The Tower Meditation

I'm not an expert in Tarot, but I've been told that "The Tower" card is the card that makes people the most nervous. It depicts a medieval stone tower (think Rapunzel) that is under siege. People are falling from the tower as fire rages in the background. The Tarot Tower is a metaphor for moments in our lives when the rug is pulled out from under our feet -- for the times when the things that we assumed were solid, constant, always-true, shift and change -- for the times when it feels like we have lost the ground and are in free fall.

I've heard many Buddhists make the argument that we are actually always in this moment. That nothing is as solid or fixed as we think it is. We are always free falling. In fact, we increase our own suffering by clinging to the erroneous belief that things should be fixed and solid. The more effort we put into building our stone towers, the more we suffer. On the flip side, if we can relax into reality as it is, we decrease our suffering.

This meditation uses Jarod K. Anderson's poem Forsythia as a model for an alternate type of tower. Can we be more like the forsythia and relax into where we are, rather than fighting against reality?

Go to 4:25 to skip the intro and get right into the 18-minute meditation.

https://youtu.be/WrZsyX3Ig1U