How to use the meditations
1. Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed.
2. Read through the whole meditation a few times, then put it down.
3. Sit in a position both comfortable and alert.
4. Allow the meditation 10 minutes or so in your imagination. Do not give up before this time; stay with it.
5. Allow another 10 minutes for recording what happened. Allow events to develop as you record. |
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MEDITATION 20
WATCHING THE LEAVES GO BY
There is a steadily flowing stream. As you look upstream, you see a large tree, dropping its leaves into the water. The leaves are soon passing you on the surface of the water, and you watch them as they go, floating away.
This meditation is to help us to see the difference between thoughts passing us by, and thoughts which somehow possess us, and start to think for us. It is to help us see which thoughts we allow to be transitory; and which thoughts take hold, and assume undue importance.
MEDITATE
Imagine you are standing by the river, watching the leaves pass on the surface of the water.
As thoughts occur to you by the river, allow them to be written onto a floating leaf and allowed to float on.
If any images occur to you as you stand by the stream, allow them to be pictured on a leaf and allowed also to float away downstream.
At some point, the river will seem to stop, for you find yourself no longer on the bank watching the leaves go by – but caught up in a thought.
What was happening by the bank, just before this thought kidnapped you? What led up to it? How did the thought take over?
Can you see the difference between thoughts passing through you and thoughts thinking for you?
Return to the bank, and give every thought to a leaf floating by, floating away. They are just thoughts...
I first came across the image used here in an article by Chris Mace in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment
More one-minute mysticism |
