Meditation

The Seed Meditation

The seed meditation does not aim at a particular goal, such as calm, or love, as many types of medtiation do. It is a way of opening to the deepest or highest in you in a way that enables those facets of you, perhaps never known before, or even suspected, to express. It allows the natural healing and balancing forces innate in your body and mind to do their work unhindered by your own conscious controls and directions. If we knew everything about our body and mind, then perhaps we could direct our processes wisely. But as much of our nature is still a mystery, it is wise sometimes to stand aside and learn and let the process that gives us daily life to do its own thing. And when it does its 'own thing' it is truly awe inspiring and one understands why ancient travellors in this realm called it holy.

In most social settings we usually restrain everything except what may be acceptable to others, expedient in the situation, or judged as correct. This means that you may not give yourself the freedom elsewhere to allow your own creative imagination - your body to discharge tension through movement - experience your intuitive process - your feelings about the sacred - your full range of emotional responses, or a chance to release inner pain and past traumas. Because of this you may have gradually diminished yourself, blocking out much of yourself that is not of immediate use in everyday affairs. You may in fact have diminished your relationship with Life itself. And believe me, Life is wild, in the way we use that word when we talk about a 'wild' party. See: LifeStream.

The seed meditation and the seed group can allow you the freedom to express and know those restrained parts of you. To practice it needs a particular setting. The meditation is a means of opening to all the aspects of who and what you are in a way you may not have done before. So you need a setting where you can give attention to what is occurring in you in the subtlest of your feelings and sensations; where you can explore your spontaneous responses of posture, movement, voice and feelings, and not be disturbed. The place needs to be warm enough to be comfortable, and with a blanket or something soft underfoot. Clothing needs to be loose enough to move in easily.

When you are ready, stand in the middle of your blanket. If possible, feel thanks to nature and its processes for your existence - and toward fellow human beings for the work and thought they share with you. Then take on the 'keyboard condition'. In other words learn to hold your body, emotions, imagination, sexuality and memories like a keyboard that can be played on by your inner self. In this way you are holding your body free to move spontaneously; you are letting go of any control or resistances you might have in connection with your emotions; you are relinquishing your thoughts and goals, and you are leaving the stage free for your imagination – all to be able to respond to something other than your conscious will – all ready to be moved spontaneously. Remember that when you go to sleep another will creates dreams, body movement, emotions, sexual feelings and all the phenomena of dreams, without your conscious will needing to be active. It is this inner process, or inner self, that can express when you can create the Keyboard Condition.

African musical instrument showing the body as a musical instrument.

The meditation has now begun.

Direct your attention to the idea of a dried seed. It can be any sort of seed, but preferably the type you have handled in the past sometime, and maybe planted. But you are not to 'think' about the seed, just hold the idea or image of it gently in mind. No need to visualise it clearly. You are leaving thought behind and exploring another way of experiencing.

Without trying to be completely rational or scientific, what might it feel like to be a seed? Try raising your arms above your head. Does that feel like a dried seed? Does it feel like a dried seed so be standing?

Watching the subtle sense of what feels unlike or like the seed, experiment with body positions until you find a position that feels for you like an expression of a dried seed. There is no 'right' position, only what feels right for you.

Don't struggle with this - enjoy it. Once you feel reasonably satisfied with your position, imagine what a dried seed might feel like inside. Is it waiting, sleeping, unconscious? Whatever you imagine it to be, allow your own inner condition to be as nearly like it as you can. Then check over details. Do the limbs and head feel right for a dried seed? Can you allow yourself to dwell in the condition as a seed might?

THE GROWING SEED

The next stage is very important, so do not move into it until you have satisfied yourself with the first stages. When you are ready move gently into what may be called imaginative, spontaneous, or intuitive responses. To do this you allow your body and feelings to express or experience, just as you have done so far in finding the position of the seed, but more flowingly now.

So, give your body and mind permission to express themselves freely and without prior consideration, in expressing the seed receiving rain in warm soil. The seed absorbs the moisture and the process of growth is triggered. The seed puts out roots and then stem and becomes a seedling, then progresses through its cycle of growth, blossoms, producing seeds, and dying. But do not simply act this out or think it up. Wait to see if your body feels it and moves spontaneously into it. If it doesn't do not progress by acting it out. Wait.

As the seed you do not HAVE to do anything other than what emerges from you spontaneously. Some seeds simply want to remain in the protective warmth of the soil. Some seeds go through active and powerful growth. Others only grow to a certain stage and that is as far as they can go at the time. So leave yourself open to what emerges naturally for you.

