Earth Meditation

Relax. Deeply relax, and take a few deep breaths. In, out; in, out. Feel your body, wriggle your fingers; wiggle your toes, your nose, your hips and arms; roll your head. Feel where your body ends and what's around you begins; feel the air around you, the surface underneath you. Be here now, present in your body, in the present moment. Continue to breathe deeply, and begin to release the cares of your day and week with your breath. Be completely here in the present moment.

Throughout this meditation, you will have a complete, deep experience, and you will remember everything you sense and learn. If you need to return, you can always recall yourself to the physical world by moving your fingers and toes. You will be utterly Deep in the Soil: An Earth Meditation safe and protected throughout.

Continue to relax and to breathe deeply, and in your center, a little below and behind your navel, imagine a seed. See it glow and pulse with life. See it break open, and a tiny pale root poke out underneath. Watch the root grow downward, down through your belly and groin. At the same time, feel a tiny sprout push up from the seed, up through your torso, your shoulders, your neck and head.

Below you, feel the roots push from your body into the floor below. Feel them go down through the building foundations, through concrete, into the earth.

Feel them sink into the deep, moist, cool soil, into rock; feel them cool as they cross an underground stream.

At the same time, feel the sprout grow through and out your head, through the air of the room, through the ceiling, through the roof into the cool outside air, into the breezes, up into the clouds.

Below you, feel your roots spread out and grow deeper, deeper still, down into living rock, into bedrock, into magma deep in the heart of the earth. Feel the roots reach the warm, living, glowing heart of Mother Earth. Deeply connect to the Earth, your mother. Let your energy connect with hers. Pour out into Her any cares and concerns, let them go, as energy She can transform and use. (Pause briefly.)

Above you, feel the sprout grow thicker, into the trunk of a tree. Feel branches grow up and out into the sky, up into the clouds. Feel yourself put out flowers, fruit, leaves; grow as a tree. Let your branches grow up into the thin air among the light of the sun, the moon and stars. Feel and connect to this cool, cleansing sky energy. (Pause briefly.)

Now draw up within you from the earth energy of the Mother, warm, glowing earth energy, and at the same time draw down cool, cleansing, flowing sky energy. Bring them together, and let them mingle in your center. Mix them and send this cleansing, healing energy through your body. Let it go to any remaining areas of tension or pain. Feel it washing away all your problems.

Let all your troubles and tensions go with the cleansing mingled energy down your grounding into the Earth. (Pause briefly.)

Now go deep into your grounding and feel yourself particularly in your roots. Be there, be a root deep within the dense, moist earth, completely encased and feeding from the earth. Know that throughout this meditation, you will remember everything important to you.

Sense the earth in all ways. Feel it. Smell and taste the dense, rich loam. Sense it visually in darkness. Hear the sounds of earth -- roots moving, chewing through the earth; earth animals, moles and beetles digging; deep, deep below, hear the magma moving liquidly, the mantle of the earth, the far-off sounds of earthquakes. (Pause briefly.)

As you study the earth from within, you notice it has associations for you. Let these come up freely. Know that you will remember all parts of your experience you want to remember. (Pause for some time.) What emotion you have for earth? (Pause briefly.)

Do images or symbols or words come up through the earth? (Pause briefly.)

You ask the earth what it is, what its nature is, and the earth replies. (Pause for some time.)

You continue to study the earth, seeing it, sensing its feel, its taste, its sounds. You sense now that the earth is asking you to come still closer, to become earth. In utter confidence and safety, you become one with the soil. You find you are warm and safe and breathing easily. Be the earth; see how that feels. Feel each particle of the soil. (Pause briefly.)

Go deeper still, into hot, moving magma, earth molecules heated to liquid. Flow with the liquid magma deep within the earth. Travel slowly with the liquid earth from continent to continent, under the ocean, all the secret deep places of earth. (Pause briefly.)

You find yourself at the base of a volcano. Feel the pulsing movement, the impulse to spurt upward; feel yourself spurt upward as lava. (Pause briefly.)

Now feel yourself slowly cool and become rock. Feel what it is to be rock, the side of a mountain, hard and cool in the wind. Feel rain and snow patter on you. Feel the years of being rock. (Pause briefly.)

Now feel plants break you down to soil. Find yourself soil again, supporting a forest glade. Feel the flowers bursting through you, the trees, the creatures of the forest above. (Pause briefly.) Now spread. Grow, spread out, and become all earth. Feel the consciousness of the whole earth, Mother Gaia, the whole Mother Earth as she spins among the stars. (Pause for some time.)

Now coalesce, become small again, one small consciousness, and find the roots of your tree. Enter your tree through the roots, and become your tree again. Become yourself; separate into yourself as a tree sensing the earth again, remembering everything that has come to pass. You feel cleansed and invigorated.

Say good-bye to the earth, and thank the earth in its many forms for its presence and the insight it has conveyed and for allowing you to become one with it. (Pause briefly.)

Return again to your center, and begin to draw back your branches, down from the sky. Thank the sky for giving you its energy, and play the tape backward: See leaves become shoots, flowers become buds, branches draw back into trunk. At the same time, begin to draw your roots back from the heart of earth, up through bedrock, up through the deep rich soil.

Your trunk becomes a sapling, then a sprout; it shrinks back into your body, back down your head, neck, shoulders, back down your torso into the seed. At the same time, feel your roots shrink and draw back into your body, draw

back up your groin and torso, back into the glowing seed. Feel the seed grow still in the center of your body.

You begin once more to feel your body. You are coming up from trance, remembering everything that has happened, retaining everything important you learned from earth. You feel warm and relaxed yet energetic. Feel your body; wiggle your fingers and toes. Be present here and now. Feel the air above and the surface below you. You will remember everything you want to remember. Breathe deeply, and open your eyes.