I Am The Stillness (Guided Meditation & Affirmations)
This is the 4th installment of The Poet Guides: Affirmations Series.
You can watch a reading of these affirmations
on the author’s IGTV @ artingdarling, or listen on Soundcloud.
I Am The Stillness
by Cassandra Pereira
The miraculous stillness behind all this chaos —
If I can just get there —
I know, if I just get there —
I can heal.
I seek this stillness now.
I breathe into this stillness, now.
The miraculous stillness behind everything —
It is the blank canvas on which all my drama
dances and splashes and splays.
Right now, I am here
to make bare this blank canvas.
My eyes, softly closed, look
for the other side of perception.
I look inward.
I focus.
I discover a beautiful emptiness.
It calls me to come closer.
I use my breath to sink
more deeply into my body,
I leave my mind and all thinking behind.
Slowly, I feel myself arriving.
Breathing, I clear thoughts as they arise.
Softly, I shift my focus toward the stillness.
I know, my goal is to see the blank canvas
behind the noise. I empty my mind completely.
The fabric of my universe is pure potentiality.
The canvas of my life is clean.
I see through all the Earth-gunk that covers
me. I will myself to see
through —
Through my breath
and through my will
I know what it is to be still.
Surrounded by vast oceans of space.
I hear my breathing as the tides.
I inhale.
I exhale.
I release the grip of my mind,
and from inside this opening hand,
my attention floats outward,
through my skull,
down the shafts of my hair.
I feel the soft surface of my face,
I feel the tip of my nose,
I feel the tiny hairs on
my cheeks,
soft as cattails
swaying in the stillness.
I feel my face
to let my mind go blank.
Blank.
I float through layers of illusion.
I feel them dissolve as I move through them.
I feel the calm emptiness within.
I can be anything.
I am everything.
Yes, I can create myself
new from here.
But that is for later.
For now, I am simply aware of it.
I am present,
without ideas,
without plans.
For now, I am still.
Surrounded by vast oceans of space,
I sink more deeply into myself.
I am only breath.
As I inhale,
my attention falls to my abdomen.
I feel my diaphragm, a supple
disk of muscle.
As I inhale,
I my diaphragm expands convex,
like the surface of a sphere,
massaging my intestines as it grows,
pulling air down to fill my lungs.
I swell with life.
I swell with vitality.
As I exhale,
I feel my diaphragm curve concave,
I feel my abdominal muscles contract,
I feel my ribs close around my heart.
I feel myself strong.
I feel myself alive.
I feel myself in effortless flow.
I am a circulating flow of life.
Nothing more.
I am, breathing body,
a circulating eddy,
a spiral of air faintly
passing through the canvas.
I feel the miraculous stillness
holding me,
supporting me.
I breathe in with love for this stillness —
Miraculous stillness, my refuge.
This place where everything is truly okay.
This place where thinking has no place.
This place where thoughts disappear.
I focus my will on arriving here.
Through my breath
and through my will
I know what it is to be still.
I funnel all my attention into my breath.
I follow its path from outside to in.
I feel my nostrils sip the cool air into my nose.
I feel it warming as it passes through my boundary,
Passing above the roof of my mouth
before billowing down the tube of my throat,
caressing my voice with healing vitality,
evanescing through my lungs
as a sun-filled breeze through boughs
of a blossoming dogwood tree,
where, for just
a moment, it is still.
And beyond this image,
I see the blank canvas.
Then back up my trunk,
I send the breeze, in a straight line, out.
I notice how it leaves warmer than it arrived.
I feel good to be a warm presence in this world.
I feel good to be present in my own natural warmth.
And feeling this warmth within me, I am still.
Even as I move my breathing muscles, effortlessly,
Even as I feel my heart beating, effortlessly,
Even as I feel my intestines digesting, effortlessly,
gratefully mining like gold, nutrients from calories,
circulating this golden light of health
to my skin, golden light,
to my eyes, golden light,
to my smile…
Even as I feel all this movement
— the perpetual motion of aliveness —
I move
towards greater
stillness.
The miraculous stillness behind all perceptions.
The life behind all this living.
I arrive to know it through my body.
I arrive through my breath.
My awareness is now beyond mind.
My awareness is now beyond thought.
I know myself to be the blank canvas.
I am
the space
between
thoughts.
I am
the silence
between
words.
I am the silence.
I am the stillness.
