Creative Ways to Transform Challenges:
Reducing Stress

Meditation to Meet Life's Challenges with Balance  Joel Levey and Michelle Levey
 
Ultimately, balanced living comes from remembering, affirming, and experiencing in an ongoing way the essential wholeness of your being. The pathway into this experience comes from staying tapped into your connection to a much larger Wholeness whose very nature is always in dynamic balance. Knowing that you are intrinsically, inseparably embedded within the matrix of this fundamental field of Wholeness, that you are intimately a part of it, and it of you, is the most vital wisdom key you can have to access the reservoirs of inner strength and confidence you need to meet life's challenges with balance.

In our own lives, we call this remembrance the practice of "taking refuge." It is something the two of us do on a daily basis, often several times a day, as a way of anchoring ourselves in the ultimate Source of balance, blessing, and guidance. What is it that steadies you? What or who, for you, can be a reliable source of refuge? Here is a meditation you can do to remember

Receiving and Radiating

As you sit here now, envision yourself sitting at the center of your universe, surrounded by all living beings. Holding this image in mind, pause for a moment to remember, invite, or sense the presence of those who have most deeply inspired you in your life. Reach out now with your heart and hands to these beings whose presence in your life is truly a blessing, a source of renewal, deep information, and inspiration. Imagine that all of them are right here with you now, surrounding you and shining like a constellation of brilliant suns. Or if you like, envision that these many sources of light merge into a single brighter sun that shines a radiance of blessings and inspiration into your life. Imagine that with each breath you reach out to them and hold their hands, and that through your connection with them you can draw strength and inspiration. In fact the stronger and more sincere your own aspiration, the deeper and stronger the flow of inspiration becomes.

Imagine that each of these inspiring people in turn reaches out to hold the hands of those whom they look to for guidance, strength, and inspiration, and that they in turn reach out to those who have inspired them. Sense your teachers reaching out to their teachers, who reach out to their teachers. Envision yourself balanced within and receiving from this endless cascade of wisdom and love as it flows to you and through you from countless inspired ancestors of the far and distant past.

Envision this inspiration as knowledge and energy, soaking into you now. It energizes the parts of you where your life force is weak. It balances what needs to be balanced. It floods, cleanses, and opens the spaces and places within you that are clogged or congested, and nourishes the seeds of your deepest potentials to blossom beautifully. Like sunlight filtering into a deep clear pool, sense these waves of inspiring grace flooding your body-mind-energy-spirit. Every dimension of your being is illuminated, blessed, and renewed. With each breath you are filled, silently thinking, receiving. With each breath you release what you no longer need to hold on to, thinking inwardly releasing. Receiving.., releasing... Receiving.., releasing... Plugging into this renewal circuit, you are revitalized, calmed, and energized, and move toward balance between your inner and outer worlds.

Having cleared your circuits, charged your batteries, and filled your tanks, begin now to radiate and expand this sense of peace and well-being within you. With each inhalation, shift to receive, and then with each exhalation, radiate. Breathing in, imagine the inspiration and blessings converging and spiraling into you, filling your heart. With each out-breath, imagine that your heart is silently radiating like a bright shining star. Effortlessly offer the natural radiance of your innermost being to the world. Allow it to shine through the darkness within or around you. Allow it to light up your inner and outer world effortlessly, immediately. Let this be the light of your love, the light of your peace, the light of your presence, the light of your goodwill and positive regard.

Now, having enhanced and expanded your radiance, begin to direct your attention and energy to the world around you. Reach out now to those who look to you as a source of inspiration, guidance, and support. Reach out to your children, to your students, to your patients, clients, and customers, and to all those who look to you as they seek for balance and belonging in their lives. Receiving inspiration, wisdom, and strength from those you draw guidance from, reach out with your hands and from your heart, and let each exhalation become an inspiring gift that you offer to those who, in turn, look to you.

Envision each person you reach out to taking your gift to heart: feel that it truly inspires and awakens greater wisdom, balance, and strength in their lives. As you reach out to your children, envision them receiving and taking this gift to heart and then passing it on to their children, who pass it on to their children, who pass it on to their children and to all whose lives they touch. Envision your students reaching out to their students who reach out to their students. Imagine that all those whom you reach out to take these gifts to heart, and pass it on to those who will pass it on in an endless cascade of inspiration and blessings that reaches out into the world to help nurture harmony and balance for countless generations to come.

In this way, receiving and radiating, sense yourself balanced here reaching out from this fleeting moment where all the experiences of the infinite past and all the potential for the boundless future converge. Viewed in this light, realize that your real life-work is to reach out and realize your connectedness and wholeness, to deepen in balance, to increase your capacity to gather inspiration and wisdom, to take it to heart, and to pass it on as far and wide as you possibly can. Now, as you breathe, gather the raw energy of any agitation or discomfort into your heart, like raking coal or wood into a furnace, and let it fuel the fire of transformation, giving you more light to radiate. With each breath, breathe in compost, and breathe out flowers and fruit. Breathe in fear, and let its energy be released into the radiance of confidence. Breathe in imbalance, and let it, too, fuel the radiance of your steadiness and resilience. Radiate the power of equanimity out on the waves of your breath as a blessing of balance and peace in the lives of all those who share your world.

In this way, with practice, begin to understand that you can utilize any experience that comes to you as a vehicle to deepen your inner strengths, and tap you into a greater sense of connectedness. If you are faced with fear and suffering, let it fuel the radiance of your love and compassion. Faced with beauty and the sweetness of life, let it intensify the radiance of your gratitude and rejoicing. Imagine yourself as a light bearer, illuminating the world. Imagine the silent light of your innermost being blazing with exquisite clarity and radiating out to fill your body. Imagine it radiating out into the world around you now, as you yourself act as a radiant source of inspiration for the world. Holding your loved ones and friends in mind, radiate this love to them. Bring to heart and mind the leaders of the world, the children of the world, the beleaguered nations and species of the world and radiate your heartfelt care and prayers to them.

In this way receiving.., radiating... each breath affirms your deep relationship with the whole of creation, and with all beings in time past, present, and future. In this way, each blessed breath becomes a gesture of balance, a gesture of receiving from and offering to all.

From Living in Balance : A Dynamic Approach for Creating Harmony & Wholeness in a Chaotic World by Joel Levey and Michelle Levey. © 1998 by Conari Press. Excerpted with permission from Conari Press, Berkeley, California. www.conari.com. For more information, call 1-800-685-9595

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