You cut your fingernails and brush the clippings away. A moment ago they were you. You don’t go back for them.
Settle. Let the body be heavy, the belly soft, awareness wide enough to hold the whole of it. Then listen. A car, a voice, the hum of an appliance. As each sound arrives, label it silently and lightly: not me, not mine. This one is easy — obviously the sound isn’t you, obviously you can’t keep it. Notice what happens when you say so anyway.
Widen from there. The pressure of sitting, an ache, the rise and fall of the belly. The breath has been going all day without your permission; the air was outside a moment ago and will be outside again. If you were going to possess a breath, which one would it be, and how would you hold it? Then feeling — warmth, unease, whatever tone is here — already shifting as you turn to look. Then thoughts. Where did that one come from? Was there a decision before it arrived? Thoughts happen on their own; we take the credit after the fact.
Then look for your sense of self. It might be tight, everything glued together and about you. It might be loose and open. Either way, it is arising. Not me, not mine.
Nothing here is being got rid of. A rainbow is vividly there and has nothing solid in it. Open your eyes, look around the room, and keep looking that way.
Something has bothered you and the thought will not stop turning. The body is tight, the shoulders drawn in, the world narrowed to the size of the problem. On another day you are out walking and everything is roomy and unhurried. The difference is the grip.
Clinging, craving, aversion, grasping — different words for one movement: taking hold of experience and trying to keep it fixed. It is felt in the body. Which is useful, because what is felt in the body can be released there.
Settle, then let awareness fill the whole body, part by part, until the whole space is bright. Tune into the felt sense of it — the overall tone, like dialling in an analogue radio. Notice the clear sensations, and what is vague and murky. Whatever you find is fine.
Now look for the holding. A contraction somewhere. A pull for this to be other than it is. It is in thought too — the mind solving, fixing, reaching towards something later. Find it. Stay with it a moment.
Open, soften, allow.
Take resistance the same way: soften around the sleepiness, the agitation, the doubt. Let it be here. Take the pleasant that way too. Released from the grip, what is pleasant tends to open further; what is unpleasant tends to dissipate.
Then feel the whole body again. Tight, or roomy. Solid, or moving.
You do not let go. You stop holding on.
Drawn from Rob Burbea’s teaching on ways of looking.
A sound wakes you in the night. Nothing much has happened, and within a minute the body is tight and the mind is looping — what was that, who caused it, why this, why me. Hours later you are walking in the sun and everything is fine. The body is open. There is nothing to cling to. Same person, same day.
Place a number between zero and ten on what is being felt. Zero: the self-sense faint, thin, perhaps completely gone. Ten: contracted, fixated, everything is about you. Most of the time you are drifting somewhere in the middle without noticing.
Sensation first: what you can hear, see, feel. Then feeling — not the story of the emotion, just its energy in the body. Then thought: distinct images and inner sounds, or a stream bubbling away.
Then ask: what is my self-sense right now?
It’s a strange question. It doesn’t land the first time.
Now watch how the mind binds it all together. A sound, an agitation, a thought about who did this — glued into a solid, fixed, “you”. When the gluing runs unwatched, the contraction is strongest. See it clearly, and relax.
Suppose a magician were to hold a magic show at the four crossroads, and a keen-sighted person were to see it, reflect on it, and examine it radically. Even as they see it, they would find it empty; they would find it hollow; they would find it void of essence.
— Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta, SN 22.95
Examine the self-sense that closely and release clinging. Not gone — vividly appearing, but without the solidity it seemed to have. Rest as what knows this.
See through the lens of change. Sounds arise out of silence and disappear back into it, and even the constant ones waver. Bring the body forward: look at the edge of a sensation that feels solid, and find the flicker there. You never take the same breath twice. Then thoughts — each with a beginning and an end, or one stream, flowing, never the same for long.
The mind gives solidity to what has none. Look this way for a while and notice what loosens. There is often relief in it: nothing here to hold.
Then open your eyes, and notice what lens you are looking through now.
