Nectar of the Gods

[ A friend of mine wrote this and posted it on a private website we both use, many thanks to him. I have been enjoying it, so here it is, lightly edited. Enjoy !]

Here’s a meditation directly inspired / adapted from Rupert Spira’s Feeling-Imagination approach which he describes in Transparent Body, Luminous World.

It’s important not to wonder whether this is believable or “true”. I hope you have beautiful, nourishing beliefs and I do not want to undermine them.

RECIPE

(A) Getting to where the meditation is possible:

• Find enough time and a quiet place away from people and noise; get into a comfortable posture and close your eyes to enable seeing-imagination.
• Smile and realize that while the world outside will go on doing what it wants, the inner world is bigger than the outer one.
• Relax with long, slow breaths to calm the body.
• Don’t try to fix uncomfortable thoughts and feelings – just note them until they go.

Do (A) for 15-30 minutes, or as long as you want or need to until calm enough to try (B).

(B) If the body-mind has become fairly quiet:

• Stretch out, imagine your body is hollow, and focus on the soles of your feet. Imagine that some warm, golden liquid gently penetrates the soles of your feet.
• Imagine this as viscerally as you are able. ( If you want to try this as a devotional meditation, imagine that The Beloved wishes to bless you — how marvelous is that? ) Watch how the liquid gets through your skin and how it fills your hollow feet and ankles.
• Slowly watch the way it permeates the rest of your body. Do it as slowly as you can. ( Revel in how fabulous it is that The Beloved wants to take a tired, anxious body and fill it all with THIS.)
• Watch each part of your body filling up with the liquid s-l-o-w-l-y.
• When the liquid has gone all the way up into your head, it comes out of the top of your skull and drips down onto your skin.
• This point reminds me of Psalm 133‘s vision of a heaven on earth, so I smile.
• Now the liquid covers all your skin and extends outwards. Soon you see that the whole of the world outside is also enveloped in the liquid. It is warm, utterly without fear, and perfect.
• Then magic could happen. Look closely at the inside and outside of your skin. The warm liquid is on the outside, and on the inside. This makes me think of Psalm 139.
• Slowly, consider whether it possible that your skin isn’t really there. Is it all the divine golden liquid, both inside and out? ( Where is the Beloved, and where are you? )

After soaking in the paradox of boundarylessness for as long as you can indulge, come gently back.

Photo from here.