Transcription
[00:03, guided meditation begins]
So again, setting the posture, finding the felt sense of that balance, expressing that balance through the posture. There is wakefulness, alertness, and also openness, softness, gentleness. Settling into the body. Finding that aspiration, that wish of kindness. Setting your course, your direction.
And today, beginning by just becoming aware of, right now, what's most prominent in consciousness for you right now. So it may be there is something prominent, and maybe nothing in particular is prominent. Maybe a mind state, or a body sensation, or an emotion, or a mood, some discomfort, something lovely. If there is something prominent, seeing: is it possible to completely welcome it, to move into a mode of relationship with it, to open to it completely? Totally allowing, totally allowing. If there's nothing particularly prominent in your experience right now, opening up to the body in this way, and the body sensations in this way.
So really emphasizing welcoming, total, complete welcoming. Seeing that there's space for whatever is there. There's plenty of space for it. Opening, opening to it, allowing. So could be something in the body, could be an emotion or a mind state, could be sound, so-called inner, so-called outer. Softening in relation to this thing as totally and utterly as is possible. Complete welcoming, inviting, inviting this phenomenon.
When you feel ready, including the whole body and the whole field of bodily sensation, welcoming. Total acceptance, total invitation into the space of being. Is it possible to open up even further and to include sounds? Sounds from nearby, sounds from afar. Letting awareness open wide and welcoming, welcoming. All experience, all phenomena, allowed, invited.
Staying sensitive to the whole body, the whole field of body sensations, but including everything, everything in experience. Softening into, opening into, an attitude of complete welcoming, complete allowing, letting be. Wide open space, vast space for everything to be, to be welcomed, to be allowed.
[11:00] So it doesn't matter what is happening. It doesn't matter what the experience is -- good, bad, pleasant, unpleasant, like it, don't like it. Seeing if it's possible to sit back, to rest back, in an attitude of total welcoming, total allowing. As fully as possible, letting things be. Opening, opening the space for them to be.
And it's fine if it seems to mix a little bit with the other meditations we've done -- impermanence, silence, the sense of awareness. You can bring them in, even, if you feel they're helpful. Or you can just see if it's possible to maintain and continuously come back to the sense of welcoming, total open welcoming of phenomena, of experience, and the kaleidoscope of experience.
Just as much as is possible, again and again relaxing, softening, into this openness of allowing, allowing. So the arising of experience, welcomed. The staying of an experience, a phenomenon, welcomed. And the disappearance of an experience, welcomed, allowed. So the emphasis is fully on welcoming and allowing, not worrying so much right now about how clear phenomena appear individually or how precisely we can see things. If they feel like they're blurring a little bit or losing their edges, not a problem at all. Keep leaning towards the welcoming, the allowing, over and over sustaining that, opening. Space for everything.
[21:52] Opening wide the door of consciousness. Wide open. Whatever is there, allowing. There may be restlessness -- allowing, welcoming, welcoming. Even if resistance is there, welcoming it, giving it lots of space to be. Any other form of unhappiness. But also if there is happiness there, if there is peace, welcoming, softening, totally allowing. The pleasant and the unpleasant and also what is neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Whatever arises, whatever is there, whatever passes. Opening the doors, inviting, allowing, softening.
It's also possible to work a little more specifically in the space. Perhaps sensing the subtle feeling of tension or rejection or aversion or clinging to a particular experience or a particular phenomenon, sensing that. We can often sense it in the body as a slight tension, or also in the way that the space cramps a little bit in the presence of aversion or clinging. Just picking up on that subtly in the space, sensing into that, being sensitive to that, a tension in the relationship with experience, and seeing if it's possible to relax that tension. So it's reflected in the body, but it's also possible to relax the tension by relaxing the body, even just subtly. Just over and over, tuning into tension in the relationship, and relaxing. Again, perhaps using the impermanence or the silence or the space to help you do that, let go of clinging, of aversion, even subtle clinging, subtle aversion. Softening it.
[34:13] And again, it's possible to get quite subtle at times with the welcoming, with the allowing. So whatever is present in awareness, any image or sense of the self or of yourself sitting here right now, welcoming, totally allowing that image. Welcoming the welcoming. Welcoming the intention to welcome. Include everything, everything. If sometimes things feel like they blur a little bit or dissolve or lose their boundaries, totally fine. Just welcoming that too. We're not now concerned with preserving the boundaries of things, the precise edges of things. Welcoming, opening, over and over. And if things fade, letting them fade. Just welcoming continuously, again and again. Opening, allowing.
[40:30, guided meditation ends]