— Vajrachedikā (Diamond) Sūtra, translated by Rob Burbea
When your experience of life deviates from life as it objectively is, the lens is revealed. Between the world as it is and the world as you meet it, there is a way of looking. It involves everything: from how you have slept to your beliefs and emotions. Like squeaky-clean glass, you look straight through without noticing it.
Sense what is here now. A warmth, a tension, a sound, a passing thought. With each, notice its tone: is this pleasant, or unpleasant? Stay for the small movement that follows — the mind leaning in toward what it likes, drawing back from what it doesn’t, quietly sorting the world into good and bad.
That leaning is the lens. When you catch it, relax. Let the pleasant be pleasant without chasing it, the unpleasant be unpleasant without turning away. If resistance comes, let the resistance be here too. Then take one step back toward the thing itself, before the mind decides what to make of it. Even here, the lens is shaping what appears.
Find one steady thing. Your seat, the uprightness of the body, or an object across the room. Notice the solidity already present. Rest your attention there. Borrow its steadiness, and let it spread.
Thoughts will come, wanting to be solved, wanting to carry you off. You don’t have to feed them. Each time you notice, that noticing is a fork in the road — be glad you caught it, and choose to come back to what is steady. It doesn’t matter how many times.
This is a way of looking: not something you force, but a stance you take, and then wait. Give the body, the heart, the mind their time. Peace of mind is only a short way off, on the other side of habit. Get out of your own way and the system settles on its own. The steadiness was always its birthright.
I recall being on a meditation retreat and seeing someone who was practising diligently but continually running up against a wall in their practice. Over and over they raised their hand and asked what they should do if they weren’t at the level of understanding emptiness. They appeared defeated. Their tone communicated a sense of self-deficiency — that they were failing at the practice. The teacher patiently asked them about their experience, explained the instruction to them again, and tried to give them pointers of what to try next. They praised them for continuing to attend so many of these retreats and tried to encourage them by framing it positively as dedication and perseverance. But I felt like something important was missed. There was an obstacle arising that couldn’t be addressed through insight practice. That felt experience couldn’t be seen through with emptiness practice. I could sense there was a better way, in which the doubt could be explored and felt into, related to differently. I wanted to offer attunement and compassion for their sense of being stuck. My sense was that something wasn’t being touched by the meditation practice; a part of their experience was crying out to be acknowledged and kept being met with silence.
Contemplative traditions, Buddhism among them, offer something genuinely liberating and beautiful in the move from the mundane to the profound. These ways of practising can radically shift how we experience being alive. But the way most traditions and lineages operate falls short for a human being in the world today. This largely comes from setting life and practice in opposition. It sets up a dichotomy that separates and contains rather than integrates.
We might hear this distinction between the ultimate and relative levels of experience. On the ultimate side we place the universal, transcendent, nondual, unconditioned, and “pure”. On the relative side we place the specific, everyday, conditioned, and messy. We can also see this when an experience is taken to belong to the domain of psychology rather than meditation — some content arises and it is thought to be something to ignore, or deal with another time and through different means, such as in therapy.
This separation can be immensely helpful. We need distinctions to make practices clear and usable. At times, skilful ignoring of the content of the mind allows for a powerful deepening and opening. The limitation is that integration is stifled when these are seen as separate concerns, without overlap, and without common ground for bringing practice forward.
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The image I want to put forward is the double helix. Picture DNA. Two strands spiral around each other as they move forward. They are connected by rods at intervals, lines that bridge and bind them together. The structure is two distinct strands that have a pattern of movement and points of connection.
The ultimate strand is the path of insight. This is insight into emptiness — opened through doorways such as impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and not-self. This path of insight develops through ways of seeing in which the solidity of experience begins to shift and melt, dropping us down into a different sense of existence. These practices reduce fixation and solidity. Eventually, this opens up into recognising that our own nature is beyond what we conventionally experience as mundane existence.
