Laying Down Meditation And Visualizing A Lake

So,
making yourself comfortable
lying down on your bed
or on the floor,
or wherever you can be comfortable,
maybe putting a pillow of some sort under your knees.

Allowing your eyes to close
and your body to just melt into the floor or the bed,
and allowing your attention to gently
come into the body and to the flowing of the breath.

Experiencing the sense of the body as a whole,
simply lying here,
extended and breathing.

When you feel ready,
picturing in your mind’s eye
the image of a lake,
perhaps a lake that you know well and frequent,
or one that you’ve seen in a photograph,
or an imaginary lake, for that matter.

Just seeing if you can bring that image into vivid focus in your mind’s eye.

Noticing how it’s an extended body of water
held in a depression in the earth’s surface,
and perhaps fed by a spring or a stream.

If you watch and observe
the lake carefully,
you’ll notice that it’s always changing,
and yet it’s also always itself.

It changes as the sun moves across the sky.

The light is reflected off the water in different ways.

It changes depending on the weather.

Sometimes,
on very calm days,
the surface might be like glass
and reflect virtually everything with great precision that comes by,
clouds,
birds,
the trees
that might surround
the lake,
the sun
as it makes its journey across the sky,
and for that matter,
the moon
and the stars at night.

So there are times when the lake is extremely reflective
and contains, in a certain way everything that comes by
or over it.

In different periods of time,
the surface might be choppy or roiled,
and sometimes quite pronounced in the waves,
in which times the light might sparkle off the waves in different ways,
like a myriad of jewels.

Of course,
the lake changes
through the seasons.

In the winter,
depending on its location,
it might actually be frozen over,
at least on the surface.

Through day and night,
and through the seasons,
and through the years,
the lake is constantly changing
but always is its own essential nature.

Let’s see if we can’t invite the lake
to become coextensive with our own body lying here
so that our body
becomes the lake itself.

We also feel held
and embraced
as we lie here
aware of the many ways in which our own mind is like the surface of the lake,
sometimes highly reflective,
sometimes choppy.

Getting in touch with the sense of the entirety of the lake,
the full body of water,
not only in the surface,
but down below.

As we lie here,
just experiencing the fullness of our own being
so that even at times
when our mind is choppy and upset, or reactive,
or dealing with difficult things
we can drop down beneath the surface of our own mind’s waves
and find a stillness
and a calmness
that’s always here
and always available to us
with each moment,
with each breath,
and certainly when we come to lie down in this way.

Lying here under the canopy of our vast awareness,
experiencing the moment to moment changes in the body
and sensations,
thoughts,
feelings,
impulses,
sounds,
and all the while,
lake like,
just simply lying here
watching the play of the weather
of the mind and body.

Allowing the awareness to hold it all,
moment by moment,
breath by breath,
in our own fullness,
in our own completeness,
moment by moment.