Deepening Into Presence

This is a meditation that seeks to draw the you into an increased openness and awareness of the presence of your being. Presence is simply what is, but it can also be thought of as a relationship to being. In particular, this meditation attempts to help people to loosen their tendency to tighten and contract, whether to hold onto something or to protect against something. Instead, we practice allowing things to happen, and experience the joy that's underneath all phenomena, once loosen our habit of tightening.

Transcript

Hello,

Friends.

Today I would like to lead you on a medium-length guided meditation into deepening presence.

This presence that I'll be directing you to soak yourself deeply into is the presence that's at the basis of all of our experience.

And I'll just be using all the different sorts of things that arise as doorways into that presence and reminding us to come back again and again.

So set our aspirations and enjoy.

We begin by taking a deep breath,

Deep breath in,

And a slow release out.

We do that a couple of more times.

With each breath in,

We attend to the points of tension within the body-mind,

And with each breath out,

We release that tension,

Feeling the tension and releasing.

We want to keep our back straight,

Our posture good,

Our mind alert,

But yet everything deeply relaxed.

And even we can,

As we breathe in,

We can heighten the vividness of our alertness,

Of the sharpness and the clarity of our presence,

While on the breath out,

We just release everything,

All the worries about the past,

Plans for the future,

And whatever thought might be wandering about at the moment.

Now coming into the primary meditation,

We're just going to go straight in and allow the process of experiencing to slowly take up more and more of the space of our experience.

That is a sort of awareness of the experience,

And we're just going to soak deeply into that awareness.

So we begin with a panoramic,

Phenomenal view.

We take all of the things that we think,

All the thoughts that are going through our head right now,

Take all of the feelings that might be in the torso or wherever they might be in the body,

And we take all of those that are arising right now,

And we take all of the visual stimuli that are occurring at this moment.

We take all of the auditory stimuli that are happening right now,

Including my voice.

We take all of the olfactory stimuli,

All the scents,

Smells from the room or the place where you're at.

Take all of the gustatory or taste-sense experience.

Take that all in,

And finally we take all the tactile experience that we're having right now,

And we take it all and we form it into a sort of a ball.

That is to say,

We form it into the formlessness,

Which it is.

It renders a sort of a sphere around us,

We might say,

Although that around and us can get a little bit complicated as we deepen into non-duality.

So we take this all,

This sort of ball,

And we experience the whole sphere of our phenomenal experiencing,

This entire tapestry of all of these sense modalities woven together into a unity that is what appears to be my experience or your experience.

So we're going to take all of those,

And we're going to just loosely allow them all to happen right now in front of us,

And we're just going to rest with this presence for a moment.

So let's just bring all those together into the ball,

So to speak,

The ball that they are on their own when nothing is done to them,

And let's just rest in those for a moment.

Nothing is excluded.

Nothing that happens is part of the presence.

We're here for it all.

And if we're like most people,

We frequently experience thinking happening.

Maybe even we always experience thinking happening.

But also if we're like most people,

We're not aware of the thinking that's happening most of the time.

So here in this deepening into presence,

It's totally fine if thinking arises.

No problem at all.

What we want is just to remain present with the thinking that's happening.

So this is a form of mindfulness,

And what we're remaining mindful of is just being present with what's arising.

So if the thinking is arising,

That's totally fine,

And we allow that to happen.

We're aware of it happening,

But we're not narrowing into the thinking.

We're just recognizing the thinking as one thread in the larger weave of this moment of existence in our lives.

And this can seem a little bit like a tricky practice,

Because we're accustomed to doing things.

We're accustomed to having purposes and seeking to accomplish.

And with this practice,

Our highest accomplishment is really just to do nothing or to be with what's happening.

The doing is a being,

And there's no more doing than that,

Except of course that there's doing happening all the time.

So we're going to just do the being and be with what's happening.

And if we've been doing this practice for a while,

Or if we're coming from a practice of concentration,

We very likely will be beginning already to experience a little bit of settling into presence.

And in the settling,

We begin to experience a sort of a sweet buzz or a fine,

Blissful warmth that begins to pervade the body.

