Blessing Field Meditation: The Chain of Giving and Receiving
The Blessing Field Meditation
Dear Rosies,
In the West we don't really have a holiday that celebrates the teachers. In India, they do: Guru Purnima, the full moon of the teacher, was last night. (Guru means teacher, and purna means full). On this moon, you're supposed to bring gifts and appreciations and devotions to your main teacher, or anyone who has passed their knowledge on to you.
Holiday or no holiday, this is a beautiful practice, particularly if you ever get contracted, or if you start feeling alone. Especially the way we do it, which is to place yourself in the middle of the stream of giving and receiving.
Here is how the meditation and visualization work.
You sit in your own seat and elongate your spine. You open your heart, you open your crown. And you bring to your mind's eye anyone who has ever looked on you with love, handed you a teaching, given you a blessing. The longer you stay in it, the more of them come — people, and even animals, maybe a dog or a horse that taught you something. And the longer you sit, you start to absorb, and come back onto the frequency of being loved and transmitted to.
Then a bell rings, or your timer goes off, and you just switch positions. Now you imagine arrayed in front of you all of those you have ever looked on with love, or given a blessing to, or taught something. You let it stream to them, with yourself as the channel.
We are giving and receiving in equal measure, our whole life long.
It's a beautiful meditation. It lands you square in your heart and in the web of life. Directly into the kinship that is our reality.
So on this full moon of the teacher — why don't you try it? If you want it as a recorded audio meditation, here's the link, just for you. [audio link]
And if you'd like to build a little ritual around it: a candle for the sitting, and Reverence, my book of ritual in modern life. Both are here.
To your most beautiful, valued, sacred embodiment,
Christine
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Frequently asked
What is the Blessing Field meditation?
What is Guru Purnima?
Is this a loving-kindness or gratitude meditation?
How do I build a ritual around it?
References
- The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: a meta-analytic review— Frontiers in Psychology
- Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation: Potential for Psychological Interventions— Clinical Psychology Review (PMC / NIH)
- Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life— Emmons & McCullough, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (UC Berkeley Greater Good)
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