Transcription
This series of guided meditations and instructions presents a set of tools and approaches for working skilfully with emotions and mind states in practice.
Let's review a little bit, very briefly. And please remember -- because I'll add another piece today -- that these instructions are not linear, as I've been saying. More like pieces of a jigsaw or something like that. So if it feels like, "Well, I didn't quite get that piece yesterday," or "It's not really working for me," that's actually very normal. Different people, different personalities, etc., will gravitate towards different practices, or they will find different practices easier than others. Completely normal, and that's fine. Try everything, and see what your favourites are, and try and make everything work. But that kind of discrepancy is to be expected.
So we started with this sort of paying attention to the experience within, in a more central, this central axis, and kind of focusing there, and holding the experience, and becoming intimate with it, and exploring that. And then we expanded the awareness just a little bit to kind of suffuse, if you like, the whole space of the body, and what we were calling 'opening to the energy body,' whatever language one wants to use. But the awareness there is more spread to inhabit the whole field, the whole field of this area, and its texture, its vibration.
And we were saying that sometimes, sometimes that can actually feel quite restful, quite nourishing or pleasant or something, peaceful, in a way that acts as a real resource -- a really, really helpful resource. And then yesterday we were beginning also, in a way, to include the observation of what the mind is doing, really saying, in response to what the experience of the moment is. Particularly noticing judgments, but particularly assumptions in the field of our awareness. And then we played little games with "Okay, I'm noticing that, but is it possible to actually introduce an opposite kind of assumption?" Introduce a different assumption, just for a moment even, "This is completely just right. This is the perfect flowering of something. It might not be pleasant, but it's perfect. It's perfect in some way. It's just right. It's the manifestation of some deep, intuitive intelligence that I can't figure out, perhaps." And what happens when I look at experience even for a moment with that informing the attention?
And then similarly, we played a little game where, even for a moment, you can chop off the past, chop off the future, kind of unburden the whole sense of the moment's experience. Instead of dragging everything from the past and the future and myself and my life and all that in, just for a moment and maybe another moment, one lightens the whole load, and that can free things up and make an experience lighter or just get things shifting a little bit.
So that's pretty much what we've done so far. Okay, so why don't we actually do a bit of a meditation now? And then I'll just say a little bit about it afterwards.
[3:55, guided meditation begins]
Taking a couple of moments to establish your meditation posture again. And again, it's really worth just feeling into the quality of uprightness that runs through the body, if you like. And feel the body supported by the sense of uprightness. So this vertical energy that runs through the body, it can do the supporting, rather than me yanking or forcing the body or holding it rigid. So feel that uprightness that is in the body. Let it express uprightness, and feel that. And with the uprightness, this sense of softness, softness in the body, relaxation, openness. So the posture embodies both of these aspects or qualities of the heart, of the mind, of the consciousness. And sensing the body sitting. Connecting with the experience of sitting right now. Feeling that. Open, upright, present, sensitive.
And again, connecting with this acknowledgment of kindness, acknowledgment of practice as a movement of kindness, as a giving to oneself of care, of loving attention, of holding. This is what we are doing; nothing more than that. Learning to see ourselves in ways that heal. Knowing, too, realizing, too, that in giving this kindness of practice to myself, the movement is also to give that kindness to the world. Can't help it. And again, if that connects for you right now, feeling free to just dwell in that sense. No need to hurry on into the rest of the meditation. You can just dwell in this realization of what the environment is. This realization of what you're doing, the gift you're giving yourself, this kindness.
Whenever you feel ready, beginning to connect with and explore the experience along this centre of the body in the way that we've been doing. Just drawing close, becoming intimate, holding the experience in a light and curious attention. Whatever's there, whatever's prominent, tuning in. Just showing up, over and over, to meet, to touch whatever's there. Whatever's there, to touch it with this kind and delicate attentiveness. Allowing it to be what it is. Curious, exploring.
When you feel ready, allowing the awareness to expand out from this centre of the body, expand out to include the whole of the body. And just dwelling for a few moments in that sense, in the sensations, in the feeling of the whole body, whatever's there, whatever the experience is.