The relative strand is the path of content. This includes feelings, emotions, psychological content, conditioning and upbringing, patterns and behaviours. Rather than being universal, this refers to something specific about our individual experience. It includes our likes and dislikes. It’s also the ways we react and get triggered. It is our style of being, what we are in our humanity, and what it means to be you rather than somebody else (or no one). The side of content also includes the things we desire, that we engage with most deeply, and what we love. These practices contribute to a healthy sense of self that is grounded and stable.
There’s a way of relating to both that brings them onto the meditative path, so that all of experience can be integrated. Sometimes we frame meditation only as the fair-weather practice, when the body, heart, and mind are amenable. A meditator might be cruising along until things start surfacing and they’re left saying “I can’t meditate any more!” The implication here is that we are meditating until we run into something too difficult, then we have to stop and take that into a different domain. Instead, I’m proposing that from the beginning we can learn to relate well to whatever comes up, so that working with content actually deepens our practice. Rather than being a detour or a sidetrack, this is the path.
To do this, we find connections across the spiral. There are moments in practice where we jump from one side of the spiral to the other. We might be practising a specific meditation technique, such as śamatha (calm abiding), and realise that there’s something in our experience that needs tender care rather than to be ignored or calmed. Or we may be engaged in trying to understand our psychology, and realise we’ve become fixated on our past and the self-image that came from it — recognising that we can instead use insight to see through it and find space and relief. We find a bridge to the other strand of the helix and it allows us to deepen.
Eventually this opens to a smooth flow between insight and content, between ultimate and relative. In this sense, we flow along in the centre of the helix, with both sides arcing and spiralling, allowing us to unfold more and more. To do this, bring a loving attunement to your present-moment experience. All content is seen as practice.
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An example. I was practising the śamatha meditation technique according to The Mind Illuminated. I’d been chipping away diligently, increasing my sitting duration, gradually working on ignoring distractions and coming back to my object. Eventually I had a taste of stability — a clearing where the mind settled and I could stay with the meditation object for a while, able to return quickly when distraction arose. It was really nice! I thought to myself: “Finally, some fruits from all the time I’d put into the practice.”
I wanted to get back to that state and was excited to return the next day. When I sat down, I found myself at Stage 2. The mind was completely off track, wandering like a box of frogs, or like a wild elephant. I found this incredibly frustrating. Where was all this stability I had so carefully cultivated? What did I do wrong here?
In this stark contrast I cognitively recognised that this was the experience of not-self that I’d read about, taking place before my eyes. I could see how I’d been mistaken in thinking the mind existed independently, something I could control and identify with as a self. Rather than relief, this insight brought up frustration. It kicked up old stuff and spun me into a loop. At this point the teachings became an annoyance rather than a source of wisdom. Upon seeing the frustration, I recognised that my experience was also coloured by a kind of sadness. I intuitively let go of my meditation object and went towards the frustration and sadness. I opened to them and let them be there.
This was a great sadness at not being able to control the mind, to will something into existence. I was coming to terms with the fact that even in my own mind, I didn’t have agency. I had lost control of what had felt like the only thing I could control. I’d lost what had felt like me. For the first time, I saw it clearly. I felt the grief of not being able to make something happen through will. As I opened to those feelings and emotions, the grief crystallised as this loss.
I felt into the grief as it appeared in my body. I fully allowed it to open and unfold. Then something shifted. The mind, which had been scattered and restless, settled into a state of calm. A wave of emotion passed through and left a clear space in its wake.
As I continued meditating, I recognised that I’d dropped down into a deeper level of experience. I no longer felt like I was a separate self meditating and controlling the mind. All experience was unfolding on its own. I rested in this state. Everything became so easy and clear, with no sense of needing to do or control anything. Awareness had become spacious and open. Afterwards I realised I’d dropped past Stage 4 into something more like the effortless stability of Stage 8.
Surprised at the efficacy of this, I realised that insight becomes embodied and integrates through these mismatches of experience and opening to emotions. Not only did I shift my way of being and access that resource, but the insight into non-controlling also deepened and became more available.
