15 MIN GUIDED MINDFULNESS MEDITATION - JON KABAT ZINN

Let's take a few moments to lie down in a comfortable place where we can feel supported and undisturbed. And just touch base with the flow of our own breathing and with a sense of the body as a whole lying here. And when you feel ready, picturing in your mind's eye a lake, a body of water, large or small, held in a receptive basin by the earth itself. Noting in the mind's eye and in your own heart that water likes to pool in low places. It seeks its own level, asks to be held, contained. The lake you are invoking may be deep or shallow, blue or green, muddy or clear. With no wind, the surface will be flat, mirror-like. It reflects trees, rocks, sky and clouds, holds everything in itself momentarily. Wind stirs up waves, reflections distort and disappear. But sunlight may still sparkle in the ripples and dance on the waves in a play of shimmering diamonds. And when night comes, it's the moon's turn to dance on the lake or when the surface is still, to be reflected in it along with the outline of trees and shadows. In winter, the lake may freeze over, yet be teeming with movement and life below. As you lie here breathing, as you establish this image of a lake in your mind's eye, allowing yourself, when you feel ready, to bring it inside yourself completely so that your being merges with the lake, becomes one with it, so that all your energies in this moment are held in awareness with openness and compassion for yourself in the same way as the lake's waters are held by the receptive and accepting basin of the earth herself. Breathing as the lake, feeling its body as your body, allowing your mind and your heart to be open and receptive moment by moment, to reflect whatever comes near or to be clear all the way to the bottom. Experiencing moments of complete stillness when both reflection and water are completely clear and other moments perhaps when the surface is disturbed, choppy, stirred up. Reflections and depth lost for a time and through it all as you lie here, simply observing the play of the various energies of your own mind and heart, the fleeting thoughts and feelings, impulses and reactions which come and go as ripples and waves, noting their effects, in contact with them, just as you are in contact with and feel the various changing energies that play on the lake, the wind, the waves, the light, the shadows, the reflections, the colors, the smells. Noticing the effects of your thoughts and feelings, do they disturb the surface and clarity of the mind's lake? Do they muddy the waters? Is that okay with you? Isn't having a rippling or a wavy surface part of being a lake? Might it be possible to identify not only with the surface of your lake but with the entire body of water so that you become the stillness below the surface as well, which at most experiences only gentle undulations even when the surface is whipped to frothing? In the same way, in your meditation practice and in your daily life, can you be in touch not only with the changing content and intensity of your thoughts and feelings but also with the vast, unwavering reservoir of awareness itself residing below the surface of your mind? The lake can teach us this, remind us of the lake within ourselves. If you find this image to be of value, you might want to use it from time to time to deepen and enrich your meditation practice. You might also invite this lake image to empower you and guide your actions in the world as you move through the unfolding of each day, carrying a vast reservoir of mindfulness within your heart. Dwelling here in the stillness of this moment, we can be the lake in silence now for the remaining time, signaled by the sound of the bells, affirming our ability to hold in awareness and in acceptance right now all our qualities of mind and body. Just as the lake sits held, cradled, contained by the earth, reflecting sun, moon, stars, trees, rocks, clouds, light, caressed by the air and the wind, which bring out and highlight its sparkle, its vitality, its potential moment by moment.