Ready to Travel

TL;DR

Ready to Travel — a 16-minute guided meditation, read by Lucas, written for Maggie

First snow comes down autumn mountains like a blanket. Then an orange tree, pruned not because it is failing but because it is being readied for its next home. A place to rest with what you have let go of, and to let it count. Under it: slow French salon music from old Paris, and the faint hiss of an old record.

How to listen:

• Sit or lie down somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed. Never while driving or walking.
• Headphones help: the music carries soft binaural tones.
• Nothing needs to be seen clearly. A little is enough.
• If anything feels like too much, open your eyes, move, and feel what is holding you up.

About

Description. This meditation walks you down into the body with an image of first snow on autumn mountains. Then it stays with one image: a pruned orange tree, cut back not because it is failing but because it is being readied for its next home. It’s a place to rest with what you have let go of, and to let it count.

Written for our friend Maggie in Valdez, Alaska, in a season of endings and waiting. The orange tree and its grower come from a dream she shared with us. The lines “Endings are sacred too” and “the letting go is just as necessary as the gathering in” are her own words, from a reflection she wrote on the autumn equinox, as are “hard lesson” and “freedom of time, freedom of place, and freedom of money.”

You can stop at any point: open your eyes, move, and feel what is holding you up.

Written by Lucas and Lee, with Claude. Read by Lucas.

Sound: rain, soft and steady.

Transcript

Opening

Settle in, sitting or lying down. Let whatever is under you carry your weight.

Close your eyes, or let your gaze rest soft and low.

Let your breath do what it wants to do. You don’t need to change it.

For these few minutes, there is nothing to decide. The plans and the numbers can wait.

Part One: Coming Down

Notice your feet. Notice where they touch the floor.

Notice the weight of your legs. Let your hips settle down.

Notice your hands. These hands have done so much. Let them be heavy now.

Let your shoulders drop, just a little.

Now imagine mountains in autumn. The first snow has come to the peaks. Below it, the slopes are still gold and red.

Imagine the snow coming down the mountain, a little lower each day. Not as an ending. As a blanket.

As you breathe out, imagine a quiet like that snow coming down over you. Over your forehead. Your jaw. Your throat. Your chest.

Part Two: The Tree

Now imagine a tree. An orange tree, strong and bright.

Let it take whatever shape it takes. Seen clearly, or only sensed. A little is enough.

Notice that some branches have been cut back. Each cut is a place where something was let go.

Let yourself name, quietly, what you have let go of this year. You don’t need to say it out loud. Or simply feel it, without a name.

Look at the cuts again. They are clean. They have already begun to close.

And the tree is not smaller for them. Its life is gathered into fewer, stronger places.

Imagine the woman who grew this tree, standing beside you. She is kind. She is in no hurry.

She has pruned this tree all its life. Not because it was failing. Because it is getting ready to be transplanted into its next home.

A tree can’t travel carrying everything it ever grew.

Breathe with that.

You once wrote, “Endings are sacred too.” And “that the letting go is just as necessary as the gathering in.”

And you once said you would change the word fail to hard lesson.

Let everything you learned this year settle into the tree. Into the roots. Into the trunk. Nothing wasted.

Now imagine the tree in its next home. You don’t need to know where that is.

Just notice how it feels to be planted somewhere that fits. Freedom of time, freedom of place, and freedom of money. Felt, or only imagined.

Part Three: Rest

Rest here now. Nothing to do.

Part Four: Return

Notice what is under you, holding you up.

Notice the sounds in the room.

Let your fingers move a little. Your toes. Your shoulders.

Take one fuller breath, and let it go.

When you’re ready, open your eyes. Let the first thing you see be ordinary. A window. A cup. The light.

The snow is coming down the mountain. The tree is ready to travel.