So take a moment,
Give yourself this gift.
It's truly a beautiful gift to sit in silence.
I want you to almost,
As you close your eyes and breathe deeply,
As you relax your shoulders,
As you breathe into your diaphragm,
Into your belly,
I want you to notice that silence is this incredible gift from life.
And you're giving yourself the time here to have it.
It's a bit of a paradox.
You give yourself this gift and life is giving you this gift.
So nice and relaxed,
And we're going to walk through these four doorways or these four portals together.
So with your breath slowing down a bit,
As you pull your energy out of anything else you need to do today,
Or you think you need to do,
Or you think you need to think about doing,
I'm not going to do those things,
I'm just going to think about them.
Let's see if you can draw your energy back nicely into your body.
You can even surf your breath into your body.
Imagine your awareness just kind of surfs your breath right back into your body.
You always want to come in for a gentle landing,
Right?
It's like when a plane lands really nicely on the runway.
You want to land your awareness nice and smoothly back into your body by riding that breath in.
You could feel your hands.
You could feel your feet.
You could feel the trunk of your body in this beautiful human form.
And it's because this human form that you're able to experience the contrast between silence and sound,
Which is our first doorway.
You have ears.
You have an ability to experience sound.
So I'd like you to just take a moment and notice whatever sounds are in the room with you.
Could be the sound of a computer.
Could be the sound of an animal,
Of nature.
Could be sound.
I want you to just notice it.
I want you to notice if you label the sounds.
Like this is an air conditioner.
This is a bird.
See if you can remove the labels.
Just like you didn't have words for the sounds.
Like if you were on another planet and had never heard them before,
So you couldn't label them.
Experience the sounds in the room that you're in without any labels,
Without any judgment.
Even if one of them irritates you.
So the sounds,
They arise and they dissipate.
Notice the sounds arise out of silence.
They may make a sound for a second or for a minute.
And then they dissipate back into silence.
Almost if you were watching like this physics experiment,
Like wow,
You could see these sounds arising and dissipating.
With an almost curious attitude.
The sounds arise and they dissipate.
All sounds arise out of the ocean of stillness and subside back into the ocean.
Provide yourself to hear and then experience that silence.
I want you to notice that the silence that's here,
Even when noise arises out of it,
Has always been here.
It's been here before you were born.
You'll be here after you pass.
Every time you go to meditate,
It's here.
Every time you're upset,
Every time you get distracted,
Every time you're peaceful.
There's this ocean of silence that's always here.
This is the first doorway,
The first portal.
And I want you to notice that it has no judgment.
Silence does not judge.
It doesn't appreciate one sound over another.
So our first doorway here is recognizing sound and silence.
Let's step into our second doorway.
Our second doorway is movement and stillness.
What you didn't notice in the room that you're in,
Wherever you are,
Any movement,
You may notice movement inside your body.
You may notice the movement of yourselves,
Of your breath,
Of your emotions.
The trees may be moving outside,
The clouds.
Notice that all matter has some kind of movement in it.
And I'd like you again,
Without any labels,
Any judgment,
To notice any and all movement around you and in you.
And you almost be fascinated by movement.
What a beautiful phenomenon of life,
Movement.
And then I'd like you to notice that all of this movement,
All the movement you experience,
Arises out of stillness and then goes back to stillness.
All movement arises out of stillness and then goes back into stillness.
See if you can experience that stillness inside yourself.
It is the foundation of all movement.
Notice the quality of inner peace inside of that stillness.
So we have silence and sound.
We have stillness and movement.
And let's step into our third doorway,
Our third portal.
So here we have matter and space.
So first I'd like you to focus on any objects that exist in your awareness,
Including your physical body.
You have your body,
Perhaps you have a chair or cushion,
Desk,
Window,
Walls.
Want you to notice any and every object in the room that you're in,
In the space that you're in.
And again,
See if you could peel up any labels.
Imagine you were not able to label these objects.
You didn't know what they were called.
You have no judgment about them,
Good or bad.
You're just in a room that has physical objects.
They have shapes.
All these objects have shapes.
Some are rounded and some are squarish,
Some are rectangular,
Some are wide and some are narrow,
Some are tall,
Some are small.
Just notice all the objects made of matter that's around you.
And then I'd like you to notice the space that these objects occupy.
There's a space that these objects exist in.
They need space to exist.
So you focused on the objects,
Now focus on the space in the room.
Notice the stillness and the silence in this space.
Just like silence and sound have a relationship and movement and stillness have a relationship.
Matter and space have a relationship.
Wonderful.
And we're going to step into our fourth doorway,
Our fourth portal.
And this one is our awareness and thought.
So I'd like you to internalize your attention a little bit more.
If you need to,
You can bring your attention behind your eyes into the center of your head.
And notice any thoughts that arise in your awareness.
Just like clouds that you may see passing through the sky,
Just notice the thoughts in your awareness.
And again,
If you had no ability to label them or judge them,
How would you experience them in this moment?
You don't have the ability to say,
I like this thought or I dislike that one.
This one's useful and that one's distractive.
You can only watch.
And they just pass by on the screen of your mind,
One thought after another at varying speeds.
And you notice this is the content here of my mind.
And then you notice something a bit peculiar,
That all thoughts need awareness to arise in.
A thought needs to arise in awareness.
So you have your thoughts and then you have the awareness that your thoughts arise in and dissipate out of.
Just like you had your attention on the matter,
On the forms in your room,
Notice you have your attention on the thoughts and then you move your attention to the space.
Just like the space in the room,
You're moving your attention to the space of your awareness.
What is it like to notice the awareness itself?
Make sure you're breathing.
Want you to notice if you start to recognize a calmness inside yourself.
What creates disturbance is when we forget about silence,
About stillness,
About space and awareness.
When we focus solely on the content,
Solely on the noise,
On the matter,
The thoughts.
Balance the equation in yourself.
Recognize that all noise needs silence.
All movement needs stillness.
All matter needs space and all thoughts need awareness.
This is where your inner peace resides.
This is where your enlightenment is.
And then one last one,
Which is I want you to notice you are both human and being.
So before we come out of meditation,
Just notice you are a human.
You have a human form with human feelings and human thoughts.
You are a human and you are also a being.
A being has awareness.
You are a human and a being and you will find a lot of deep inner peace in that part we call being.
And when we recognize the stillness,
The silence,
The space,
The awareness,
That is recognizing being.
And when we do that,
It really brings a deep,
Deep sense of calmness to our humanness.
And then we manifest this energy of calmness,
Of presence,
Of compassion,
Of love,
Of acceptance,
Of inner peace.
That's how you do it.
It's not by creating something new,
It's just recognizing who you already are.
This is your true awareness.
This should help you come home.
This should give you a healing.
This should help you release any tension,
Any worry,
Any excess need to control or be perfect.
This is how you find your center.
Take a nice big deep breath in.
Take easy,
Soft sigh out.
Great work.
When you're ready,
You can slowly open your eyes and stretch.