When doing this meditation give yourself at least fifteen to thirty minutes to complete it. Unlike many forms of meditation this is without struggle or any particular goal, and usually the whole sequence of personal experience flows out of you as you allow your being the freedom to express.

There are surprises in it too. Many people find the meditation has its own dynamic, and they move into unsuspected directions, or the unfolding story throws up unplanned details. These details of how your own growth in the process occurs are relevant to your personal life situation. For instance, finding it difficult to put down roots might point to your difficulty in staying in any one place, and so on.

The experience is an exercise in allowing your unconscious, your creative impulse, feelings and wisdom about yourself and life to express more freely. So it can usefully be practised regularly. I would not suggest every day for most people, but certainly once a week until you are well experienced in at and your being is easily healing and unfolding you. Each period of using the seed will produce something slightly different, enlarging on or continuing the theme previously dealt with. The personal experience of this amazing ability to continually produce the new can convince you of the enormous creativity you have within you.

VARIATION AS A GROUP

There is another form of this seed meditation that is a great pleasure to use, gives it a huge magnification of power, and is helpful in developing a new ease and warmth in relationships. I have used it with many groups over many years, and if it is led up to slowly and time given for people to feel their way in without a sense of rush or pressure, it leaves them feeling much more in contact with themselves and others.

This is basically the same as already described but done as a small group of three or four. With much larger groups they can be split into the smaller groups of three or four. The members of the group need to have already experienced the seed meditation done individually before they attempt it as a group. This is not absolutely necessary, but it helps. It helps also if each person has at least once practised two other meditations - the Earth and Water meditation. These are done in just the same way as the seed meditation. The instructions I usually give are as follows: Stand in a relaxed open manner with the keyboard condition, and hold in mind the idea or word 'earth' (or water). Just as you did with the seed meditation. Then explore what postures and/or movements express for you the feelings and images connected with the earth from which all growing things arise. Allow yourself to explore the experience, letting spontaneous fantasy or movements arise if they occur.

After everybody has established themselves in these three (seed - earth - water) meditations they come together as a group and decide who is going to be the seed, and who earth and water. I usually suggest that when they are ready, the seed takes up the dried seed position and waits for the stimulus toward growth to arise out of the relationship with the people in the role of earth and water.

In other words, the seed is now not alone. The two or three people in the role of earth water and perhaps sun, draw close to the 'seed' and hold or enclose them as the earth and water might. Often this mean close and supportive physical contact.

The earth and water role needs you all the time to honour what is happening with the seed, and not to take over and control what arises.

For the person who is the 'seed' the course of their meditation is the same as doing the seed alone, but with added dimensions. How, in terms of human relationship in the meditation, does the growing seed take up the water and minerals and lift them to the sun and build a form?

To the earth and water their meditation is similar but reversed. How do they penetrate with water and warmth, in human terms, the enfolded seed, to release its growth? And then, how to enter into the life forces of the plant as it unfolds?

See: Seed Group.

IT ASKS MORE OF US

Some people are at first reticent or have never explored these possibilities in human relationships, unless perhaps they trained in drama or dance. If the meditation is entered into enthusiastically though, it becomes a learning and growing experience. The seed grows and often releases warm feelings and pleasures in its own unfoldment that touch the earth and water and involve them in the drama of its own experience. Or the person who is the seed experiences a whole new range of ways to interact with people. Most of us have not been this close to others except in a sexual situation. But just as with being the seed alone, the seed allows just what arises, and in their own time. The others as teh earth ad water support their action in whatever way they intuitively feel is helpful. This is often mostly passive support. The time taked, and when it is time to finish is up to the seed.

It is very rewarding and helpful for the group to share what they experienced after the meditation has finished. The actual meditation should be mostly non-verbal - although some groups are vocal in that they feel the expression of sounds, humming or emotive sound a part of their experience. However, it is helpful for the seed to occasionally say what they are experiencing to help the supporters be with them more fully. But the sharing of the experience at the end is a release and completion of what went before. Then, the group can support another person to be the seed.

The seed meditation used in these ways is an extremely simple way of starting or developing one of the most important aspects of personal growth and healing - namely - allowing the emergence into consciousness of material from your wider awareness. It does this in a gentle way acceptable to a most people. This leads to a gradual expansion of consciousness as you touch more parts of your inner life, bringing about a realisation that you are far more than you suspected or were led to belive by modern cultural philosophy. You learn to work with the spontaneous process in you, active also in dreaming, that brings to consciousness parts of yourself otherwise ignored. As you integrate part after part of your inner life you literally grow as a person. You absorb into your waking self more of your personal past, more of your heritage as a mammal and life process, more of the treasures of culture and spirit left us by humanity. Your life of spirit has begun.