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This also works in the other direction from content to insight. I’m thinking back to my first call with an experienced coach who was working in Aletheia,[1] the system I am currently studying. Aletheia is a methodology that integrates psychological modalities such as parts work with the tenets of nondual meditation.
To begin the session, I brought in that I’d been feeling stressed and that there was a “get things done” part of me that I associated with a sense of pressure and tension in my head. We worked on this in real-time direct experience as a form of meditation. We felt into the present-moment experience and contacted this part through the sensations, emotions, and thoughts. We got to know it, asking some gentle questions, making sure we were relating to it from presence with a welcoming, kind attunement. This took some navigating as even just contacting this part of me brought up other parts, including a sense of frustration and a concern that this pattern of stress was causing me difficulty. We acknowledged and felt these, waiting for their okay before going on.
Once the “get things done” part felt seen and understood, there was a turn. Gradually the pressure shifted toward sadness. Underneath was a sense of hopelessness, as if all my efforts are futile. After I stayed with the sadness for a few minutes, a hole opened in my chest like a dark void, an absence. I felt as if I were slowly imploding, sucked into a black hole at the centre of my being. Acknowledging the fear that arose, I stayed with this absence, gently opening to it.
Suddenly it shifted. Instead of an absence, it was a presence of stillness and peace. Rather than a bleak vacuity, there was openness. I rested in this spaciousness. It was serene and profound. I felt a wave of calm and contentment. I distinctly remember sitting and watching the birds outside the window afterwards, in awe of the coexisting movement and serenity. I felt whole and complete. Gratitude spontaneously arose. My life was totally fine. The stress of existing in this world couldn’t damage the core stillness and peacefulness of my being. I could be stillness and also live and act in the world.
I was amazed that in a 50-minute call I’d dropped into what had previously taken me three days of silent retreat to reach. Since then this stillness has become more and more accessible, not by cultivating perfect conditions for silent meditation, but by going through the content and emotions.
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Aletheia names this as the cycle of deepening and surfacing. When we drop down in depth of being, content often surfaces. Parts of us arise that have concerns, or don’t feel comfortable without a job. When we work with these parts and patterns of mind by allowing the emotions, we can drop further into our depth. Surfacing happens repeatedly in meditation. It also happens just by going about life. To see this as surfacing and deepening is to appreciate that all experience is unfolding meaningfully.
Seen this way, the two movements have names. The deepening is wisdom — dropping into a depth where we recognise that we are Presence. The surfacing is love — turning toward what arises to meet and hold it. Life takes place in between.
This is the flow Nisargadatta points to: “Love says: ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says: ‘I am nothing.’ Between the two my life flows.”[2] If we think of this flow as the unfolding of life through the double helix, we move between love and wisdom, we connect them, we find the union. When we open to emotions and difficulty with love, it brings forward wisdom; when we open to wisdom, it brings forward compassion.
Integration isn’t a phase of practice — the practice is integration. It only asks that we learn to relate to our experience in new ways. We can honour the liberating power of the traditions and still bring nuance and care to the full range of human experience.
This path lets us open to and choose the direction we move in — to be both released and integrated, to find freedom and meaning, and to discover new dimensions of being right here in this life, in this world
Warmly, Kynan
This is the work that matters most to me. Where I can do it most fully is one-to-one. If something here speaks to you, I’d be glad toexplore it together.
P.S. Retreats are currently being planned for the rest of the year — save the dates! Look out for registration opening in the coming weeks.
4 days, 10-13 September
10 days, 6-15 November
Aletheia is a coaching method founded by Steve March that brings psychological work together with nondual meditation. Its teaching centres on unfolding — letting experience open and integrate as a way of being. I’ve found it deeply helpful. You can learn more here: https://integralunfoldment.com/learn-more↩︎
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That (The Acorn Press, 1973), 269.
