Watching the End
Read slowly, aloud; about twenty minutes. For use with a clinician, or by experienced practitioners.
Before you begin. This practice works with images of an ending. Do not use it if you are having thoughts of death or self-harm, if you have survived a fire, flood, earthquake or war and the memory is still raw, or if you have a psychotic or dissociative illness. Never practise while driving or in or near water. Sit upright.
How to return at any moment. Say "Cool air", rise in your imagination to a higher, cooler place, then press your feet down, take three full breaths, count from one to five and open your eyes.
Sit. Let the eyes close. Find a seat high up in a quiet sky, a place that is yours and cannot be moved. Whatever happens below, you keep this seat.
Breathe out. Let the breath slow. As it slows, let some wish you have carried a long time grow a little thinner, a little quieter. You do not have to give it up. Only let it rest. As it thins, you thin too, wide and quiet.
Below, there is a world that is ending. It may be an old life, an old fear, a way of being. Let it show itself from far off.
Perhaps there is heat. Watch it from your seat. If it grows too hot, rise. Rise to cooler air. That is allowed. That is wise.
Notice, somewhere in the fire, one thing that does not burn. A tree that keeps its fragrance even as it burns. Gold that stays gold. The sky that holds everything and is not consumed. Let it be clear. Keep it near.
Now let rain come. Hear it first, far off. Feel a cool air from one direction. Let the rain cover everything, until there is only water and sky, and your seat.
If a figure of fear appears, look at it from your seat. Say quietly: You are made of my own mind. Watch what happens.
Watch the agitation dance, and slow, and come to rest, as a river comes to the sea and is simply sea.
Breathe out. Rest here, like sleep, with the mind awake.
(Silence: one to three minutes.)
Now become the air. A gentle wind, moving back towards the world. Carry coolness to tired limbs: your own arms, your own legs, your own face.
Feel the breath come fuller. Feel the weight of the body on the seat, the feet on the floor.
I will count from one to five. One: the breath is full. Two: hands and feet are warm and your own. Three: the sounds of the room return. Four: a deep breath in, shoulders roll once. Five: eyes open, here, now, fully alert.
Say your name, the day and the place. Look at three things in the room and name their colours. Stand, walk a few steps, drink water. If any image stays with you, write it down and bring it to your next session.