Meditation Peace - Guided Meditations audio podcast

All the things that you see, do they help define who you are? The sounds you hear, the things that you touch, do any of those define you? Yet the mind comes out through the physical senses. It paints pictures of the world outside of you and actually creates a sense of 'you' that exists in that world. This 'you' is your ego. It is nothing more than a construct of your mind, no more real than the illusion a projector assembles from transparent plastic.
For this exercise, we will make the leap between the 'constructed ego' and our real nature that is our heart. Let's begin by analyzing this idea a little more. Gently repeat to yourself "Who am I? Am I defined by the things that I see? by the sounds that I hear? by the fragrances that I smell?" The answer should obviously be a resounding 'No!". So then firmly and calmly go through the process of rejecting the egoic construct of you. "The real me is not outside of me. The real me is not even the things that I do." "I am not the body" - and try consciously to let go of all your body consciousness. Your attachment to the way you look, the food you eat, your age etc. "The real me is not even defined by the thoughts constructed by these things" "I am not the mind" - and let go of superficial and even, finally, all thought. "I am the soul" - and allow yourself to be intuitively guided to the real centre of your own existence. A place beyond all the egoic constructions and free of all material, physical or emotional attachments. A silent place within that is your window to the kingdom of heaven within us all. Try to consciously stop allowing the mind to flow outwards and direct it inward. Ask your mind to entertain the idea that inside is your real self. Ask it not to travel outside but to journey within to find the real you. This will take much practice as you might imagine as we have all become very accomplished at the egoic construction of us, now we have to become experts in the heart construction, the spiritual construction of us. Rejoice and realize that heaven is here, now.

The aim of this exercise is to change the habitual way we have walked in the past, and lift the habit into a meditation.
A habit that will require no thought, we will just automatically and effortlessly slip into a meditation every time we walk. So while you read this, imagine you are walking, or download the exercise to your ipod or create a CD for yourself to use anytime. Please imagine yourself walking along a forest path, it's warm and the fragrances are fresh and inspiring. The sunlight is filtering its way through the leaves and the sounds of the birds are gently dancing in your ears. As you walk just allow yourself to feel the rhythm of your movement. Notice each breath. The rise and fall of your chest with the inflow and outflow of air. As you walk feel more and more that you are making no effort. That you are being powered by nature itself. As though there is a force that is feeding every leaf, every flower, every bird and that same force is powering you in your walking. Begin to feel that you are not separate from the forest but rather you are the part of the forest that walks. After a time I would like you to imagine that you are not walking at all. I would like you to imagine that you are a like a large drop of water hovering across the earth. And as you move little droplets of you are falling to the earth and moistening and enlivening and feeding the forest all around you. The plants and flowers around you are reaching towards you to be nourished by your moisture, your energy, your love. Then please feel that you are not water but loving energy and you are radiating it into the forest. As you radiate love into the forest, you will automatically notice that you are also opening up your receptivity to the love that the forest is radiating unconditionally and always to all. Take a moment to really feel this. You might spend 5-10 minutes doing this or longer. You might then just play with the feeling of you the walker radiating love into the forest and then in the next moment feel that you are the part of the forest that radiates love. Spend some more time with that awareness and remember that you can deepen your awareness at any moment in your life.

Sit with your eyes closed and concentrate all of your attention on your heart.
Please repeat to yourself as you have in other exercises "I am not my body, I am not my ego - I am my soul" This is your real reality. This is the real nature of you. Your inner voice. Your conscience that has spoken to you since the beginning - this is the real you. For a moment, reflect upon the possibility that the thinking, physically feeling being that we think of as ourselves is not the real us, but that tiny, silent little voice within is the real us. That tiny little voice that tries to prompt us, tries to guide us and we ignore, is actually our highest reality. Is that possible? That tiny voice that we ignore day in and day out is what we are trying to grow into. That is our highest self? Is that possible? Listen very quietly and hear what your inner voice has to say - hear the answer it has for you. Is that the voice of your soul? Focus all of your attention on it and let everything else go. Let everything else go. Sit still and silent and focus your entire life past, present and future on your soul and listen. Listen with all your heart.. It is your own eternal and infinite voice.