Being a seed in a group gives us a social opportunity to receive a sort of powerful healing you seldom receive in everyday life - the healing of touch, and of a form of relationship not dependent on genital sex. Laying on of hands has always been recognised as a way of helping a tired or sick body back to health. Modern doctors and nurses are now recognising the importance of touch. They are learning to hold patients' hands, to be warm. In the seed meditation the earth and water can gently relax and open the seed with their touch and body contact. So the meditation is one of healing as well as growing.

The group meditation is of enormous help in learning to be close and supportive with another person, to allow into ones own experience a part of someone else's inner life, and to help another human being begin the miraculous process of exploring the height, depth and music of their own being. So make yourself a seed bed and grow a little. See Listening Skills

Squatting and Standing Meditation

To use this meditation you need a space to easily move around in, or lie full length if necessary. Stand in this space, preferably on a carpet or mat. Create a condition in yourself of relaxed ease, like a keyboard ready to be played. The keyboard in this case is your body's ability to move, your feelings, imagination, sexuality and memory. When ready take an in-breath and slightly open the head and shoulders backwards. Then on the outbreath drop down into the squatting position, relaxing as much as possible. If the squat is difficult use a block of wood or a book to put your heels on. If it is still difficult use a low chair or stool. Repeat the movement a few times to familiarise yourself with it. When you have done this, take time to become aware of the different way you feel in the up position and the down.

The down and up are opposite poles of how we express ourselves not only physically but psychologically. The down expresses sleep, rest, withdrawal and non-involvement.

The up expresses activity, involvement and confrontation. When we emerge from the womb, our being is confronted by a different world. In the womb there was little change. There was no otherness such as other objects or people to deal with. There was no need to reach out for your needs because food came automatically. In life outside the womb, food does not come automatically, certainly not as we mature. There are other people and objects to deal with. Change is occurring all the time. If as a baby we found no comfort or love when we were born, it could be that we did easily adapt to this new life. Perhaps we did not want to be involved in its change, its opposites, its necessity to find our own needs and to cope with other people. We may have wished to stay in the womb condition because there was no reward in emerging from it. So although our body matured, we might not have developed into an outgoing explorative person. This might lead us to be quiet and unexpressive, not wishing to be involved in what is going on around us.

The squat posture is expressive of this type of non involvement with the exterior world. But of course there is another side to withdrawal - it is also an aspect of a healthy life. If we do not honour our healthy need to sleep, to have times of privacy or cycles of lessened outer expression, then we suffer stress. So the squat also represents our ability to rest and to allow ourselves the attainment of relaxed, non-active pleasurable feelings. This could be called our warm comfortable place.

The standing position expresses our involvement in the exterior world of change, opposites, and needs which require expenditure of effort.

It would be ideal if each of us could move easily between these antipodes of our being. But we tend to have a greater ease in one or the other, and this is expressed in our feeling sense of each posture. It is because of this the postures can be used as a meditation. Through the postures we can be led to awareness of the feeling sense telling us how we react to squatting or standing. From that you can learn to allow your inner awareness to express what relationship you have with being down or up.

So, from becoming aware of the difference you it is helpful for you either to write down or describe to yourself what the difference is.

Feeling Low - Feeling High

Now, if I were leading you in this meditation, I would say to you:

Okay, we are now going to continue the exercise a little further. When I suggested you do the movement, you were going up and down because you were willing to follow my instructions. Having accepted what I asked you, the movements you made were partly automatic. What I want you to do now is to discover how your feelings respond to the movement. Some of you probably described feeling more comfortable while down, and some of you preferred to be up. These preferences are part of the way your feelings react to everyday life, often unconsciously. What we are going to do is to honour those feelings and find out what they are telling you. So start from the standing posture, go down into the squat, and this time, if you feel no impulse to get up, stay down. Follow the impulse with your body. In other words, if you feel like going right down onto the floor, do so. It might be that during the time of the exercise, to which we are going to give ten/twenty minutes, you will not feel any feelings to get up at all, in which case stay with whatever position or movement your impulse leads you to. It might be that your feeling changes, and after a while you have an urge to stand. Or perhaps you do not have a nice feeling about being down, and have an impulse to stand right away. Therefore, think of what we are doing as an exercise in being aware of, and expressing your subtle feelings. This is helpful because often we automatically do things without having the full backing of our feelings, and this causes some degree of tension or conflict. In listening to our feelings and giving them an opportunity to express themselves we are reducing the tension, and also learning what our feeling-needs are. Give yourself time now, to explore what you feel about standing and going down.