Often that begins in the hands or sometimes the lips.

And if this is experiencing for you,

If this is a doing that you're being at this moment,

Then please just allow that to happen and give it your joy,

Your whole heart.

This is a practice which will lead us to a joy that is totally without reason and not dependent on specific outcomes or attainments.

The attainment is just to be present with what is,

And by being present with what is,

We begin to experience a lightness,

An openness,

A joy,

And a sort of bittersweet softness towards ourselves,

Towards others,

And towards the world.

And so let's settle into the warmth of our tactile presence,

Even as we remain wholly open to the totality of phenomenal objects,

Phenomenal arisings.

And we may be beginning to feel some motion of energies up and down through the center of the torso and the head,

And those are all just fine.

We're really just opening up the body.

We're opening up the energies.

We're opening everything up and just allowing it to be just as it is right here,

Opening the heart,

And as the heart opens,

It bursts out with a warmth and love for whatever it is that happens to be there,

Whatever is present for us right now.

And if you find your mind is hopping from object to object rather than resting more openly,

That's totally fine as well.

But I would just ask that rather than being sticky with the mind that's hopping,

To instead try to step back a step from the mind hopping.

Allow it to move from place to place as it chooses or as it does.

But experience that as one more thread in the tapestry of the presence of your being at this moment.

So the motion of your attention,

The closing or opening of your attention,

Is just one more thread,

One more of the things that happens.

And so we allow that to happen,

And we just do so with a lightness of touch,

With an open hand.

And we might notice sometimes a little bit of boredom or irritation or frustration forming,

A feeling that there's something awry or something that needs to be done.

And those are also just fine.

We just maintain our presence,

Recognize those feelings,

Recognize where they're at,

And be aware of them as another thread in the tapestry of the presence of our being.

And if we wish to experience for a moment what the presence is like of the whole of phenomenal experience when it's not dominated by thinking,

There's a couple little tricks.

One trick that I found works very well is to try to make a thought happen.

So while remaining aware of the space of the mind,

You encourage thoughts.

And when a thought arises,

You give yourself a little cheer.

And when there's no thoughts,

You wait and watch.

When will the thought arise?

Come on,

Thought.

Come on.

When will it arise?

And by doing that,

The mind,

The contrariness of the mind,

The child of the mind,

Rebels and won't produce a thought often.

And in that openness,

We get a little taste of what our experience might be like if we could spend a little bit more of it in a space of presence.

And as we develop presence,

As we deepen it,

We come to see more and more that the thoughts are just one more thread in the tapestry of the presence of our being,

And that they're not exclusive or special in any particular way.

And so we stop prioritizing them or giving them such centrality.

This allows joy to arise spontaneously,

And it allows a much more sane perspective on beliefs and opinions,

Right and wrong,

And resolves so many arguments and questions without the need for disputes.

Just being there,

Present with what's happening,

If we find our body tense,

Our mind tense,

We can relax.

If we find ourselves getting sleepy or lethargic,

We can rouse a sort of curiosity and enthusiasm for what happens next.

We're just sitting here doing nothing,

And yet every moment is fresh and unconstrained.

Every moment is something new.

What will come next?

And in this last short period,

I want to give you a brief glimpse of presence again,

Sliced right through to the heart of it.

So gather together once again all of the things of sight,

Now with your eyes open if they haven't been open before.

Gather all the things of sight and of sound,

Of smell and of taste,

All the things of your tactile sensations.

Gather together all of the feelings in your body and the motions of the energy systems running through your body.

Gather all of your thoughts and opinions and plans and memories,

All the things that are happening.

Gather them all into the ball,

The mandala of your being,

And throw that ball up in the air and slice it right through the middle with a katana.

And as they're cut,

Rest in the space that opens.

Just rest without trying to do anything.

Just experience that space that cuts right through the center of them all,

Of all the things that happen,

Vast spaciousness.

Thank you so much for joining me with this meditation,

And I ask that you dedicate whatever value this meditation has been to your highest aspirations for yourself and for the world.

Thank you.