Mindfulness Of Feeling Tone

Guided mindfulness meditation from our Power of Engaged Awareness course with Fleet Maull, Ph.d., co-founder of the Engaged Mindfulness Institute.

Fleet Maull, PhD, CMT-P, is an author, meditation teacher, consultant, coach, seminar leader, motivational speaker, social entrepreneur, and peacemaker. He is the founder of the Prison Mindfulness Institute, the National Prison Hospice Association, and Windhorse Seminars & Consulting. He is a senior teacher in two Buddhist traditions: the Tibetan Buddhist Shambhala lineage and a Roshi (Zen master) in the Zen Peacemaker Order and Soto Zen lineage.

Transcript

Hi,

Welcome to this guided practice for module three,

Where we've been discussing how our sensory experience,

All the five sense perceptions,

As well as thoughts and emotions,

Arise in our perception across the spectrum from pleasant to neutral to unpleasant,

Everything between pleasure and pain,

Comfort and discomfort.

So,

We're going to do a practice now to explore that.

So as always,

I encourage you to start by establishing an intention for this practice session,

And that intention could simply be a personal individual one to wake up,

To heal,

To develop greater insight,

Greater self-understanding,

Self-empathy,

To really come to know ourselves more deeply,

And thus be able to be more successful,

If you will,

In relating with ourselves in a beneficial way,

And if the language works for you,

To self-manage,

To self-regulate,

Such that we can follow through on our real intentions and our real aspirations and so forth,

Instead of having ourselves kind of be just driven to and fro by the circumstances of our life and all the distractions surrounding us,

As well as our conditioned internal reactions to all that,

Which is really what we're going to be working with in this practice.

So you can set an intention,

Whatever it is for you,

And then if you like,

You could expand that intention to have it also be about others,

That we're practicing to awaken,

To heal,

To develop more mindful self-compassion,

Greater capacity for self-regulation,

In order to improve the quality of our relationships,

So to show up in life in ways that are mutually beneficial for ourselves and others,

To make a difference in the world,

If you will,

Or we could have the sense that we're practicing really to relieve the suffering of all beings,

If we want to have a really vast mind kind of motivation.

So whatever that is for you,

Establishing your own motivation for practice and getting a clear sense that we are sitting down to practice,

So we're not just sort of stumbling into it casually,

But I'm taking some time here.

And also,

It's helpful to remember how precious our time is.

You know,

We often suffer under the illusion that we have endless time,

But at least in this body,

Our time is limited,

As we know,

And none of us know how much time we have.

So really,

Life is precious,

Every moment is precious,

And as busy as our lives are,

It can be very difficult to carve out the time,

And to even have the privilege to carve out the time to practice meditation and do other types of mind-body awareness practices.

So setting that motivation,

And perhaps doing it from a place of appreciation and gratitude and real intention to optimize this time,

And to use it to the best of our ability.

So we set that intention,

And then we relax.

It's not like we're in here to drive ourselves to achieve some goals,

But we do have intention.

We're doing this for a reason.

Okay,

Then the second step,

As always,

Is to establish our posture.

And basically,

We're looking for a posture that encourages wakefulness,

Presence.

So traditionally,

It's been experienced by countless numbers of our fellow human beings that sitting with an upright posture can be quite helpful.

One that feels naturally uplifted,

Upright,

Dignified,

Awake,

At the same time relaxed,

Stable.

That kind of mountain-like,

Very solid pose,

Seated on the earth,

And having a sense of really being solidly placed here.

It's not rigid,

It's flexible,

But there is a sense of solidity and really settling.

It's good to have a concave wall in your lower back so you're not hunching out,

But you're actually extending the crown of your head towards the ceiling a bit,

Or the sky,

And letting your shoulders and your entire body then relax around that.

Now,

Of course,

As always,

If you need to do this practice for any reasons of physical limitations,

Lying down,

Standing up,

Leaning against the back of a chair for support,

Please do whatever works for you.

However,

If you are able to sit up on a cushion or in a chair with an uplifted,

Upright posture in this way,

That can be helpful.

