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.
Tag: clarity
Pointing Out Awareness (Guided Meditation)
You experience many sensations and contents of awareness: sounds, images, body sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts. You can observe these and be with them. But these sensations are not you. You can have an emotion, but you aren’t an emotion. An emotion can’t fully define you. Your sense of experiencing goes way beyond this. Thoughts might reference a sense of self, but there is awareness that knows the thoughts and knows the spaces between thoughts. When the mind settles, you can notice the awareness that knows these contents. You are this awareness that is like a wide open sky. Just as the sky is more than the clouds, awareness is more than its contents. This awareness is continuous and spacious. It is a bright, clear, lucid knowing. Rest as this awareness that is completely whole and unbroken.
Practice: 15 minutes samadhi, 15 minutes pointing out instructions on awareness that is aware of itself.
Interconnectedness and Non-Separation (Guided Meditation)
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.
Can I be with this? (Guided Meditation)
Can I be with this? (Guided Meditation)
Duration: 30:07
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?
Just Being (Guided Meditation)
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.
Inviting Relaxation By Doing Less
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.
The Body is Space
YouTube | alternate | audio only (31:33)
The body itself is made of atoms, which are mostly empty space. You can find a sense of freedom and refuge in the body through tuning in to spaciousness that arises within the body. This practice explores ways of opening to a wide-open, vast, spacious awareness. First you will allow the body to settle by connecting with the breath and then expanding to include the whole body in awareness. From here you can tune into the shifting, changing, flowing, impermanent sense of the body sensations, noticing how the body is open, empty, transparent, and light. Tuning in to the sense of space in the body, you can open to this sense of lightness and openness, and then opening to the sense of a vast, spacious awareness that holds the whole body, and all of experience, bringing tremendous relief.