The Elephant Path is an ancient meditation teaching, believed to be a transmission from the Buddha-to-be Maitreya and written out by Asanga in around 500 CE. It describes the Nine Stages of Calm Abiding — a map of how experience shifts as the mind deepens in meditation. In this meditation, we traverse all the stages, using the appropriate antidotes and techniques at each stage to progress to the next. Through this we move from scattered monkey mind all the way to effortlessly stable attention. By practising The Elephant Path, you learn how to navigate the mind and how to cultivate different states of mind. This makes the mind a nice place to be — not only from landing in calm and clarity, but also from the confidence of knowing how to move the mind appropriately to whatever is present at any given moment.
The practice of calm abiding culminates in effortlessly stable attention — you sit and focus, returning again and again, until it becomes automatic. There’s also a way to begin with effortlessness. Start by opening to effortless spacious awareness. Release the body and mind. Drop all effort, relax to the max, give up. Rest as the awareness that is already here and knowing. From that place of spacious ease, gently intend to care about the body. Through just the slightest intention, the body appears brightly and vividly in the foreground. Attention is stable without tension nor doing. Let go of everything and rest into the body.
The path of calm abiding leads to effortlessly stable attention with equanimity and tranquility. A key to this part of practice is first building up to complete staying and then, when the time is right, easing up in effort. This easing up is a releasing, softening, and relaxing in such a way that the practice starts to flow by itself. Because of all the work done to establish stable attention and bright metacognitive awareness, the mind can, with only the slightest intention, rest into the body. This occurs at stage seven of the elephant path. You will ease up gradually, bit-by-bit, noticing if distractions again interrupt your continuity. When this works, it feels like the less you do the more focused you become, that there is no difference between meditation and non-meditation, and that there is a profound background stillness.
This practice uses the breath in the whole body as a technique to lead to completely staying with the meditation object. In the Stages of Samatha, the transition from Stage 5 to Stage 6 is accomplished through bringing more curiosity (intensifying) until there is an increase in sensory clarity. This then allows for *complete staying* with the meditation object, where there is exclusive attention that no longer scatters or alternates to distractions. Here we use the whole body as the meditation object and then notice the subtle level of sensation, then opening to noticing the breath through the whole body. This leads to a quality of engagement and interest where the body is seen as rich and complex, often becoming a cloud of sensation or waves of energy rather than something solid and fixed. Practising at this level cultivates more calm and clarity than is commonly though possible — the mind becomes both more at ease and brighter than in typical conscious experience.
Through meditation practice, we can make the body a comfortable place to be, relating to the body in such a way that the body feels like home, no matter where we are. Even when there is pain, discomfort, or tiredness, the body can be a place to rest and settle. This practice explores using whole body awareness as the meditation object. This whole body awareness includes all of the sensations of the body, as well as tuning into the overall texture or felt sense of the body space that can be rich, complex, murky, and have a more-than-words quality. Use whole body awareness as your practice of calm abiding, or use this as a support to insight, open awareness, or imaginal practice. By opening to the whole body and resting here, you can gradually cultivate a sense of settling, ease, and okness — deeply shifting the state of the body towards rest and nervous system regulation, while also shifting the relationship with the body such that whatever arises can be held in awareness with equanimity.
Effort is a key aspect of meditation practice. Too much effort and the practice becomes tight and frustrating; too little effort and practice becomes slack and directionless. Progress, especially in calm abiding (śamatha) practice, is greatly aided by finding the right balance. In the Elephant Path, this is done through phases of intensifying, where more curiosity is brought in and the meditation object is engaged with more and more, then phases where the practice becomes about easing up until a balance is reached. This practice explores alternating between strong effort and ease, gradually settling into an eased up effort that is both calm and clear. The possibility of continued practice is effortless effort — where the mind stays with the meditation object just through the slightest intention and everything arises and ceases brightly and clearly, without any doing or paying attention whatsoever.
