Resting on Cloud Nine

This week, CMP facilitator, Lisa Sheehan, shares her experience with Sky meditation. She writes:  

"At a recent beach yoga class, the sun was super hot, beating down on my skin.  The sand beneath me was lumpy, bumpy, uncomfortable and challenging to do most poses.  As I stretched up towards the sky,  I suddenly noticed its vastness and felt the spaciousness above me.  I became mesmerized watching the movement of the clouds gently float across the bright blue sky.   The uncomfortable earth below me became less noticeable, less bothersome. I had redirected my attention from the vexatious things I had no control over… away from my discomfort of what wasn’t working for me in the moment.   As a result, I had a greater sense of ease as I moved through class.  I had created some space from my ruminating thoughts, emotions, physical discomfort and my wish for things to be different, and simply allowed myself to witness, to just BE in the moment without trying to change or control anything. 

As I lay in stillness on the beach gazing upward in silent relaxation at the end of class, I was reminded of the Equanimity Sky Meditation which offers an opportunity to rest our awareness on our own interior sky landscape and embody qualities of the sky… qualities like spaciousness and openness.  Our sky meditation reminds us that the sky is so vast, it has the limitless capacity and space to effortlessly and simultaneously hold everything with a sense of neutrality.  An infinite container for the light, the dark, the calm, the storms, the heat, the cold, the planets, the stars, the sun and the moon.   In this meditation we allow the mind to be capacious enough to contain and patiently hold whatever passes through it; seeing thoughts, sensations and emotions like the weather in the sky… always changing, impermanent, flowing and moving like the clouds.  Rather than identify with the content of these happenings, we can practice allowing them to ‘float on by’ like a cloud in the sky.  Can we then take this practice off our cushion and make space to hold everything life presents us?   Can we practice allowing all things to flow in our lives rather than rigidly clinging to the things we prefer and pushing away what causes us DIS-ease? With a regular practice of SKY, we can expand our perspective of our current moment experience and perhaps even rest with ease for a bit on cloud nine…."

Thank you for sharing your practice with us, Lisa (and for taking us to the beach for a moment!)

We hope that you will join us this week for one, several, or all of our nine live meditations by zoom and conference call.  We remain committed to supporting you in your well-being, and to practicing in community with you.

May all beings feel the vastness of the sky and the ability to hold everything that life presents,

Your CMP Family