(đ©700 words, a ten-minute read, final part)
In Part Two, the âAppleâ became a friend that helped us quieten the mindâs focus on concentration (of things) and created a âlight and bubblingâ sense of ourselves, a kind of glowâŠ
In this final part of the series, we are going to do something quite wonderful ⊠and very simple. I hope you will take this with you and use it, often.
When we feel the gentle affinity with the apple – or whatever object we have used to help us – we are going to include it in our being.
Thatâs right, weâre going to relate to it as though it were part of us; a part of the âmeâ that is âyouâ – your very special sense of self.
We do this by holding that bubbling glow that we feel at the presence of this friendly object and transposing it back to us, as though some invisible process was absorbing it back into our body.
Immediately we do this, we will feel that, actually, it already was part of our body, and that the bubbling glow we now feel was really coming from us, all along. Only now, we recognise the signature of that focus on the apple was actually the sense of peaceful self.
While the energy of this is glowing, use it to sweep up your whole body, starting with the muscles and bones of your feet and rising up within the legs to the mid-section, stomach and chest, and holding it in your heart. Then, let it rise through your throat and head with a sense of âfloweringâ at the very top of your head and out into the space above you.
As though you were a flower, feel your feet rooted to the Earth and your flowering head connected to the sky (and stars) above you.
Itâs a beautiful feeling, isnât it?
The body is always in the now, but we donât often pay this kind of attention to it, so we stay lost in our thoughts and concerns and feelings – the mind. All of these are imaginations compare to the reality and âpresent-nessâ of the body.
Go back now and feel how much your body is in the âpresent momentâ. Does it have that gentle inner glow? If so, then the whole of it is present to the beautiful now, and the phantoms of the busy or troubled mind have been pushed where they belong.
The future is an idea. The present is where everything happens; and it is constantly changing, Our lives can change in an instant, so our heavy thoughts and worries simply hold us away from the power of the now and that which is present in the now to change things.
Our minds are usually in a chaotic state of âmust do this, must remember to do that ⊠and worry about things that have yet to happen to us. The body is always in the now, and when we return our full presence to it, it glows with joy.
Experience –where we started – touches the body, first. That is reality, What we then make of that touch of experience is down to the state of our emotion and thoughts – the mind, in other words,
With care and love for our-selves, we can separate these, and see how they work. At any stage, we can stop the compulsive busyness and simply be present to our bodies, re-inhabiting the bubbling joy of being alive and being âmeâ.
This âother realmâ of being is what we always had before our minds became âsophisticatedâ and cluttered with concerns, anticipations and worry.
It belongs to us. It is us. We can reclaim it so simply.
I hope this works for you⊠Its effects can be a revelation.
Previous parts of this series:
This is part Three
âââ-
©Stephen Tanham 2024
All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.
Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers a guided inner journey from the state of conscious personality to the awakening of realised personal Self and its world of Being.
There are two blog streams:
(mystically-oriented writing)
and
(general interest, poetry and travel)