And now, when you're ready, is it possible for the awareness to open even further, opening out, expanding out from the body? Not away from the body, but from the body. So including the body, including whatever sensations or experience is there, but opening to listening, to sounds. Opening to the totality of listening, the totality of sounds. So the awareness is spacious. Receiving. Receiving all sounds from everywhere. Not necessarily naming the sound; don't need to necessarily identify it. Just the experience. Sounds arising and passing in space.
If possible, rather than focusing on this sound and then that sound, here, then there, the awareness is opening out, opening out a vast sphere, a space of awareness. Not so much this and then that, but the totality. The flickering, shimmering dance. Sounds in space and silence. Body sensations arising, passing, shifting. The awareness can be 360 degrees, as open and spacious as possible. And within that space, letting everything, everything come and go, arise and disappear. Body experiences, sounds -- let them all belong to this space, belong to the silence, even. No need to push anything away. No need to hold onto anything. Letting it all arise and be there and pass, fade back into the space, melt away into the space, into the silence. Let it all belong there. Awareness just receiving, letting be, letting go.
So it's natural for sounds to arise in the space; to arise, to be there, to disappear. It's natural for experiences in the body to arise, be there, disappear. Also thoughts -- natural for thoughts to emerge out of the space, to be there, and then to disappear, dissolve back into silence. Nothing need be a problem if it belongs to the silence and one lets it belong there. Practising letting the space hold everything. Everything. Even contraction. The feeling of the contraction, the experience of contraction, also just an experience arising in the space. Arises, abides and dissolves. Can let it belong -- not to me. You can use the listening to help open out the awareness. The way sounds come and go in silence is the way everything comes and goes. In a way, the space, the silence, holds everything that arises, embraces it, permeates it, even.
[34:30, guided meditation ends]
Rob: How was that? Please, yeah.
Yogi 1: [inaudible, something about Rob's voice] There wasn't a sense of distance.
Rob: I think something was going on with some feedback, partly. So partly it was that, but partly I think, as we go deeper, the sense of sounds being outside can dissolve a little bit, and the sense of separation can dissolve, certainly. Yeah, wonderful. It helps me to get a little sense, so ... Anybody?
Yogi 2: [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, okay. Can I respond to that in a moment? Yeah, thank you. The fear thing can be quite common when we open out the awareness like that. Did anyone else experience any fear with it? Someone put their hand up. Yeah. Did it feel helpful at all? Okay. Some people say no, which is good. Okay, but some people are saying yes. Yeah?
Yogi 3: It seems also that when you remind us that thoughts arise and disappear in the same way that sounds arise and disappear, it's all just the nature?
Rob: Yeah, very good, okay. Does anyone else want to say what felt helpful, if it did feel helpful?
Yogi 4: [inaudible]
Rob: Yeah, very good. So the stillness that can open up then -- in a way, we allow stillness; we don't create stillness. It's almost like we prevent stillness most of the time by struggling with things. It's like churning up; it's like creating agitation by pushing things away and holding on. When we let go of that a little bit, stillness comes into the being, and that stillness can be felt as a resource, as a context in which to let go more. So really helpful.
Yogi 5: [inaudible]
Rob: It's okay. Very good. So Christine, right? Christine is saying it felt a lot easier to accept whatever was going on as just whatever's happening because there's a bigger space to do it in. If the space is small, as usually our consciousness is, small, everything gets referred back to me: it belongs to me, it says something about me, I identify with it, I like it, I don't like it, it impacts on me. But actually if I see, "Well, I don't have to see it as belonging to me; I can see it as belonging to the vastness," then that creates a very different context.
So usually, especially when there's a difficulty, the attention gets sucked into a difficulty or ricochets off the difficulty. It's like we do one or another of two unhelpful things. Either we distract ourselves, or we get totally entangled, pulled like a magnet into what the difficulty is, if I've got a pain here or a heartache or whatever it is. One of those. Either I just can't help -- compulsively I go straight in there and I get entangled in it, or I just go off in a daydream.
