Transcription
I'll do a guided meditation, but I'll keep it pretty sparse, okay? [laughter] Yeah? These days are -- inevitably, you can't please everyone.
[00:18, guided meditation begins]
Let's take a little time to establish a posture, so that it's comfortable. Upright. The body has a certain uprightness, but not tense, and not rigid. So upright, but still soft, still relaxed. And if it's possible to get a sense, even just a little bit, of how the body, the posture itself, is kind of expressing a quality of uprightness and wakefulness, at the same time as openness, softness, relaxation. And just, can you get a sense of the body, just a little bit expressing those, that balance of qualities?
And maybe feeling into your face, just the sensations in the face. And particularly noticing any tension, perhaps around the eyes, around the mouth, the jaw. Just noticing, and just, with the mind, relaxing, relaxing just as a much as possible, perhaps releasing. If it doesn't all release, no problem. And the throat, and the neck, same: just sensing in, relaxing, releasing. The shoulders, feeling, letting them drop towards the floor. The upper back, the arms, and the chest, sensing in, letting go, letting be, relaxing. And then the belly, tuning in, feeling, letting go.
Can you give a simple, mindful attention to the sensations in your hands right now? Just noticing the sensations in the hands. How do they feel? What about the backside? Sensations of contact with the chair, with the bench, with the cushion. Simple mindfulness, simple sensations, just feeling. And the legs or the feet, touching the mat, touching the floor.
Now, is it possible to open up the awareness? Rather than funnelling the awareness to one point, is it possible to open up a space of awareness, almost like stretching a balloon, so that that awareness is a little bit bigger than your physical body? There's a region, a space, and that whole space is inhabited, is filled with bright awareness, sensitivity, aliveness of presence. And one's feeling that space as an energy field, so to speak. What's the feeling of the energy of that space, the texture, the vibration? Now, the awareness, the attention, will keep shrinking. It will keep shrinking, again and again -- no problem. When the mind gets distracted, it will shrink. And just opening it up again, and filling it again with this bright presence, alive mindfulness, awareness. [5:06] Feeling the energy of the whole space. How does it feel? Opening.
So like wind will fill a white sail, the awareness is filling this whole space. Sensing into that whole vibration and energy of it. Just again and again, expanding whenever you need to, stretching the awareness.
So you may find that when you keep stretching and keep opening the awareness this way, you're really opening up the sense of the body, and really opening up the mind, the awareness to that space, to that energy field, and then actually, that's enough. It may be. And just tuning into the felt sense of energy, vibration, texture, feeling. Open, open, alive, bright, bright awareness. So the whole space is filled with awareness there.
Now, see if you can, if you want to, play with something. You want to keep that whole space. And when it shrinks -- it will shrink many times -- you just keep re-expanding it, stretching it again, whenever you need to. No problem. But within that space, and alive to the whole space, see if you can imagine -- so it might be a visual imagination; it might be some other vague sense, kinaesthetic or something -- imagine a line of energy running from deep down in the lower belly, or even the perineum, a line of energy straight up the centre of the body.
And if you're visual in the way you work, maybe it has a certain colour. Maybe it wants to be bright white, or golden, or who knows, blue. Just see what colour feels right, or what sense of it feels right. Maybe it wants to go out of the top of the head, maybe. See what feels right -- this line of energy up the body. And how does it feel? How does that whole space feel with this line of energy running through it?
And then, if you want, you can add two more lines originating in the same place, deep in the lower belly or even the perineum, and this time, radiating out -- in addition to this other one, these two radiating out, down the legs. They don't need to bend if the knees are bent. They don't need to bend, necessarily, with the bend of the knees. They may just go out at the knees. See what feels right, what feels good. Sensitive, alive to the whole space of this energy field, and imagining, in whatever way works for you, these three lines of energy. And noticing: how does that feel to do that? How does the space feel when you do that?
If it feels helpful, keep doing it. And if it doesn't feel helpful, just leave it. Opening the space, again and again, filling it with awareness. So if you're using those lines, perhaps they help to support the tone of the body, to support the uprightness and the openness of the body.
Some people will feel it helpful to include the breath, but you really don't have to. It's not necessary. It's up to you. Just see if it feels helpful or not. In this whole body space, this field of awareness, the energy field, if it's helpful, to include also the sense of the whole body breathing. With the in-breath, there's a gentle expansion of this whole energy field, and with the out-breath, there's a sort of gentle contraction, as if the whole body is expanding, contracting, breathing in and out. But one's still sensitive to the whole field. So maybe that feels helpful, maybe not. Just see. Maybe with the lines of energy, maybe not. What gives the most comfortable or even nice feeling to the whole space? Keep stretching it, especially if there's tiredness. Keep opening it.
If you're using the breath, some people feel a kind of energization with the in-breath; the whole body is a little bit energized. And with the out-breath, a quality of relaxation. So you can tune into those qualities in the whole space, if that's helpful.
So maybe use those lines of energy, maybe use the breath in different ways, or maybe not. Perhaps you may want to experiment in some way, in your imagination, feeling this whole space, this whole bodily space, this space of energy, feeling that more as an amorphous field of energy that's very bright. So with the imagination, whether it's visual or some other sense of it as bright, luminous. That space itself is radiant, perhaps golden white. Not thinking so much about the contours of the body, the anatomical, physical body; just a field of energy that's radiant, bright, luminous, opening. How does that feel? Sensitive to the whole of the space. Maybe that feels helpful. [17:41] So you can combine any of these as you like. The primary thing is the feeling, the felt sense of the tone, the energy, the vibration, texture of that whole space.
Keep opening the awareness, opening the body, opening the space -- really helpful. No problem when the mind gets distracted or pulled away. Just opening it again, filling it out with awareness, sensitivity, presence, very alive.
Another possibility, if you want to try, is rather than a field, an amorphous cloud or space or sphere or sun of light, actually feeling again, imagining again the contours of your physical body, but imagining, sensing the body as a body of light, translucent and luminous, radiant -- a light body, in both senses of the word. What does that feel like? And if you're visual, or if you have some other sense, what colour does it want to be? Same sensitivity to the feeling, the energy, the texture, the vibration of the whole space, the whole body.
See what feels helpful, of the different possibilities that I've suggested. See what feels helpful. You can play with these things.
[24:57, guided meditation ends]