Rest, while under-appreciated in our culture, is an essential part of being human. When we rest, we recover resources and capacity that allows us bring goodness forward. Well-rested, we show up with presence, patience, and kindness. This practice explores this intention and how we can practice towards rest, gradually doing less and less, resting more and more into our deepest nature. Beginning with setting a Presence Anchor and finding a sense of grounding, you will then use the breath as a tool to allow the mind to gradually calm and settle. The breath then becomes a tool to rest more deeply into the body, continuously releasing into this embodied presence. Finally, you rest as awareness — without doing anything, without meditating at all, you can rest in complete effortlessness. Rest as this awareness which is totally eased up yet brightly knowing.
Meditation presents the opportunity to cultivate both calm and clarity at the same time. This leads to a quality of mind that is, compared to ordinary states of mind, more alert while also being more relaxed. This is a state of deep resource. It allows for nervous system regulation and being connected and engaged. From this collectedness of mind, craving and aversion arises much less intensely. In this practice you will use the sensations of the breath at the belly as a way to ground and settle, allowing experience to simplify. Then you can bring in the practice of focusing on the inhale to bring more energy, drawing upwards; while using the exhale to relax and settle, drawing energy downwards.
When we experience painful sensation, we generally resist it, want it to change, or otherwise have some form of craving and aversion. This is wanting things to be different from how they are, either by trying to get something better, or by trying to get rid of what is present. The way of non-clinging releases this resistance. You can notice the sense of clinging through detecting contraction, stuckness, or resistance in the body, then you can release this by opening, softening, and allowing. Be present with this experience exactly as it is. This will open up a different way of being, with more lightness, openness, and freedom. Note that this is equanimity in regards to the primary experience in the moment, which still allows for taking action as appropriate to the situation.
This practice weaves together two threads: relaxing and calming the body by gently bringing attention to the whole body space; and knowing the body from the body. Awareness is effortlessly already aware, without you doing anything or needing to make awareness happen. So too does the body know itself — the body space is filled with bright, clear awareness. In order to get a sense of this, you allow the body and mind to settle through calming and collecting, then tune in to how it feels to inhabit the body, from the body. Allow awareness to drop down into the body space and behold itself.
Sit upright, with care and respect. Sit with dignity. When you sit in meditation practice, you dignify yourself, the community, and the practice. Recognising that each passing moment is constantly changing, you open yourself to the uniqueness of each experience. This body, this breath. The body calms and eases into comfort and stability. As you sit, poised and balanced, you begin to notice this palpable sense of presence, a quality of knowing awareness that is immovable, imperturbable, and fully awake to each passing moment.
Sunday 5 October 2025, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Buddhist Library, Camperdown, Sydney
The opportunity to go on retreat is special. To have the time and space to focus on practice is an amazing opportunity. Unfortunately, many of us don’t get this opportunity very often, so we try to carve out bits of time that allow us to do this in the midst of a busy life. The Day of Practice is an opportunity to practise deeply in the city, without leaving our lives.
You can look at this as a detox from communications and electronics, or a nervous system reset. It can be a deep exhale and shift towards relaxation. It also fosters time to go deeper in practice and explore what is meaningful to you about meditation and the path. The day becomes a container to hold your practice and assist cultivating different states of mind.
Śamatha – Practices for Deep Nervous System Resourcing
Tuesday 14 October 2025, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Buddhist Library, Camperdown, Sydney
Śamatha (calm abiding) is a meditation practice that leads to degrees of samādhi (collectedness and unification of mind and body). This calming is a powerful resource for regulating and balancing the nervous system. Beyond simply relaxing, these practices open up the possibility of deep states of effortlessness and equanimity – which can be directly linked to states of deep nervous system regulation.
Attuning to the state of the body and mind in the present moment provides clues as to how to navigate both meditation and daily life in a way that leads to more grounding, settling, and the state of energised calm that is both a resource in itself and sets the stage for freeing insight to arise.
This session will include lecture, guided meditation, and discussion to provide a first hand experience of these practices. All levels of experience are welcome. If you are interested in a deeper exploration.
