Article by Stefanie Johnson

There are magical places that exist within each one of us, inside our minds, hearts, and souls. By visiting these places, we can tap into the infinite and bring peace and abundance into our lives.

 

Each journey will be unique, as we are unique, so you may want to have a notebook and pen nearby to record your experience afterward. You may choose to have another person read the meditation to you so you may experience it more fully.      

 

Find a comfortable place, close your eyes, open your mind, and prepare yourself to travel within.

 

This week, we will pay a visit to the beautiful Kingdom in the Clouds.  In this beautiful place, you will experience freedom from your worries and regain your lost sense of youth.

 

You find yourself riding on the back of a giant, majestic white bird with wide, graceful wings that stroke the sky.  The earth is far below you. You look down and watch the moving patchwork of the fields, the groves of deep-green trees, the silver-brown snaking rivers and gray concrete ribbons of road.  There are tiny houses, too, and tiny neighborhoods with little postage stamps of turquoise swimming pools. 

 

Cottony wisps of clouds swirl at your feet and tickle your legs.  The vast sky is above you, all aquamarine and deep sapphire farther up.  A cool wind ruffles your hair, and you breathe deeply of cool, pure oxygen, filling your lungs with the wonderful stuff. 

 

You feel completely secure on the back of the bird, which seems almost angelic, ethereal in its grace and beauty.  You know instinctively you are safe with this winged guide, that it will never drop you no matter how hard the wind blows or how hot the sun shines.

 

You throw back your head and laugh.  You feel so free, so young, so in love with the world and all the wonderful things in it.  In this perfect moment, there is nothing but this freedom.  There is no worry. You are as light and bright as the wind and the sunlight.

 

The white bird turns slightly and glides a bit higher.  It seems to have some specific destination in mind.  You wonder where exactly it’s taking you, but know at the same time that it will be somewhere you enjoy.

 

On the horizon, you see an enormous cloud formation.  Aside from its size, the shape, the solidness of it is very unique.  You even think you can see twisting turrets rising from it, roofs, windows, endless bridges across sections of sky, glints of rainbow.

 

The closer you get the more detail you can see.  It is a wondrous city fashioned from clouds, and it almost seems to be beckoning you.

 

You reach what seems to be a harbor, and the bird lands on it.  Gently, it nudges you off of its back. Your feet touch the cloud harbor, and sink in slightly.  The ground feels slightly bouncy, as though you were standing on a water mattress.

 

This is why those weighed down by worry cannot visit the cloud kingdom.  They are so weighed down by worries they can’t even step a foot into it.  But you are free and weightless, welcomed here, a favored guest.

 

You step off the side of the harbor and step down into a slightly golden cloud.  You turn and look at the stretch of sky you just came from and realize that you are now standing on a beach made of clouds, and that the world below you, of houses and roads and groves, is the ocean of this realm.  All the people and animals down there are as fish and sea creatures to those who dwell in the Kingdom of the Clouds.

 

Seeing the world you generally live in from such a different perspective makes you realize how many things there are out there, how many adventures and experiences still await you.

 

You turn around again and face the kingdom.

 

There are so many places for you to go … where will you choose?  Will you go to the café where you can sip fresh rain from thin, crystalline flutes of ice?  Will you go to the park where the wispy flowers are the colors of all the sunsets in the world?  Will you go to the palace and swim in the pool of dew and moonlight?

 

This adventure is up to you now, for you are free.

 

Tell me, where do you go?

What do you see?

Who do you meet?

 

The best part about this place is that it is ever-changing, and no matter how many times you visit it, there will always be something new to see.  So go there whenever you can.

 

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
-Rabindranath Tagore

 

“After all this kind of fanfare, and even more, I came to a point where I needed solitude and … I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds …”
-Jack Kerouac  

 

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