Imagine yourself sitting on the edge of a cliff looking out across an ocean.
It is just before the dawn on a warm summer’s morning. All around you is still and soundless. Just slivers of starlight sparkling off the waves below saves a pitch-blackness. A warm breeze drifts across the ocean and wafts up the face of the cliff and into your heart, and this breeze is not so much a movement of air but a feeling; a feeling of peace.
As you focus out towards the horizon you notice the first purples and crimsons of the morning dawn spilling out across the sky. And you begin to get a feeling of the sunrise... Newness... Beauty... Warmth... Innocence...
All the time the sunrise is changing - purples turning to crimsons, crimsons to oranges and yellows - the feeling of the sunrise intensifying, soaring across the vastness into your heart-breath. And now the sky above and behind you is being overwhelmed by the colour and feeling of the sunrise until the very air around you is tinged by the wondrous purple hue of the morning dawn. It fills the air like a fragrance; you breathe, and the sunrise enters.
The crescendo builds. Finally, the first ray of sun explodes into the sky straight to your heart. Filling you like an electric charge with peace and light. You feel as though if you were to just stretch your arms they might become like wings and you would be able to soar down over the ocean. And so you do.. You stand and stretch your arms and lean ever so gently against that breeze drifting up the face of the cliff.
You find yourself becoming lighter and lighter until just your big toe on your right foot is the only link to the earth - and then a moment later - a gentle puff lifts you off. Letting go you glide down over the face of that cliff and soar inches above the surface of the ocean, one wingtip every so often just dipping into the water making splashes that sparkle rainbows across the sky.
The gentle breeze that had wafted up into your heart at the top of the cliff, has now become a great gush, rolling over your wingtips, splashing against your face inundating your heart with peace. And in the distance, or perhaps deep inside your own heart you hear two words whispered, ever so gently over and over again.
I am
I am.
I am...
I am the sky. I am the ocean. I am the sunrise. I am the bird. I am freedom. As you look down across the waves you feel the whole ocean vast, horizon to horizon. You feel it. You have become the sky, as far as you can see.
It feels as though you could stretch your wings from horizon to horizon and engulf every little part of this magnificence. And it’s shown to you in the next moment that it is the love deep inside your heart that is allowing you to connect with all that is around you. Your love is so full, so all encompassing that you understand and feel what every part of the creation is feeling.
You glide in this love, you float in this love, you soar in this love - all the time it expanding within you, welling up inside your heart. Then with just a whim you decide to dive deep to the very depths of the ocean. And as you splash through the surface you feel that this ocean is so deep it is almost unfathomable. deeper and deeper you dive; past the turbulent waves crashing about on the surface, deeper and deeper to the silent, still depths of the ocean. And you feel that you are diving in some parallel way deep into your very own soul.
Plummeting to the centre of your self. Past the worries and fears and doubts and limitations crashing about on the surface of your life. Until finally at the bottom of the ocean, at the still centre of your soul, you sit cross legged in perfect silence, in perfect stillness and there at the core of your existence - you explore your self in perfect meditation.
Light beams stream through the water and as you glance upward you see the noon day sun, powerful and bright. Drawn like a magnet your heart pulls you upward, and focusing on the light you accelerate through the surface of the ocean into the sky. The more you concentrate the faster you accelerate and the intensity of the light satiates you, your every atom. Your heart like a beacon propels you higher and higher. And you realise that this light is not just a physical light it is also a spiritual light.
The light of wisdom, of truth. It is as though, all of the millions and billions of people that have ever been here on the earth, and all of their experiences, their wisdom, their revelations are flooding the very core of your being with light, truth, wisdom. All the time the light welling up inside you until finally it seems as if you were to look out to observe your form all you would see is light.
You have become the light and all that it touches and it fulfils you. Finally relaxing and drifting across the sky you allow yourself to return to where you started your journey and observe this time...

Please close your eyes and imagine yourself in the most perfect situation you could create here on earth. You are trying to visualize heaven here on earth. You might imagine yourself as being super-successful in your chosen vocation, or perhaps a great and powerful world leader, or a rich and famous musician or sports person.

You might also imagine the perfect relationship; your partner, your perfect soul-mate brilliantly reflecting all that you had imagined your perfect mate to be. Or perhaps heaven for you is a quiet property in an idyllic forest away from the rush of the city. Perhaps heaven is just being popular and loved. Perhaps it is being close to the animals you love or experiencing the love of your children. Everything that you want for yourself or have ever wanted for yourself in this life you have achieved.  

Glimpse yourself in this perfect place and focus all of your attention on how you feel. See yourself in heaven here on earth, and then be supremely objective. Realize that there is no anger or hate or indeed any negativity, that the earth is by no means perfect but observe your consciousness, objectively inspect your state of mind, and you will realize that in this heaven inside of you, you are free, there is pure love, pure happiness and perfect freedom. You might visualize your heart being full of light and that all darkness - your worries, anxieties and fears - have been lifted and transformed by the flood of light from your heaven.

Now, gradually, I’d like you to remove the physical inspirations you used to create the vision of heaven for you, focusing more and more on the feeling of heaven within you. Take out firstly the place, removing your dependence for example on the idyllic forest or the stadium for your huge rock concert. Then remove your dependence on being materially successful, and notice that you can still feel the heaven within you. Then remove the time, if you were imagining this in the future, notice that you are feeling heaven now, and it is not bound to any time yet to come, it is here, now.

Then try removing your dependence on certain things happening so that you can feel this heaven, e.g. I can’t feel heaven until my existing partner is removed from the equation. Finally remove the physical you, stop seeing yourself in this body with these arms and legs, and if you can try removing even your superficial mind. Notice all that is left is the real you, the real you. You might try imagining yourself as a small ball of light that is being shone through. As you focus on this ball of light it is almost as if it is being cleaned and more and more light can shine through it.

As if heaven is not a place or a time or even a result of some event, it is a perfect light that shines simply and perfectly through your consciousness now, in this moment.