It is almost a year since there was a post to melaniechong.com so I am led to begin ?again at a time when I think and feel most of us are experiencing the coming of the ?harvest season, autumn.
This post, ?See the Forest and the Trees,? is an intentional change to the familiar phrase that we?re not seeing the forest for the trees.
This came to mind as I began to feel that a reflection or contemplation could include ?the forest concept, the bigger picture, and the trees ? the details of the object of the reflection/contemplation. It is as if I could engage in an exercise that allowed me to expand and return, with the result of mental development.
Visualize, in your mind?s eye, a wheel that has a central hub and the spokes that connect to the circumference of the periphery.
Add to this visual, your normal respiration of exhaling and inhaling.
When you exhale, allow your mind energy to travel outward to the circumference/periphery of the wheel. On your inhale, allow your mind energy to travel inward and return to the central hub of the wheel.
What are you becoming aware of in this exercise? Make a note to yourself ?
More to come on this exercise. I would love to hear about your direct experience with this simple beginning.
Melanie
thanks for the feedback Thom. I can imagine being outdoors at a wonderful jazz concert in nature, must have been liberating and exhilarating. The imagery I feel would be constricting as it was concentrating your mind energy into a restrictive visual versus the experience of the expanse and breath of nature itself. As we discussed, I will revisit the exercise and the image in response to your feedback.
Melanie
I was listening to a wonderful jazz band at an outdoor concert today, sitting on the lawn, sun beating down, feeling very relaxed. I decided to try this meditation. It felt very confining to me. As as my energy traveled down each spoke and hit the outer rim of the wheel, it seemed to go in different directions, so that it was colliding. It might turn left off one spoke, in other words, and right off the other. Mass confusion. Then I had to corral it to bring it back to center. After a while, I just started going with the flow of the breathing, visualizing nothing in particular, and was treated to 3D waves of colors ? shades of white, gray and black with a lot of magenta/purple/violet, too. It fell much less constricting.