Art by Willow Arlenea. It’s hard to deny that we are being pulled into a vortex towards a new future that is unlike anything any of us have ever known.  This is exhilarating for some of us and frightening for others, but our reactions and programming don’t really matter now.  The change is happening and we are a part of it.

This guided meditation is taken from Joanna Macy’s fine book Coming Back to Life and titled “The Web of Life.”  I’ve made some changes to fit with the intention of integrating with the process of the earthly incarnation and the purpose of the Change that is afoot.  I invite you to read it aloud, or perhaps record it and then play it back when you are able to relax with your eyes closed.

Feel your breath, glide on the breath as it flows in, and then flows out.  The oxygen ignites each cell, stirs it awake as it burns in the metabolism of life…. Extend your awareness deep within to feel this energy…. It is all around you , too – sustaining your body, sustaining great circles of air, water, fire and earth flowing through us all… weaving us into the web of life.

See these interlacing currents, like threads of light…connecting you with everything else in the room you are in.  Expand your awareness beyond the room – to your entire home, to the street on which you live, encircling your entire community, encircling the Earth.  This great multiplicity of strands, formed of the emotions and thoughts and laughter and tears you’ve held in your being and shared with others…they hold you in place.  Sense those filaments – lie into them.

This web sustains your bones and blood and skin, concocted so intricately out of the food you have eaten and the soul of the earth from which that food has come.  The soil that yields the grain for your bread, the boughs of the tree that bears the fruit you eat…all are part of your body now.

Back through time this web extends, back through your mothers, fathers, all of the ancestors…extending back through countless generations to the very stars themselves from which we come.  For it is of star stuff evolving that we are all made in the flowing of time… We are each a jewel in this vast net that called us into being…. Each of us a unique and wonderful jewel, sparkling with awareness, reflecting the world.

There is pain, too, along the strands of the web and perhaps this pain has become stuck in the filaments.  A memory of loss…an aching of rejection and betrayal – open to these sorrows…breathe them in so that the channels may open once again and the beautiful sparkling web may flow smoothly with the energy of life and change and love and joy.  There is power in the flowing of this fluid net, love that has enriched us and love that we give.  Feel the opening of your heart as you breathe love in and breathe love out, nourishing and feeding the web with love and grace.

Open your inner eyes and your heart and your mind to the pulsing of the web and all of its murmurs and whispers as deep as time and life itself.  You are a part of it, and it is a part of you.  Open to it all – unafraid, relaxed, with perfect love and perfect trust.  You are the Universe, knowing itself and flowing with divine inspiration and courage.

In this time of change we may go through a dark place, but we do not go alone, and we do not go without the timeless wisdom of the web which nourishes and sustains us, which cradles us in the arms of ancestral power and love.

You are already home…there is nowhere you can go where you’re not held in grace.