Sora’s Desert Planetarium

Welcome back to the "Desert Planetarium." You're right on time. Out here, time is a flexible concept. Even the stars are traveling from light years away. There's nowhere we need to be. We can enjoy the planetarium and take in all the stars. Far and away from the city, it's so quiet out here, just the gentle wind rolling past your shoulders. The marble hexagon is patiently waiting, filled with wondrous cosmic mysteries. Before we start exploring, let's settle in with a brief wind down exercise. Tonight's wind down is an exercise we call noting. It helps to soothe the mind, and once you've learned it, you can even use it if you wake up during the night. We are going to be counting our breaths and then just gently noting thoughts and feelings as they arise. We are not trying to change them. We are simply labeling thinking as thinking, feeling as feeling. It may sound incredibly simple, but it can help to create distance between ourselves and the thought and ourselves and the feeling, so we don't get so involved in it. That, in turn, creates a more restful state of mind. In other words, the perfect conditions for gentle, restful sleep. So to begin, just take a moment or two to get comfortable. Make sure you are nice and cool. Just starting with some big, deep breaths. Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth. And with the next out breath, allow the breath to return to its natural rhythm, in and out through the nose, and feeling the weight of the body pressing you down into your bed. And in your own time, starting to count the breaths as they pass. 1 with the rise, 2 with the fall, just up to a count of 10. When you get to 10, you can stop and start again at 1. And remember, any time you get distracted, the moment you realize you are distracted by thought, simply note it thinking and return to the breath. Or if a feeling arises, note it as feeling and return to the breath. Noting is very gentle, not harsh at all. Think of it like a feather, just gently touching the surface of a crystal glass. I'm going to give you a few moments just to keep counting the breath and noting any thoughts and feelings that arise. At first glance, the twinkling stars have no rhyme or reason. Their positions seem scattered across the sky. Countless coins, falling from a giant's pocket, gleaming on a black top sheet. Out here in the desert, time stands still for the cosmos. The stars shine as bright as a thousand years ago. Witnessing the night sky beyond the city haze, we can begin to trace a sort of choreography taking place in the great expanse. Every night is a little different. As the earth orbits around the sun, the stars rise in the east and slowly swim west toward the horizon....