Join Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg for this meditation on shalom/peace. Shalom is vast and open, receptive, spacious, it does not grab; it holds everything.
Shalom Meditation
Transcript of meditation:
Every day is a good day to pray for Shalom.
Our most important prayers are sealed with the prayer for Shalom.
Birkat Hamazon. After each meal. The Amidah recited three times a day.
The priestly blessing. May peace be upon you.
This is also how we bless our children after candle lighting on Erev Shabbat. With Shalom.
Every day we face the fact that the world is filled with conflict.
Wars abound. Fear of war threatens. Violence is all around us.
We make our best efforts to work for peace as we understand it.
For the next few minutes, you are invited to welcome peace, shalom, to enter your body, heart, and mind.
This is a meditation for shalom. A prayer for shalom.
It moves from the inside to the outside.
Come to a comfortable seated position.
Allow your hips and legs to be heavy.
Undo the lower half of your body.
Invite rest, peace, shalom in the lower part of your body.
Now feel your spine reaching upward. Light. buoyant all the way to the crown of your head.
Soften your skin.
Shalom is receptive,
spacious,
non-clutching.
It does not grab.
Allow your skin to be soft and sensitive.
Allow your belly to release and be soft.
Shalom is here. It fills the inner spaces.
heart of this moment.
Feel the peacefulness in a soft belly.
Allow your shoulders to relax and soften.
With a great sense of ease and shalom, receive your own breath.
Shalom is vast and open.
It can contain the coming and the going of breath, sensation,
sound,
even thoughts.
Nothing to grab hold of. Shalom.
Shalom is a vast openness that holds everything.
Shalom is wholeness.
Shalom is completeness.
Allow a full breath to complete itself.
In breath.
Out breath.
Receive.
Be in. Shalom.
Rest. in Shalom.
Let Shalom rest in you.
Let Shalom be in you.
Notice any place in your body that is struggling.
Make space for that.
Notice any place in your mind that is tense.
Make space for that as well.
Make space, Shalom,
even when there is nothing to do. You can be at peace.
Shalom.
Go with shalom.
Go toward Shalom.
Go into Shalom.
Open to Shalom. Inside of you.
In your inner body.
Allow breath to expand the sense of Shalom.
Sitting in this open space.
Feel the harmony.
Peace.
Non-contention.
Non-struggle.
Non-striving.
Let us sit until the bell rings.
Thank you.