Then we're encouraging at this point of the practice for you to do it with your eyes closed.

Later,

We'll be moving into eyes open practice,

But in order to really tune into the internal landscape of the body especially,

It can be helpful to have the eyes closed and to really focus in on the arising of our sensory perceptions as pleasant,

Neutral,

Or unpleasant.

It may be helpful in the beginning to do it with your eyes closed.

However,

If you are uncomfortable with having the eyes completely closed,

You could just lower the gaze,

Looking down the bridge of your nose,

About a 45-degree angle,

And just have a soft gaze so we're not staring at anything.

It's not a penetrating gaze.

We're not projecting out.

We're just kind of relaxing the gaze back,

Just a soft gaze.

We're not blurring out,

But we're not staring.

It's just relaxed.

However,

If you are able and willing,

The invitation is to close your eyes for this part of the practice and training.

If you like,

You can have your lips slightly parted as if you're about to say,

Ah,

And the tongue resting on the roof of your mouth behind the upper front teeth.

Having established your posture,

You're invited to bring your attention to your body.

Again,

We're making the distinction between the conceptual or psychosomatic body that's made up of our memories of the body,

Our images of the body,

Our thoughts about the body,

And so forth.

We're making a distinction between that and the actual physicality of the body,

The direct experience of tactile physical sensation,

The unmediated experience of tactile physical sensation.

And it takes a gentle effort to sort of drop beneath the level of conceptual experience into direct experience.

So just being curious about that,

Willing to explore that.

And you might want to begin with the sensations that are most prominent for you,

Wherever they are in the body.

For some of us,

That might be the sensations arising at the contact points or the pressure points where our body meets the chair or the cushion or our feet meet the ground.

And for some of us,

It might be the weight of our clothing,

The contact between our skin and our clothing,

The texture of our clothing.

It could be sensations arising with the contact between any movement of the air where we are or the air temperature where we are and any exposed skin surface areas,

Like the face or the neck or the hands,

So forth,

Ankles.

And of course,

The passage of air across the nostrils and or part of the lips with each in-breath and out-breath.

And as we begin to explore the direct experience of being alive in the body right now,

Remembering to invite these attitudinal qualities of openness,

Curiosity,

Beginner's mind,

Non-judgment,

Self-acceptance,

Gratitude,

Appreciation,

And so forth that we've explored already.

So always coming back to that.

And one of the principal ones,

At least for me,

Is curiosity,

Developing a deep curiosity to really know ourselves.

You know,

This life is what we have and this body is our vehicle for this life,

So why not know it as deeply as we can?

And as always,

If you notice your mind or attention wandering or getting caught up in some kind of distraction,

Caught up in discursive thinking or daydreaming or anything other than being present,

Feeling the body directly,

The minute you notice that,

You just notice it,

Let it go,

And come back,

Come back to the body,

To feeling the body directly.

Now,

Part of this experience of body is the breath.

So you're invited to tune into the breath as well,

To all of the many sensations arising and falling away with each in-breath and out-breath.

Again the passage of air across the nostrils and or parted lips,

The rising and falling of the belly,

The expansion and contraction of the ribcage,

And at a deeper level perhaps feeling the action of the diaphragm muscle contracting and relaxing,

The abdominal muscles assisting with breathing,

The intercostal muscles between the ribs assisting with breathing.

There's really an entire flow of sensate experience with each in-breath and out-breath.

And it has a natural wave-like motion that will be different for all of us and different at different times,

But it generally has this wave-like motion in and out.

And we're not controlling the breath at all,

We're not manipulating the breath at all,

We're just letting the breath find its own rhythm.

And the practice is just to feel it as directly as we can,

As part of our experience of being right here,

Right now,

Alive,

In the body,

With awareness.

You're also invited to begin exploring other sensations within the body,

Just the overall weight and mass of the muscles and bones,

The feeling of gravity holding us down on the earth.