Everybody has their own personal reaction to this exercise. In general there are three basics: [A] Not wanting to stand. [B] Not wanting to go down. [C] Moving reasonably well between the opposites.

Now take time to clarify or write down your feelings again.

Whatever it is, it will almost certainly be relevant to you own life situation. This is important, so do not think this is merely a loosening up exercise. The meditation is an expression of an inner process that expresses through this method very capably, and although it is gentle, what you meet is a part of your own healing and self-regulatory activity.

At a recent workshop one man found his feelings led him to a rather tense standing position. It seemed to express an attempt to avoid going down. It turned out that he had experienced a loss of self confidence which he had only recently moved out of, and he was anxious that he might drop back into it. The exercise showed, however, that his anxiety was causing tension, which he needed to move beyond.

A woman in the workshop felt loath to get up. It felt to her as if standing would require a great deal of strength, even aggression. This expressed her sense of difficulty in expressing herself as a woman, and her feeling of being in competition with men.

Just these two examples show that the person was facing important issues in their life. This approach to unfolding the best in you can be an available avenue for many people to meet and resolve such difficult feeling areas and aspects of their growth, and allow more of their potential. It does not need high intellectual attainment to be of real service in helping them toward such resolution. But it does need the strength of the teacher's support and their skill in creating an environment where such healing can take place. If you are using this meditation in a group, people should be given an opportunity to discuss the connection between what they experienced during the exercise and its link with their everyday life. The aim is not to find answers to the person's life situation but to bring greater awareness to it. See Listening Skills

The Arm Circling Meditation

This is a useful technique to learn the first stages of allowing your inner being to express spontaneously.

For this exercise you need sufficient floorspace to move easily, or even lie full length if necessary. It also helps to have loose clothing.. You start by standing in the middle of your floorspace, giving yourself time to explore what you feel and experience. Start by circling your arms. Take the arms above the head, down the sides of the body fairly slowly, with the arms fully extended, then upward crossing the front of the trunk. In the full movement the hands are then forming wide circles that cross the front of your body. This arm circling is simply to help you learn how to allow spontaneous movement. It is a way of working with the natural forces within you.

So, as you are circling your arms with eyes closed, bring your awareness to the shapes your hands are making in space. As you become aware of the shapes the hands are carving in space, watch what feelings you have as to how you would like to move. Give yourself permission to doodle, to make any sort of shapes your feelings or body incline you to. Allow any sort of posture or movement, as active or quiet as you like.

If they arise, allow sounds to accompany the movements, and allow whatever feelings accompany them. Hold the attitude that what you are doing doesn't have to make sense. Nor does it have to comply with what other people might expect of you. Realise that you are allowing another part of yourself, perhaps a non verbal part, or a facet unknown to the rational mind, to express.

With a non critical watching attitude, relax and let your body and feeling sense direct what happens. There is no need to fiercely concentrate in order to wipe the mind clear of other influences. But you may need to relax the part of the mind that always needs to know beforehand what you are going to do.

This is not like creative dance, in which there may exist a need to produce something pleasing for others to watch. With this exercise you need an open area in which your inner being can make its own adjustments, and movement and feeling has a chance to express outside of rational criticism and demands of everyday life.

Give yourself at least fifteen minutes in which to explore what spontaneous movements and feelings emerge. Below is a summary of what may happen in this practice.

1. Although the movements may at first appear haphazard and irrational, if you allow them to continue without criticism, they usually express - perhaps only over a period of several sessions - a particular theme or point.
2. Like a dream, the theme or drama often symbolises your life situation, or something within you, such as the remaining emotions or attitudes from past experience, or a creative realisation. Or the movements may be expressive of the body's own need to release energy or mobilise itself and its urges.
3. There are obvious stages or depths to the experience. Movement is often the first. Feelings and fantasy can then combine with the movement. Only with a few people do they occur without each other. If met in the right way the movements, fantasy and sounds can lead to insight into what is being expressed. In other words the symbolic movements, if that is what they are, can give way to rational understanding. This is not because one has thought out a plausible explanation for what happens. It is because your critical, conscious mind has watched the spontaneous working of what usually only occurs in sleep and unconsciousness. This gives automatic feedback to the unconscious mind and it can speed up it processing and problem solving. A communication takes place between the unconscious and conscious mind.

From the point of view of the meditation is a way of entering into the usually unconscious processes of the mind and working with them. Usually the only way you let go so fully and allow the spontaneous action of our inner nature is when we sleep and dream.

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