Discovering your Element

This is a meditation I wrote for another group, but wanted to share it here. It's intended to be used to discover your (western) element (Earth, Fire, Water, Air) but could easily be amended to be used to get in touch with them or find balance in them.

Pre-meditation work:

Find either a quiet place or a place you can listen to some music. Shamanic drumming, monk chanting, bells, or any music with a repetitive rhythm about 10-15 minutes long.

As you immerse yourself in the music, begin getting into the mindset of meditations. Breathe slowly and deeply. Take any stray thoughts that come your way, one-by-one, and fold them into a little sail boat, and on your slow exhale, fill their sails with your breath and let them go into the distance. Do this until your thoughts are no longer your primary focus.

Meditation:

Imagine yourself, sitting on a large bolder. Extending your senses down, you realize that the stone you sit on connects to the core of the earth itself. You take your hand and touch it. The surface’s texture is rough but with no gagged edges. It’s cool to the touch and damp.

You begin to notice the sound of water. Looking around you, you find a wide river flowing around you and the stone you are sitting on. You reach into the water and its cool swift flow is refreshing and inviting. You send your senses out upriver behind you and feel that it is connected to all the world’s waters. Before you, the river plunges off of the precipice in a massive water fall, tumbling into a hole deep into the earth where you cannot see or hear the bottom. The bolder you have taken for your perch is at the very edge of the falls.

Breathe in deeply and slowly. The air is warm, and the breeze blows around you, playing with your hair. You listen and can almost hear it speaking. Whispering wisdom at the edge of your consciousness. You send your awareness up into the wind, and find a vast and open freedom above the world.

You turn your attention inward, and find life, heat, and flame. The fire flows as your heart beats, providing the very life for all living things. You notice it reacts to your touch and your emotions, providing a warming glow, or a raging wildfire at need. But you feel it also has a life of its own, and can help or hinder if you are not careful.

Closing your eyes, you reach out with your senses and touch the deep earth, the flowing water, the high air, and the hot fire. You feel their essence gather around you, and you open your eyes to see four orbs slowly rotating around you. Earth, a stone, the same color and texture of the very rock you’re sitting on, seemingly ever solid and steady, but you sense glowing lava at its core. Water, flowing almost crystal-clear liquid that rolls in on itself in an almost serpentine way. Air, a dense, slightly glowing curl of wind, visible more as movement than a physical presence. And Fire, a fierce raging hot blaze of light, flames licking out along the surface, the orb nearly painful to look at. You can feel, more than hear the roaring sound barely contained within it.

As you watch them swirl before you, you notice that they are each connected. Both to you and to each other. None of you would exist without the others. You see that each is alive, with their own temperaments, their own desires, and their own wisdom. You can hear them each whispering to you but you cannot understand them. Their voices entwining with each other.

You stand, and the elements flow up with you to circle around just out of reach at the level of your heart. You close your eyes and feel them all. You begin to move with the music of the world around you, your hands flowing freely, your feet moving to support you, your body reacting to the power of the elements. You feel the Powers dancing around you, their movements in time with yours, they speed up faster until they seem to all be a single ring of power around you. And as you continue to dance, the ring slows and forms into a single elemental orb. It comes to hover in front of you and you open your eyes. Before you is your element. You reverently reach your hand into the core and the Power flows down your arm and fills your whole body with its strength. As you breathe in, the Power fills your lungs. You feel a warm welcome from the Power inside of you, and it begins to speak to you in words you come to understand.

Dude these never turn out how I think they will! Earth. But... but I love the water and it heals me...

this is fantastic! I can never do it though...I feel like instead of feeling it, it's my imagination running amuck! Heck, I still haven't found my spirit animal either.

I'll give this a try over the weekend and see what happens, thank you for sharing!