Transcription
Why don't we stretch again, and then we'll do a short sitting?
[1:05, guided meditation begins]
Okay. So again, it's so helpful at the beginning of any sitting to just take even a few moments to set the posture. So helpful. Feel the uprightness of the body. Not rigid. Upright, wakeful. The body is reflecting these qualities a little bit. But also openness, softness, receptivity.
Feeling again the sensations of contact in the hands for a few moments, the backside, the feet, the legs touching the floor. And then, again, opening up this space, stretching the awareness a little bit bigger than the physical body, like a balloon stretching, if you like, filled with awareness, or wind filling a sail. Feeling into how that space feels, the energy of it.
And then whatever helps that space to feel comfortable, maybe even to feel a little bit pleasant. Whatever helps the mind, the awareness, to want to be in that space and to want to fill out and inhabit the whole space. Whatever helps goes. It's fine. So you can be a little bit creative. You can play with this. Maybe those lines of energy, those three lines of energy were helpful, imagining that. Maybe the breath expanding and contracting the whole space, energizing, relaxing. Maybe that was helpful, maybe not. Leave the breath if it's not; forget about it. Maybe this sense of an amorphous field of bright light that is that energy, maybe that's helpful. Maybe imagining the body as a light body with all the contours that it already has, a body of light. Or something else. Main thing is this more open space, filled with awareness, and feeling the texture, the energy, the vibration of it. It will keep shrinking. No problem. Just noticing and expanding again. Really no problem. Let yourself be a little bit playful. Use the imagination if you want to, if it's helpful, how it's helpful.
Keep opening, keep opening. Opening the body, opening the awareness to that more open space.
If you're using the breath -- and you really don't have to -- if you're using the breath, see if you can play with it, play with using it in a way that opens up the sense of the body, opens up the sense of the space. And if you're using the imagination in whatever way you want to explore, see also if that can help open up the body, support the uprightness and openness of the sense of the body. What's helpful for you right now?
So you may want to just stay with this sense of the energy body, just by itself, that more open awareness, very alive presence filling that space, or with the breath, or with any kind of imagination in regard to the body and energy. And that's always something you can come back to. So you may just want to stay with that. Or, if you want (it's really up to you, not a big deal), if you want you can keep that awareness of the whole body space, that energy body, and just see if some other image wants to come or appears. So maybe it just comes. Or sometimes people imagine, for instance, walking down a staircase into a basement, step by step, and then in the dark basement something appears. But you stay connected with the feeling sense of the energy, the energy body. That's actually a pretty fundamental anchor. So if there is an image that comes, you can also see how the energy body feels, what the resonances are. Might be visual, or it might be some other sense of it. It doesn't have to be visual. You can always come back to just the energy body.
So if you are choosing to work with an image, and if an image does come -- really not a big deal either way, if it does or if you do -- but if so, notice also what the mind does with that image, whether it prejudges it. Sometimes it can be very helpful just to drop in an idea, a step, to take the step of entertaining the possibility that this image may be something I can trust, may have a treasure to it. Just that idea, lightly in the mind, can be very helpful. Always connecting with the sense of the energy body, and opening up that space. Don't force anything. No need to force. If there's nothing there, or it feels too complicated or something, just come back to that sense of the energy body. You can work with the imagination with the energy body if you want to. But if there is an image, you're really noticing the emotions and the ideas and whatever resonances are there with it.
Just coming back again to give really full, alive attention to that whole space, the energy body. Really filling it with bright presence. How does that feel, the energy, the vibration, the texture of that space? Inhabiting it fully, sensitive.
[21:37, guided meditation ends]
