“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” —Rumi
This meditation is designed to help you experience the oneness of the universe around and inside of you, the energetic quality located in the seventh chakra, or crown of the head (Sahasrara). This is the end of the chakra trail, which starts at the root, or base, of your spine, and travels up and along the length of your trunk out the top of your head and beyond.
The process of accessing crown chakra energy involves engaging with and balancing all of the lower chakras, such that the energy can flow fluidly throughout your entire system. In order to be in the space of divine creation, the things that tie us to our physical body, our ego, our emotions, and our thoughts need to be release. They are not extinguished, but rather incorporated into the entirety of your being, which at the crown expands into the entirety of the universe. You can review a meditation on the sixth chakra to prepare you for this if you like, or practice yoga asanas that lengthen and wring out the trunk, such as Utthita Hastasana or supine or seated spinal twists.
Begin by taking a comfortable posture—lying on your back with a soft blanket under your spine and head, or seated upright with support under your sitting bones and hips higher than your knees. You may even sit up against a wall to relax the spinal muscles completely.
Close your eyes and take a few easeful breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth. Feel your face and jaw softening with each breath, the shoulders releasing away from the ears or into the floor, chest open but not splayed. Continue to follow your breath from your chest down your torso into the belly.
Allow the breath to pool in the space between your ribs and pubic bone, the area of the second (sacral) chakra. Visualize the pool of watery breath glistening and gently lapping in your low belly and pelvis. Each breath in fills the pool with more water, each breath out allows it to sink deeper into the space below you, like water seeping into a hole in the sand at the beach.
With your mind’s eye, visualize yourself at the beach at sunset, floating on the surface of the watery ocean of your breath. Let the waves hold you from below, supple and soft yet dense and trustworthy. Release the weight of your head, your arms, your torso, your legs into the water. Trust that they will carry you without any effort. Inhale, and feel the undulation of the waves ripple through your throat and the inner lining of your torso—the ocean of breath inside you. Exhale, returning the water back into the infinite pool of breath all around you.
Allow the sensory impressions around you to gently land in your field of awareness. Salty air flows through your nostrils and glides over your lips. Through your closed eyelids, see the sky pinking at the edges of the horizon, the colors of the sky melting into darkness like watercolor paints. The gentle sea breeze, like wispy clouds, dances over your body, the soft fingers of the air like the soft fingers of the waves. The cry of the last gull echoes through the air and water and into you. The distant giggle of a child and her mother on the shore brings a slight smile to your face and eyes.
By now, darkness has descended, the border between sky and water dissolved into the night. You are still held by the water, held by your breath, quietening and slowing its ebb and flow. Release more.
Let the eyeballs sink in their sockets, the tongue sink in the cavity of your mouth, no longer searching for sensory stimuli outside of you. Let your awareness settle in the dark depths inside and around you. Breath, ocean, sky are infinite. Breath, ocean, sky are one. You are infinite, you are One.
