The Complete Yoga Community

Giving and Receiving

To begin, sit in a comfortable meditative position. Relax your shoulders and lengthen up through your spine up to a vast blue sky. Begin to deepen your inhale and deepen your exhale. See yourself, not made of bone, muscle or blood. Not made of anything material at all but instead as a sky blue light. Within this body of blue light see a red gold channel. This is your central channel, Sashumna Nadi. It runs from the centre of your eye brows up to the crown of your head and sweeps all the way down just in front of where your spine would be. This too radiates light, red gold. See it, feel it within you and paint it in with your awareness. Take your awareness to just above your eye brows and about 2cm’s in towards your head at the centre of the central channel. Here see a perfect tiny diamond. This is a symbol of your wisdom, the ability to see things as they truly are. Now move your awareness to your heart centre. Here see a beautiful open ruby rose. See it in detail, every petal. Zoom in. This is your love and your compassion. The ancients teach us that we can use this ultimate love to change our world. Using your breath begin to lower the diamond all the way down, nestling it into the centre of the rose. This is the perfect union of your compassion and your wisdom.

Bring someone to mind, someone who is suffering, suffering from some kind of mental, emotional or physical pain. Imagine them sitting comfortably in a room. You can see them but they cannot see you. Look into their eyes and see their struggle. Feel within you the desire to help them, the longing to remove their suffering. You will take on their pain so that they can be free. The ancients tell us that this simple practice, the vastness of our compassion if felt deeply with a genuine heart has the power to change our minds and to change our world. Now see this person suffering in their body like a black smoke or tar. Using your breath begin to draw the black cloud from every part of them into a tar like coagulated ball at the centre of their chest. Take a few breaths and make sure you get it all. With the next few breaths begin to draw it this tar ball up and out into the air between you. Now go back to the diamond in the rose in your own heart and know that this is the key. The perfect combination of love and wisdom that you have inside of yourself has the power to destroy all the suffering in the world, all the suffering for yourself and for others. Now hear this before you do it. You will inhale deeply taking that darkness into your body and the second it touches the diamond in the rose at your heart it will explode into brilliant white light, that diamond light streaming throughout your body destroying all the pain and everything that causes pain. Your wish to take it on is the power that will destroy it. Exhale deeply, ready, set, go. Sit and breathe. Feel this light expand and pulsate through you spiraling up and out of you. There is only light. This is who you are. You look into the eyes of your friend and all you see are clear and radiant eyes staring back at you. All of their pain is gone.

Breathe with your friend. They will be your partner for the rest of your practice. From the diamond in the rose at your heart, send a stream of blue light to the diamond in the rose at their heart. On this stream give them the gift of giving, the ability to give freely without hesitation, the ability to know what will make each and every living being truly happy and the ability to provide it, ultimate generosity. (3 – 5 minutes)

See your friend. See them living and breathing right in front of you. Say to them silently and anonymously. I give you the gift of kindness. See their heart blossoming from within and then spiraling all the way to your friend on the stream of blue light. Watch their compassion rise to a universal scope. (3 – 5 minutes)

Close your eyes see your friend and give your friend the precious gift of patience. See them with this extraordinary ability to cultivate patience and calmness in the source of any adversity, never growing angry.  (3 – 5 minutes)

Bring your mind to your friend again. Give them the gift of joy. Think for a moment of what this joy really is. Think could it be pleasure, could it be contentment? These things are nice, but instead send to your friend ultimate joy, the joy of doing good things, the joy of helping others be happy, ultimate compassion. Send your friend this gift on the blue stream of light. See them becoming happier. They don’t know where this feeling is coming from. Witness their change. (3 – 5 minutes)

Silently say to your friend, I give you the gift of stillness. Really connect with the stillness here before sending it forward. Generate it from the diamond in your heart on that stream to their heart. (3 – 5 minutes)

Finally look into your friends eyes and send them the gift of wisdom. See the diamond in the rose at your heart vibrant and shining. See the light in your heart moving out to touch your friend and give the gift of wisdom. See your friend receiving this most precious gift deep into their heart. See the light from your heart expanding to touch not just your friend but a wider circle, everyone your city then everyone in your country, expand your heart light out in concentric circles until you see the whole world light up one heart at a time until there are countless bridges of light like this between your heart and the hearts of every single living being on every single planet in the entire universe. (3 – 5 minutes)

Now see all of that light, light from the entire universe streaming back into you. Stream it back into the diamond in the rose in your own heart. (3 – 5 minutes)

Take into your life the wish for every being to reach these perfections, may every being be happy and free.

Submitted By Sean Steinberg