Category: Mind and Meditation

Resting awareness deep within the heart, gently allow this prayer to move through your consciousness .

For all of the ways that I have betrayed others,
Through thought, word, or deed,
Knowingly or unknowingly,
I ask forgiveness.
Please forgive me.

For all of the ways that I have betrayed myself,
Through thought, word, or deed,
Knowingly or unknowingly,
I ask forgiveness.
I forgive myself.

For all of the ways that I have been betrayed by others,
Through thought, word, or deed,
Knowingly or unknowingly,
To the extent that I am ready to let this pain go,
I offer my forgiveness.
I forgive you.

Inspired by A Meditation on Forgiveness. “A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life” by Jack Kornfield, page 283,

There’s an outdoor replica of the Chartres Labyrinth near the town where I live, and I visit every chance I get. It’s a place of great clarity and power, and I have always been grateful for the messages I have received there. Labyrinths have been used for centuries to make pilgrimages, meditate, commune with divine beings, or contemplate difficult questions. A labyrinth consists of a single, winding, concentric circular path that leads from one entrance to the center. Unlike mazes, where there can be multiple exits and many dead-ends, a labyrinth has only one way in to the center and one way back out. You cannot get lost in a labyrinth.

The center of the labyrinth can mean different things, depending on your intent: the Holy Land, Jesus’s presence, oneness. The labyrinth’s winding path symbolizes our lives, or spiritual paths, with all the apparent successes and failures, ups and downs. When the path is moving away from the center, it symbolizes the places in our lives where we feel we have gone astray. When we are apparently moving toward the center, it symbolizes the times in our lives when things are going well. But regardless of where we think we are in relation to the center, we know that the path leads us there unerringly. All we have to do is keep going.

When I have the opportunity to walk the labyrinth, I often begin by asking, “Please show me.” Then I slowly place one foot in front of the other and open to any experience that comes into awareness, trusting the labyrinth to show me what is needed at that moment. It’s a beautiful, powerful practice. If you’re interested exploring this meditation and need to find a labyrinth near you, the Labyrinth Locator may be of some use.

Think of mind as a sense organ – one that picks up and translates vibration into thoughts and sensory experiences. It has two habits that help us survive as beings, but don’t serve so well when navigating the deeper levels of consciousness. The first habit is attaching an I-sense to some of the thoughts and sensory experiences and the second habit is attaching an emotional coloring to the experience, such as pleasant or unpleasant, desirable or undesirable.

The I-sense differentiates the experiences into components that are “me” and components that are “not me”. The moment we attach an I-sense to an experience, the energy vibration that the mind has translated sticks and becomes part of our energetic structure. As soon as we differentiate the experience into pleasure and pain, we suffer. Think of all the years we spend with these habits, collecting and differentiating over and over again. To quote one of my teachers, “The mind is a hoarder.” After many years, many lifetimes of hoarding, there’s no more room in our energetic houses for energy to pass through. We react to every single little thing that hits us.

When we meditate, we focus with single pointed concentration on an object. Object and observer dissolve into each other – become one – and a little bit of that stuck energy clears out. This happens again and again. Each time, our energetic structure becomes a little more empty. Our houses start to clear out and, when we open a window (pay attention), the breeze can move through. We feel the breeze of energy hitting our obstructions, vibrating them. For a while, the mind continues its habit of interpreting the vibrations into thoughts and sensory experiences, and we ride these out, refraining from judging them as bad or good, unpleasant or pleasant. Simply watching the play of consciousness.

Now, instead of doing, the meditation becomes an undoing. In stillness, we watch the mind’s translations. Eventually, even the habit of translating starts to go, and one simply abides in silent clarity.