Meditation For Beginners — Step Seven: What Is In Front Of You
The imagination, like the breath, is a bridge between your conscious self and your unconscious self
Step 7 in the Beginner’s Guide To Meditation series.
We’re at a turning point in the journey. That turning point is: going inward.
Up until now, you might have been doing the meditations with your eyes open. For a couple of them, I asked you to do that. This time, I’m asking you to meditate with your eyes closed so you can retreat inward and begin to engage with your imagination.
Your imagination is a wondrous tool in a meditation practice. Your imagination is like your breath. It is both a voluntary and an involuntary system. If you think about it, your breathing is just something that happens all the time without you having to force it. That’s what makes it an involuntary system — like your digestion or your heartbeat. These are functions that happen on their own on a subconscious level. With your breath, you can also actively choose the way in which you draw in and expel out air. That’s makes it a voluntary system; something that is engaged by and with your conscious self.
Imagination can do the same. You can have involuntary dreams and thoughts, things that represent your unconscious self, but you can also picture things. Imagine a rose with its thorns or a yellow bird on a branch. These are ideas you can pop into you mind consciously, so this is your conscious engagement with imagination.
The imagination, like the breath, is a bridge between your conscious self and your unconscious self. There are seven different windows that I’m going to open for you through these next meditation exercises that are going to invite your imagination to build a bridge between your conscious mind and your unconscious mind. Between your conscious self and your unconscious self. Between your conscious heart and your unconscious heart.
The first window opens with a prompt: What is in front of you?
That can mean many, many different things. With your eyes closed, invite an opening in the space in front of you and then allow yourself to consider what that means. Does that mean journeying into your future to imagine the things you have to look forward to? Does that mean examining the objects and ideas and newspapers and screens and books and images and environments, whatever it is that you literally put in front of you?
Unconsciousness answers when the consciousness asks.
What is front of you? It’s a strategically open prompt to engage your imagination. Through your imagination, you will have things arise from your unconscious self.
Give it a try. You’ve got seven minutes to play with it.
What’s in front of you?
