Meditation through a Window
by Samir Knego
An audio version of this guided meditation can be found below.
You will need:
A window looking outdoors. It can be open or closed depending on the weather and your personal preference
A chair, if you want to sit during the meditation (optional)
Begin by closing your eyes and paying attention to your breathing.
Inhale 1-2-3, exhale 3-2-1. Continue these slow, deep breaths with your eyes closed. If the window in front of you is open, you might acknowledge the warmth or chill or wind you feel through it, but try not to focus on it too much for now (if the weather is distracting, you may want to close the window).
Now you can start to place yourself in space:
You might think of yourself as a pin on a map, and slowly fill in the people and places around you.
You might feel a string connecting someone you love to you, and try to figure out how long that string might be. You might tug on your string with your mind and your heart.
You can keep connecting the dots on your map and meditating on the people and places you love, or you can return your attention to within yourself.
When you’re ready, open your eyes.
Look out the window in front of you and inhale the brightest light you can see, feeling its glowing power, and slowly release the light with your exhale.
Now find the darkest shadow and inhale that, taking comfort in this echo of night, then breathe it back out into the world.
Identify two different colors and try to mix them as you breathe in and out a few times. Imagine different proportions of the two colors and think about the new colors you might create and release into the world.
Inhale something you can see that brings you joy, peace, or hope. This could be an excited puppy or the wonder at the structure of a leaf or some pleasingly parallel lines somewhere in the landscape. If you’re struggling to find something good in the scene or if you’re in a place you don’t want to be, maybe you inhale the sky as a reminder that there are other places out there, or a crack in concrete that promises that something new will emerge. Breathe this goodness in and out knowing that it is abundant and you need not worry about using it all up.
Find a spot in the distance that you cannot reach and as you inhale, imagine yourself transported there. Exhale, seeing the world from that vantage point. If you’d like, you can close your eyes as you keep breathing slowly, looking around at the way the world moves around you as you sit in that far off spot. From your imaginary place, look back at where you physically sit and gently breathe yourself back into your body.
As you continue focusing on deep breaths, take a moment to appreciate your body, the world in front of you, and all the wild and wonderful things the world could be.
Samir Knego is the Contemplative Practices Editor of Vita Poetica.