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Vipassanā – Attuning to the Felt Sense of Freedom
Tuesday 21 October 2025, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Buddhist Library, Camperdown, Sydney
Vipassanā (insight) is the practice of Buddhist meditation that allows for seeing through obscurations to recognise our deepest nature. But how do you know that your insight practice is moving forwards?
As insight practice deepens, there is a felt reduction of clinging and suffering in the moment. You can track this with an awareness of the body and by tuning in to the sense of lightness and openness that is revealed when habitual tendencies relax. We will explore ways of tracking this felt sense of lightness and noticing the fading of perception that reveals deep insights about the fabrication of experience.
This session will include lecture, guided meditation, and discussion to provide a first hand experience of these practices. All levels of experience are welcome, however previous meditation experience is recommended to get benefit from these teachings.
Awareness is knowing, spacious, and welcoming. Awareness allows everything; rejects nothing. Awareness effortlessly holds all experiences within its tender embrace. Here I offer a practice of somatically grounding through movement and breathing, relaxing and stabilising whole body awareness, and then pointing out this awareness that is already here, already knowing. Allow the instructions to be poured in. Notice any shifts that occur in response. Rest as awareness.
The breath is a source of energy and of relaxation. It can be used to bring alertness and brightness, as well as to find calm and ease. The breath has been used in many meditative and contemplative traditions as a way to regulate the nervous system, settle the mind, and to shift perception — sometimes even in ways that are psychedelic. In this practice you will begin with finding comfort. You will then follow the breath carefully and attentively, allowing the body to relax and the mind to settle. By checking in with the quality of attention, you can notice the energy level of the mind, and find balance through inclining to more alertness or more relaxation. You get to take time out of being you and instead shift into just being: this body, this breath.
So much of being a human is dominated by a sense of separation. There’s an underlying sense of being an individual entity that is somehow outside of the environment. Yet when looked at closely, your being is intimately interwoven with all of existence. You are made of the same minerals as the Earth, a home to bacteria and micro-organisms, your body is sustained by the air and sunlight. Each person you know has affected your existence, and you have affected them, in ways that can be pointed to directly. By resting into a sense of non-separation, you can find a prior sense of relatedness; a sense of the field of relation that comes before separation.
Letting be is a core principle of Buddhist meditation (and perhaps a key tenet of all spiritual practices). To let be means to be with what is experienced, exactly as it is, with no need to change it. In this meditation, you will be guided to bring a curious, welcoming awareness to whatever is arising, gradually including sounds, sights, body sensations, thoughts, and emotions. The key here is welcoming any resistance. To aid this you can visualise resistance by seeing it as a Part of your mind and letting it take a form, or imagining placing it beside you. You can also use the trick of taking whatever is causing difficulty as unchanging — the one permanent thing in the universe — as a way to release the urge to change. Finally you will explore the felt sense of your whole body in this moment as the unfolding experience that is more than words and somehow in excess of what is present. Ask yourself: can I be with this, exactly as it is, with no need to change it?
Meditation practice can be finding methods to get out of your own way. The sense of self and operating as an individual self, while really useful in daily life, is a limiting factor on your sense of existence. By dropping out of your habitual patterns, more opens up. This practice focuses on relaxing and settling through tuning in to the present moment and then following the sensations of the breath. While doing this, you allow all other sensations to come and go in the background of spacious awareness. Then finally you will drop the breath or let it fade into the background and simply be — allowing all the body sensations, sounds, thoughts, and feelings to come and go, without getting caught up. The universe continues on, vividly appearing, without you having to do anything at all.
In this practice you will be gently guided to relax through connecting with the body, feeling into each body part and inviting relaxation. This relaxation is a kind of doing less — there was already some tension or tightness and you are simply intending to release this. You can also relax *around* any tension you find. This relaxing is a mode of allowing the sensations and feelings to be exactly as they are, reducing any clinging or aversion. Finally you will check in with how you are relating to the experience and if there is any resistance, embracing and allowing this. When resistance is fully allowed, it too will shift, soften, or change in some helpful way.
