Monday Meditation

Oh, how I wish every week started like this one has!

When I arrived on campus this morning I was greeted with the most adorable, gooey, chocolaty, frosted-pink cupcake...complete with hot pink sprinkles. A classmate presented me with the decadent confection before our class, explaining that she was in the mood to bake yesterday and thought I would appreciate a cute Monday morning treat. How sweet! Pun totally intended, by the way.

This is not the actual cupcake, but this Flickr find is a dead ringer.

I finished enjoying my cupcake breakfast as I walked into my first class for the week. It was phenomenal. Most of the class period was a guided meditation to help us connect to our ability to perceive, imagine, visualize, and hear things in our mind. We were being guided to our "minds eye and ear" through visual and aural exercises. The session began with recalling a passage of text. We were asked to manipulate the format and shape of the text, to imagine someone close to us reading aloud the passage, and to imagine ourselves orating the text. As the exercises progressed, we were asked to conjure pitches and timbres in our minds to accompany the text. It was marvelous. My senses were tingling at the end of the session.

Although I use my inner eye and ear on a daily basis, it is usually in conjunction with some other activity, such as rehearsal, practicing, or score study. I cannot recall the last time I was physically still and allowed myself to be amazed by my perceptual abilities. My mind and spirit feel nurtured and refreshed after the meditation session. I am thinking I must make this a regular practice.

What do you do to conjure and nurture your inner eye or ear?

Merry Writings!