Welcome to The Big Circle

The charter of the Big Circle is to support, educate, and inform all who have lost loved ones, especially children, focusing on the role EVP/ITC can play in healing and spiritual growth regardless of belief system. Your feedback is welcome in helping make this website a current and useful resource for all site visitors.

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Meditation for Spring and Renewed Growth --Martha Copeland

Although many people enjoy the winter season, I do not. I find the cold, the snow, and the lack of flowers depressing. I do not ski, I am fearful to drive on ice/snow, and my days of playing in the snow to make a snowman or to go sledding are far behind me. While I do see the beauty of a fresh snowfall, I also wish that the next day’s warmth makes quick work of the mess.

Every spring I breathe a sign of relief that I made it through another winter. While examining the meditation memorial garden my sister Ginny and I planted after my daughter Cathy’s passing, I noticed that the wilted branches of plants that I was afraid would not survive the cold winter weather are sprouting new growth and are fully alive. Winter changing into spring can be compared to a renewing of our own lives. Winter, as a great parallel to our lives, can bring difficult, stressful times, and we may feel lost or dead inside. For some of us however, seeing new growth in our gardens in the early spring invigorates our spirit and offers us a rekindling of hope. We are all part of nature and nature is a part of us: there is a time to grow, a time to wilt, a time to die, a time to be dormant, and a time for renewed growth. Everything in nature and life flows in a cycle, or as I like to describe, a “Big Circle.”

Spring has sprung and it is time for preparing the ground for new growth and clearing out the old and dead undergrowth from the previous year. Neglecting this effort does not prohibit the new growth but it does both slow the growth and weaken the strength of the growth.

Spring is a time for new thoughts, new plans, and new hopes. It is a time to let our souls be reborn and renewed, leading into another season in our life cycle.

Nature has a way of waking up our potentials for spiritual growth and it is essential for healing our bodies, emotions, minds, and spirit. Sometimes, when we feel disconnected in our daily lives due to the negative outside forces, we are able to reconnect to our inner strengths making our lives less stressful by spending time in nature. When we combine nature (or mother earth) with the practice of meditation we experience becoming incrementally more attuned, grounded, feel more alive, and are better equipped for the trials of our daily challenges.

Below are the steps for Meditation for Spring and Renewed Growth:

In this meditation you will start out as a bulb buried just under the earth's surface that has endured a long winter; through the miracle of nature, you will grow into a beautiful flower.

1. Sit quietly with your spine (back) straight, legs and arms uncrossed and relaxed.

2. Close your eyes and take three slow deep breaths. Feel the tension leaving your body with each breath.

3. Feel the warmth of the earth wrapped around you and visualize yourself in the form of a bulb beneath the ground.

4. Feeling the sun’s warmth and the spring rain showers refreshes you. Begin to grow secretly underground through the warm earth. The germinating of the plant is your body giving you life.

5. Absorbing the rays from the sun helps to nourish by revitalizing our fresh, new growth as we begin to sprout through the warm soil.

6. The manifestation of a tender green stalk appears and in a few days it will bare a fragrance bud.

7. There is evidence of new growth once the bud starts blooming into a brightly colored flower, full of vitality and vigor.

8. The display and brilliance of the beautiful fragrance blossom radiates and you experience the renewal of springtime growth.

9. Be immersed in the experience by feeling the warm glow inside your body taking a few deep, slow breaths, and returning to consciousness. Your eyes remain closed as you stand up and stretch towards the sunlight (like a beautiful flower).

10. Open your eyes and experience your new growth and allow the “aliveness” from the vitality of spring be with you during your daily life.

We are part of nature and nature is part of us. Spring is our time for revival along with the rest of nature. By weathering our personal winters, there is always hope of new growth in the spring of our lives.