The Natural Refuge Tree

from “The Wakeful Body” by Willa Blythe Baker

Let your attention descend and pool at the base of your body, where your body comes into contact with the cushion or chair.

Imagine that from the base of your spine roots grow deep into the earth, spreading and coiling out to anchor you to the ground below.

Let your attention move from your hips up your spine. Your spine is the trunk of this tree: strong and upright but supple.

The tree grows out of the crown of your head and reaches up into the sky above you, spreading into a canopy of branches, leaves, and blossoms.

Looking above in your mind’s eye, you see the branches swaying gently in the wind. As you gaze upward through the canopy of branches, you begin to glimpse faces.

The branches of this tree are peopled with those who have taught, inspired, guided, and loved you throughout your life: teachers, mentors, guides, loving friends and family, pets, buddhas, animal spirits, sages, bodhisattvas and angels. Some are living, and some have passed on. You feel them as if they were truly present.

They are smiling, gazing down at you with eyes of loving-kindness and compassion, accepting every part of you unconditionally. They glow with the light of wisdom. It emanates from their true nature, beyond what you have conceived them to be.

Gradually, this love and wisdom begins to flow down from their bodies, taking the form of a warm, heavy, luminous sap. The sap flows slowly down inside branches of the tree, down the trunk, and enters the crown of your head, filling your head, neck, shoulders, and chest. It flows down your arms, filling your hands and fingers. It flows into your diaphragm, belly, abdomen, hips, thighs, calves, ankles, feet, and toes.

Your entire body is filled with this golden sap of love and wisdom.

Rest and continue to receive this warm, heavy light into every cell of your body, into every part of your heart and mind. Receive it into your struggles, fears, and hopes. Receive it into the parts of yourself that are rigid or contracted, into your self-doubts and your resistances, into your sense of things not being enough. Just receive. Let this nectar flow through you down into the roots and earth below.

As you get ready to end your session, allow the sense of separation between yourself and your field of support to dissolve. Letting go completely, even the visualization dissolves into boundless light.

Releasing all effort, allow this open, warm, boundless awareness to meditate you.