Life In The Eyes of ONE: Meditation/Reflection Series

Hello and welcome to a new Reflection/Meditation Series. Over the next who knows how long/how often I will be posting meditations/reflections. This may be a total flop and end quickly or depending on how I feel it may become a multi-season series with many parts/episodes per season.

This series is inspired by a task from my previous job (a task I assigned myself based on feedback). Every Tuesday from 4:00-4:30 I would lead a guided meditation. I was fortunate enough to be working on a campus with a beautiful meditation room. My goal was to ensure this time was welcoming and available to all students, faculty, and staff regardless of faith tradition.

The goal each week was to provide a couple of minutes of quiet as they entered the room. I often had some background music playing at first just from my phone, then through a Bluetooth speaker, then through the speakers in the room itself. That's when I knew I was getting real fancy! I searched meditation music on YouTube and found this CLICK HERE to listen. I've used it/greatly enjoyed it ever since. Not too much not too little, the perfect amount of relaxing. After folks got settled I would start a 10-15 minute guided meditation. Sometimes this was a prewritten meditation from a book I have, with some ad-libbing of course. Other times it was something I wrote beforehand, with some ad-libbing of course. Still, other times it was something I made up on the spot based on the mood of the room, the weather outside, or what was happening in the world/campus around us.

After the guided meditation there would be time to just listen to the music and then slowly the music would become quieter and quieter until you couldn't hear anything. This complete silence never lasted for too long as those attending would gather their things/themselves and start to depart. These sessions rarely lasted the full 30 minutes, but always provided those attending with time to simply sit and be. They could listen to me and be guided by the meditation or focus on the music or simply wander amongst their own thoughts. No matter what the time was meant to be a gift to themselves.

In future posts, I will of course give them a title but also provide an indication that the post is part of the meditation/reflection series. All of these will be able to be stand-alone reflections/meditations, but may also benefit from being read/experienced in order. I will do my best to create a clear system for indicating/sharing my thoughts on that to start each post.

Welcome to the new series.

Below you will find pictures of the meditation room. The first is a picture of the building from the outside. The meditation space is on the second floor with those beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows. The pictures that follow are courtesy of a dear friend who took time out of a very busy day to snag the photos and shows the meditation space from the inside. To say it was a beautiful space is an extreme understatement.