The Meditation Handbook by David Fontana

Author:David Fontana
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Meditation Handbook
ISBN: 9781780284699
Publisher: Duncan Baird Publishers Limited
Published: 2011-12-26T00:00:00+00:00

MEDITATING ON THE INNER ELEMENTS

There are also techniques for meditating upon the elements within the body. These are more difficult, since the starting point is the creative imagination rather than the outer world, but they are equally rewarding. Choose one of the elements – astrologers say start with the element of your sun sign – and imagine you can feel it in your body.

Let us assume you start with water. Once your meditation is stabilized by focusing on the breath, switch your attention to the liquid element in your body. Imagine you can sense the blood flowing through your arteries and veins. Don’t concentrate upon a throbbing pulse somewhere (that would be meditation upon a throbbing pulse) but imagine you are experiencing the actual sensation of movement. Start with the feet and hold the awareness there. Next move to the calves, then to the knees, then to the thighs, and so on upwards. Don’t allow the awareness to travel through the body, as if flowing with the blood. This disperses the concentration and leads to inner questions such as, ‘How fast is the blood travelling?’. Instead, concentrate at fixed points, and imagine the sensation of the blood flowing past.

Eventually you will feel a tingling at the points where your concentration rests, and once you have moved around the whole body, ending with the crown of the head, you will feel this tingling suffusing you in a pleasant sensation of vibrant, flowing energy. Don’t concern yourself whether this is still your imagination or whether you are now experiencing something objective. The vital thing is that you are experiencing it, that it gives the body a sense of health and well-being, and that after regular practice with this meditation you will feel, both in and out of meditation, that you have something of the liquid grace of water itself. You will notice also that you gain a new affinity for water in all its forms, a fellow feeling for it, as if by sensing it inside yourself you have come to know it as a life companion, a generous brother or sister.

Similar meditations can be carried out with fire, earth and air. When working with fire, follow the same procedure as with water, feeling the warmth in your feet, legs, and so on. Don’t make yourself hot by putting on thick clothes. Even if your feet, for example, initially feel cold, don’t try and warm them. They are warm already. The blood inside them is at the same temperature as the blood in the rest of your body. If it were as cold as the outside air, your feet would literally be dead. So stay with a sense of warmth. Don’t expect this immediately to warm the feet. This is not the point of the exercise (though it is a welcome side effect in due time). The point is to imagine the warmth inside the feet, the warm blood, the warm tissues. Don’t be distracted by sensations of cold on the surface of the feet.

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