But is there a way, a third way, which is actually, rather than that, opening up the space and having, then, in a way, a choice, a choice of what happens with the awareness? So I'm not just reacting in a kind of knee-jerk way, either getting sucked in or running away. I can go in, we can go in, as we started the first day practice, we can go into the difficult and hold it and explore it, and that's really important. With the bubble, I can actually rest somewhere else, and rest somewhere where it feels nourishing -- not necessarily get sucked in.
And there's this other possibility of actually opening up really wide, and whatever happens within that is more okay because it's in a different context. Context is everything. It's everything. And then we have a choice of how we can pay attention to things. It's really crucial: instead of "I just always do this because it's my habit of reactivity," actually, over time, there's a choice: "Well, I could go into it, I could resource myself, or I could put it in a very different context." The Buddha has a metaphor called the metaphor of the salt crystal.[1] So there's a rock of salt, you know, so big, and you put it into a glass of water, and then you drink the water, the water is going to be pretty salty and unpleasant. If you take that same salt crystal and you put it in a large freshwater lake, and then you scoop up a handful of the freshwater lake water and drink it, you'll barely notice it. And the salt crystal, he says, that's karma -- meaning that's the solidified experience that's arising for ourself; maybe the old hurt, or the old pain, or some thought, or some constriction. Depending on the context that I'm seeing it in, depends what the actual experience is. We're going to get into this more, but the painful thing can be really helped, our sense of it, by expanding the space that it's in. Huge help. Okay, I'm going to repeat what I said at the beginning: they're not linear, these practices.
Yogi 6: How do I keep the mind interested?
Rob: In?
Yogi 6: [inaudible]
Rob: This relates to what you brought up in the group yesterday a little bit, about if it opens up really large there tends to be -- about the stillness -- if you can open up a space, you actually start to notice that the space itself starts to feel a certain way. Usually our attention is completely this thing, and then that thing, and then this experience, and then another experience. We're locked into the experience that's happening.
Thank you for bringing this up; this is really important. One of the things that happens when you open up the awareness, it's almost as if the experience in the awareness -- say, a constriction or a pain somewhere or a thought -- is kind of less compelling. I'm not getting tunnel vision around an experience, and it's almost like the intensity even of the experience can dim a little bit, and what starts to stand out more is the quality of the space itself -- perhaps stillness, or the quality of silence, or the quality of spaciousness. It can have other qualities, too, which I'll talk about tonight. And just like the bubble, they can be felt as a resource. There's peace there. There's stillness there. If I can let the heart be touched by that, that tends to be pretty interesting. But it's interesting in a different way than the usual things that we're interested in -- this difficulty, this drama, this pain, this something. An object is interesting for the self. In a way, the space is less interesting for the self. It's a kind of letting go of the entanglement in this object of experience and that object of experience. That's an acquired taste. Meditators acquire a taste for that over time, and the compulsion to get sucked in and entangled with whatever the moment's experience is dies down, and the sense of what is (if we say metaphorically) experience resting in, the sense of that starts to draw the heart and draw the consciousness. That's an acquired taste. Is that okay? Okay.
So just a few little things. If you're not already going for walks outside and moving the body and moving the energy, it's probably a really good idea, you know. For a week retreat, or eight days, or nine days, or whatever it is, sitting so much, just the slow walking, the energy can stagnate. So really helpful to just get out there, and also open again -- we're talking today about opening the consciousness -- to nature, to light, to sound, all that, and to be really nourished by that. And also, in a way, in the building and with each other, there is an openness that can come in, that -- and hopefully you're beginning to feel this anyway -- we're connected. There's a sense of connection with those that we're sitting and walking and practising and listening and talking with. So the awareness of opening to include each other, as well, nature, space, community.
In the walking meditation, same thing, but if you want to include now this much bigger space, if that feels helpful, you can explore that. And again, you might need to stop, you might need to slow down, or you might not. You can just zip up and down with a big space if you want. But go with what's helpful and experiment, as usual. Play with it.
AN 3:101. ↩︎
