21-Day Dhyana Sadhana - Day 9 - Cleansing the Heart Space

Day 9 for the 21-Day Dhyana Sadhana, 21-Day Meditation Practice daily online retreat as we approach Divali 2024. 

In this session we continue the work with the Heart Chakra learning how to release deep and long held emotional patterns, to embrace a higher consciousness of freedom and unconditional loving in the heart. 

This meditation shows a process of how to work with forgiveness and acceptance to open up the heart. 

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Meditation Transcript

Please come into meditation posture. Align your spine. Take a few deep breaths and relax the body.

Join me in the inner space, that togetherness, where we are all supporting each other and where we can all receive support, receive exactly what we need from the divine inner space.

Become skillful in your breathing, controlling the flow of air in and out. And using that to open up your energy awareness.

By focusing on the central energy channel, even just by guiding the flow of energy in the central channel, you are beginning to loosen and release some of the karmic patterns, some of the limiting patterns in your being, just by breathing into the spine.

That's why when you do this practice of energizing the spine, you can feel the growing consciousness, the witnessing opens up. It's because you're letting go of patterns.

So breathe in. Guide the flow of energy up and down with each deep breath. And I encourage you to use the full capacity of your lungs for now. To really oxygenate and nourish the physical body and to nourish the nerve centers, it needs that physical breath.

Even as you work with the energy, relax in the inner space and come into that awareness of the sense of self, that sense of I am, I exist, I am experiencing. That sense of self is supported by the divine. That sense of self connects you to the source.

Trace that sense of self back to its root in your being.

Where does your breath arise? Where do your emotions come from? Where does every thought emanate from that? I sense of self in your being. "I am thinking, I am feeling, I am breathing, in this body." The "I" is the origin of. Observe that.

Now let's strengthen the gut by doing some abdominal breathing. Bringing strength into your experience, bringing willpower. 

And on the inhale, draw the energy up to the heart. Breathe into the chest. Feel the expansion of the ribcage, the floating of the clavicles, the opening up of the shoulders.

And focus on that point at the center of the chest, opening your awareness of the emotional space, the emotional landscape of your being.

And you can ask gently, using the mind: "how do I feel? What emotions am I carrying in my being, in my heart?"

Just open up, but hold strong that sense of witnessing observation. You are not so involved, you're just noticing what is there. And gently allow whatever limiting patterns of the heart need to be resolved. Allow it to surface without fear.

Become open to dealing with the emotional patterns. Not hiding, not suppressing, not avoiding. I want to feel what is in my heart.

Breathe as you focus there and come into a space of acceptance, forgiveness, I accept totally this experience, this emotion, this event in my life.

It has brought me growth, and now it will bring me freedom.

When I forgive, when I let go, open up to the posture of forgiveness, knowing that you are forgiving the ignorance, the darkness that we all fall into. Sometimes

I forgive myself and I forgive the other for our ignorance.

May we learn to live in the light. May we both become wiser.

May we discover the truth of our being and breathe through the point of the heart.

Stay with that strong desire to forgive, to come into deep acceptance.

Breathe into the heart, and if you find there is some resistance in the mind, the thinking enters. It's okay. When you breathe in, draw the energy up to the brow.

When you breathe out, release the flow of energy back to your heart, creating balance between mind and heart, and you're holding the intent. I forgive to be free, to release the karma of the situation from me and the other, develop that synergy, that harmony between mind and heart.

Hold them both in that posture of acceptance and forgiveness. I can feel in this space there is room to take another step.

Join me at the brow. On the inhale, lift the energy of the heart to the brow.

You're holding your heart in your mind and open up that mental space.

Come into deep posture of forgiveness: I can forgive all ignorance, knowing that it's a part of the learning process. I can forgive all darkness, knowing it's part of the journey to the light.

I forgive unconditionally without fear, knowing that all is divine, all is perfect, and all will be free.

I forgive the darkness and the shadows in all its form, in myself, in others, in the world. I forgive unconditionally that I may be free to love unconditionally without reservation.

And as you breathe out, allow the flow of energy down the channel, all the way down to the root, and hold your entire being in that posture of acceptance, in that posture of forgiveness, affirm that's the way you want to be, that's the way you want to live.

Rest in that inner posture.

Let's take a deep breath all the way in, all the way out, and begin using whole body breathing the ground fully in every cell of the body.

Open up to your senses. Open up your awareness to the world.

And as we come to the end of our meditation, let's affirm. In the mind, I stay centered in the source of my being, engaging with the world, in my higher consciousness of forgiveness and unconditional compassion.

That's what I choose for myself and for others.

Now pull yourself fully alert into the body, feeling the weight of the body, noticing the condition of the body and how it has changed from your meditation.

When the moment is right for you, with a few gentle blinks, you can open your eyes. Thank you very much.

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Reflection

1. Are you conscious of the emotional patterns that limit you? Attempt to describe some of these in a neutral way for your own self awareness. 

2. Write out and affirm what you want: to be free of the patterns, to forgive yourself and others, to accept and experience more loving within yourself. 

3. After meditation write about the process of the meditation and how you feel.