Any feelings of discomfort,

Aches or pains,

Tension,

Relaxation,

Perhaps being able to feel our heartbeat as we slow down and settle.

So just coming back again and again to the body,

And as we begin any practice session,

There's a quality of gathering all the dispersed strands of our attention.

You know,

In our everyday life,

We tend to get very dispersed,

If you will.

You know,

We're very up here generally,

Very auditorily and visually oriented,

And also our discursive mind grabs a lot of our attention,

And our attention can be kind of scattered and very externalized.

So as we settle into the body,

We're just regathering all those dispersed strands of our attention and bringing them home to the body,

Bringing them home to the body.

It's really a process of coming home,

And really coming home to be in the body,

Alive in the body,

Aware of being alive in the body.

And of course,

We're alive in the body,

But being alive in the body with awareness.

So feeling the body as deeply as we can,

Breath after breath,

Heartbeat after heartbeat.

And if we notice the mind wandering,

It's not a problem,

We just come back.

We don't need to engage in any kind of conversation with ourselves about the mind wandering,

That's not helpful at all.

That's what the mind does,

It wanders,

So we just come back,

And we're coming back again and again.

And gradually we're training our mind to be able to really settle and synchronize with the body.

And the more deeply we feel the body,

That's why we're emphasizing the actual physicality of the body,

The weight,

The tactile sensation of the body,

Externally and internally.

Because the more deeply we feel this,

It becomes a powerful anchor,

Anchoring us here in nowness,

In the present moment.

The body is happening right now,

The heartbeat is happening right now,

The breath is happening right now.

So to the extent that our mind and our awareness is really synchronized with that,

The more that's the case,

The more we are resting in nowness.

So developing this deep physical anchor of the body,

And also understanding it from a neuroscientific or neurobiological perspective,

By really synchronizing the mind and body,

We're facilitating that shift from what is known as the default mode network,

Which is when it's overactive,

It's responsible for that very discursive mind,

What's been called monkey mind in the literature,

And that really scattered mind,

And the busy mind that makes it hard to practice,

Ruminating about the past,

Ruminating,

Fantasizing,

Worrying about the future,

Running commentary about the present.

We're very familiar with that mind.

And that's the overactive default mode network.

And when we really feel the body directly,

That engages the task-positive network.

And those two networks are mutually inhibitory.

So to the extent that we're bringing the task-positive network online,

The default mode network naturally begins to go offline a bit,

And the mind quiets down.

So we don't have to struggle with our thoughts.

There's nothing wrong with thought or the energy of thought.

We're not trying to push it away.

We're not trying to get rid of it.

But by really feeling deeply into the body,

The cognitive activity naturally begins to slow down.

So we're facilitating that shift from the default mode network to the task-positive network.

And that's a bit of an oversimplification of the brain science involved,

But there is a sensibility to it as well,

To feeling the body directly as we can.

Now I would like to encourage you to find a sensation in the body.

We're going to work with physical sensation to begin with.

You can work with any sense perception.

They all arise across the spectrum from pleasant to neutral to unpleasant.

But we're going to work with physical sensation to begin with.

And I invite you to find a physical sensation that you're experiencing right now as pleasant,

As pleasant.

For me,

It's a certain coolness in the air where I am,

And I can feel that coolness on my face,

And it feels pleasant,

Soothing.

Perhaps if it was colder,

It wouldn't feel so pleasant,

But it's kind of just the right temperature,

So it feels refreshing and pleasant.

So see if you can locate a sensation for you that you're noticing feels pleasant.

Then the second step is to see if you can notice any momentum of attraction to that experience or any quality of clinging to that experience or desiring more of that experience.

It might be very subtle,

But generally when sensations arise or we perceive them arising as pleasant,

Almost immediately the mind of attraction arises,

Which can go further into clinging or even greed or addiction,

But it could be very subtle,

Just the mind of attraction,

Wanting to hold on to that,

Wanting more of that,

Or just feeling pulled to that.

Now if you would,

See if you can find a sensation in your body that feels unpleasant,

Or even a little bit painful,

Or some kind of discomfort.

