

Present Moment Awareness Meditation

"Present moment awareness" isn't something that can be captured in words. It is a holistic awareness of "what is". This short meditation is an opportunity to explore what is "here and now". This is a more advanced meditation in that the instructions are very subtle. The words I say in meditations are never meant as instructions to be followed precisely, and that is even more true for this meditation. Since there's so much interest in the idea of the "present moment", it might be easy to get caught up in concepts about it and what it is. Any idea we have about the present moment, however, is not what it is. As you listen to this meditation, listen easily. Treat it more like poetry than prose, allowing it to reveal something to you that can't be named. Let go of the need to understand!

We'd love to hear your experiences with this meditation!

The Yin Yang of the Solstice

It's the summer solstice where I live - the longest day of the year. A lover of warmth and light, I celebrate the day with a mixture of emotions. At the same time that I rejoice in the light and beginning of summer, there's the knowledge that from now on the days will gradually shorten. The concept of Yin-Yang expresses this perfectly - in the light half resides the seed of darkness, in the dark half resides the seed of light. It seems as I grow older, the two sides of the coin of life are more evident in every experience. When young, I would be totally happy or totally sad, and at some level there was actually a belief that life could be all one way or another. As I age, with more and more up and down waves of living under my belt, there's a sense of the impermanence of all experiences. Love is tinged with the knowledge of loss, and life takes on an increasingly bittersweet quality. Sadness dances in happiness and joy dances in sorrow. There is an incredible aliveness in this. Life itself dancing in my heart!

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Related post: Musings on the Winter Solstice six months ago -- Finding Harmony in Diversity with Meditation

Finding Harmony in Diversity with Meditation

I've been finding myself deeply affected lately by a growing awareness of the tremendous diversity of our Meditation Oasis "family". Facebook more than anything has made me aware of how different we all are and yet we are drawn together by our common human experience and the deepest aspects of our inner life which we reach through meditation. From time to time I like to click on the faces on the Facebook page. It's been so fulfilling to see people living in so many different countries with such different interests. Many of us could probably fall into heated discussions with each other at the drop of a hat over politics and find ourselves world's apart in our musical tastes. Yet we can all sit together and meditate and experience a place of complete harmony.

Many of us are busy with holidays now, but some are not. We all experienced the solstice yesterday, but for some it signaled the shortest day of the year while for others it was the longest. We moved into winter where I live, but some of you are experiencing summer. Awareness of these differences has caused me to pause before sending a year end message. Yesterday instead of writing "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Hanukah" (which most people celebrate where I live), I found myself looking for a more universal greeting. I could have sent out a "Happy Solstice" message, I suppose. We all experience the changing seasons thanks to the tilt of the earth moving around the sun. But then I remembered that for people on or near the Equator, the Solstice doesn't mean much. All of this has brought me to this place today where I want to send a different kind of message, one that we can all relate to no matter what we all do or don't celebrate and believe.

As I searched for the perfect holiday/non-holiday message, I remembered the message Richard and I have often used. That's the message I'd like to send to you all today. I think it's something we can all relate to and a desire every human being shares. And it's something many of us move toward through meditation --

"We wish you a peaceful mind and an open heart."