I did the Light Body, and it’s something I’ve done for many years and find very comforting. I don’t really have much to say about it, except that it’s something I always seem to fall back on, and I have a lot of good experiences with it. All-in-all a good week.
Right now, they’ve got the new semester up for Cùrsa Inntrigidh Earrann 1 , but it’s the accelerated track. Jeez. I don’t think I could handle that. My own local Gaelic group is going in full swing again, YAY! after a hiatus, and I just don’t have the courage, or the money!, to push hard on it, and at least I AM studying. I priced it out… each semester runs £275, since I’m not a resident student; that’s currently about $445. Multiply that by 3, and you get the cost of the course. I know I can swing it, but, it’s going to be hard, and I have to pay some income taxes and a few other things first before committing to it. I do know one thing – I’m NOT doing the accelerated track.
For this week’s practice, I’m reaching back into my beginning days with OBOD; I’ve been practicing this for a good 13 to 15 years now. Wow! Time flies! The exercise is referred to as ‘The Light-Body’, and is part of Bardic Grade training.
It is essentially a seated meditation that first focuses on breathing to relax the body and focus the mind. After a few minutes of this, attending to your breathing until you are relaxed and calm, awareness is moved to the soles of the feet. Starting here, visualise white light radiating from them as you feel the vibrant tingling of the life-force. From the feet, this awareness is moved up the ankles, the legs, throughout the body, all the way, eventually, to the crown of the head. Eventually, your whole body is filled with light, radiance, vitality and strength. To complete the meditation, give thanks, and gradually become aware of the physical self grounded in the here and now.
Source:
The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. “The Light-Body.” The Journey of the Initiate Bardic Grade III (2001): 59-60. Print.
Again, I had a hard time maintaining this. I’m hitting that slump where the enthusiasm is gone, and only self-discipline and habit are forcing me to hold the course. The good news is, I recognise what is happening. This awareness represents growth for me, and instead of beating myself up over it, I can now view it with a sense of acceptance, sort of an ‘oh yes, I’m in this phase now’. This is a big departure from my past, where I would have been thinking, ‘what’s wrong with me that I can’t keep this up??’
The upcoming week is going to be more sitting and meditating, I think. I do have to understand that the heat is draining me horribly, and, although I’m going to keep up the stretching and the strength training, in a gentle fashion, I need my focus for this to be a little different.
This week, in light of really overdoing last week, I’m scaling back. I’m still doing repetitive motion, but this week I focus on being more gentle. I’m going to walk at an easy pace on my treadmill. This means about 3 mph, doing about a 20-minute mile. We’ll see how this works!