Meditating 24 hours a day - starting with walking meditation

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Walking Meditation
What is a walking meditation?
In this class we are working on incorporating meditation exercises and experiences into many of our actions. And a walking meditation is the perfect place to start.

Why should we do this?

Meditation is not about us shutting ourselves off from the world and retiring into a corner of our room never to be seen again. The real aim of meditation is for us to be more in tune with our innermost self, the real 'us'. It aims to have us not only accept our world wholeheartedly but lift the place we view it from.

I have two doctors, my left leg and my right.- G. M. Trevelyan

Most of us have spent our lives living 'outside' of our real nature. We often have confused the desires of our body, ego and intellect, with the divine wishes of our soul.

If you just reflect upon for a moment the way we habitually walk anywhere currently, you might be aware that most of the time we are thinking about another place we want to be, or things we have to do, or any number of extraneous thoughts. We rarely are conscious of the present moment, and our heart and soul in the process of walking.

Meditation, our spiritual life, seeks to redress the balance. It seeks to deepen every moment of our lives with the richness of experience of our own heart.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks - John Muir

This is really it in a nutshell, to live our spiritual lives most effectively and efficiently we simply need to live our lives from our heart, we simply need to get closer to meditating 24 hours a day

It is not talking but walking that will bring us to heaven - Matthew Henry

This doesn't mean we are in a trance state the whole time, barely conscious of the outside world. Meditation is not an escape, it is a recentering. It means that we become more and more conscious of the heaven of the heart that we are in all the time (without knowing it) and less conscious of the hell (of our unruly minds) that we can so easily fall into.

A walking meditation is where we begin.

If you want to know if your brain is flabby, feel your legs. - Bruce Barton

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Guided Meditation - Bushwalk meditation
Please read this information on preparing for your meditation

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.