In today’s mini meditation, I’m sharing another elemental practice with you in celebration of my upcoming program Elemental Awakening.

We have explored two different wind-based practices recently and now we will revisit an old favorite - fire. Today’s meditation is one of my original offerings in Roots - my nature-based meditation app. In this practice, you hear the embers of a campfire crackling as it burns in Little Yosemite Valley. This soundscape was recorded by Gordon Hempton and the meditation was written from  my direct experience of sitting in front of decades worth of campfires.

“Back when humans lived in communal caves and tribal encampments, we told stories about the stars. When we started sailing, we used these same pinpricks of light to estimate our own location. When we began planting, we relied on the constellations and the Sun to plant and sustain crops. Yet today, most modern humans have lost this deep connection to the cosmos that was once central to our daily lives.”

Join me for this exploration of the cosmos, mindfulness, and some new practices you can try tonight.

Join me for today’s mini meditation as we practice holding multiple truths and bringing synthesis to the moment.

Today’s meditation is inspired by the guided visualization Higher than Delight, Deeper than Sorrow written by Rabbi Jill Hammer

“Even things so diverse as pleasure and pain are still made up of the same building blocks, the same human consciousness and experience, the same divine creative force. The wheel of letters contains all phenomena. All happenings are ultimately one, even when they appear radically different. When we understand this, we can come to a state of equanimity within the cosmos.” - Rabbi Jill Hammer

It is all the same wind, just blowing differently.

And, the suggested solution, over and over again, is Equanimity.

Rather than fight with the present moment, can we learn to be with it exactly as it is?

Today’s mini meditation invites you to meditate with the idea and experience of wind.

This experience invites us into equanimity as sometimes we resonate with the sensation of being blown around. Chaotic, uncontrolled. Other times, we resonate with the sensation of our feet solidly on the ground, a steady anchor as the wind whips around us.

This is a series about wind, about good and bad, about our struggles with the state of the world; but mostly, this is a series about wind.

It asks us to acknowledge paradox, and it teaches us equanimity.

Join me for today’s episode of The Mindful Minute as we explore the ever-changing wind both in concept and within a 20-minute guided meditation.

This meditation is a 5-minute practice from my newly redesigned nature-based meditation app - Roots. This practice is one I’ve been using daily for weeks, and I think you might enjoy it too. You can find a 10 and 20 minute version within the app {iOS only, right now}, but for now, let’s practice for 5 minutes together -

In this practice, we hear the wind whipping from the top of a volcano as recorded by Gordon Hempton. We imagine ourselves at the edge, the void between earth and the universe, between the mundane and universal consciousness.

Let’s practice balancing on this edge.

I spend a lot of time reflecting on the teachings of meditation and their intersection with the specific moment we are living in. For most of us, I believe this feels like a scary time, as if there are two sides battling out for domination with no chance of reason or clarity being heard.

Over and over again, this lesson is presented to us -

It isn’t good/correct on one side, and evil/incorrect on the other.

Rather, one side exists because of the other.

They exist simultaneously and of the same elements, just expressed differently.

And so, over the course of this next 3-part series, The Ways of Wind, we will look at the different teachings around the ever changing winds of experience. We start tonight by learning to balance on the edge of the universe. Join me here, now for a discussion and 20-minute guided meditation.