For me,

I feel just a twinge of pain in my lower back area,

Kind of a vulnerable area for me,

And when I'm sitting up straight,

Sometimes I can feel a little bit of pain or tension there.

So see if you can find somewhere in the body physical sensation that's arising in your perception as unpleasant,

Uncomfortable,

Or even painful,

And just make a gentle effort to stay with that,

Explore that.

You could even be curious about,

Well,

What is that?

What makes up my experience of unpleasantness?

What is it about that sensation that's unpleasant?

Is it hot or cold,

Or is it sharp or dull?

What about it exactly is unpleasant?

And then again,

The second step is to see if you can notice any reaction to that,

If you can notice the mind of aversion arising.

It could be very subtle,

But there could be a kind of wanting to pull away from that,

Or push it away,

A desire not to experience it,

To have it go away.

And then if you could shift your attention,

Again,

Finding a place in your body where you're experiencing sensation as pleasant,

As pleasant.

For me,

The flow of my breath across the nostrils and part of the lips feels quite pleasant.

It's not too hot,

It's not too cold,

And just the feeling,

The breath across the skin is a pleasant feeling for me.

So,

Find a sensation that's arising for you as pleasant,

And then exploring what is it about that that causes you to perceive it as pleasant?

What is it about it that's pleasant?

Is it just the right temperature,

Or is it a quality of warmth that makes it pleasant for you,

Or a quality of coolness?

Is it soft?

Is it subtle?

Is it soothing?

What is it about that particular physical sensation or collection of sensations that causes you to experience it as pleasant,

Or you would describe it as pleasant?

And again,

Noticing if the mind of attraction arises,

Even subtly,

A desire to stay with that experience,

To hold on to that experience,

Or any quality of clinging or grasping,

Just being curious about that.

This is just the way the mind works,

So it's not,

Oh,

I hope there's no grasping.

No,

It's just being curious.

Of course,

It's always going on,

And so it's not,

I guess,

So just being curious about it,

Being curious about it.

And you can notice,

You know,

If your attention is shifting between pleasant experiences,

Unpleasant experiences,

If one calls you more than the other,

Or if it feels like an unpleasant experience is interrupting a pleasant experience.

Now,

This is going to require a little more attention and gentle effort here,

But in the midst of these sensations that we're experiencing as pleasant,

Unpleasant,

Even pleasurable,

Or even painful,

And noticing how the mind of attraction,

The mind of aversion,

Tends to arise even subtly,

Or not so subtly,

See if you can find some sensations that are actually neutral.

Now,

What does it mean to have a sensation that's neutral?

A sensation means to feel,

So can you really feel neutrality?

That's a good question.

Can you really feel neutrality?

Well,

Let's explore that.

To begin with,

Maybe it's just finding places in the body,

Like gaps,

Like maybe we're noticing places in the body where I definitely feel pleasantness,

Places in the body where I definitely feel discomfort or unpleasantness.

Now,

Where are the gaps?

They may just appear kind of dark to our awareness because there's,

You know,

When there's no unpleasantness and there's no pleasantness,

You know,

It just can be kind of dark in our awareness.

And it may be that actually what we'll recognize to begin with is that darkness,

That lack of awareness,

Which is sometimes referred to as ignorance,

The mind of ignorance,

A lack of awareness.

So,

See if you can be with those places and see if you can feel into sensation that feels relatively neutral,

Or just be curious about those places in the body that don't really feel pleasant or unpleasant.

So,

You know,

The question may be,

Well,

They don't feel anything.

Well,

Okay,

Feel that,

Or be curious about feeling that.

And see if you can notice any relationship between,

Let's say,

A lack of pleasantness,

A lack of unpleasantness,

And also a lack of awareness,

A lack of attentiveness.

And what does it feel like,

Or what's your experience,

To make a general effort to bring awareness,

Bring attention to those places in the body where there isn't any sensation that is really arising for you as pleasant or unpleasant,

So it seems neutral.

So,

Can you feel into those parts of the body?

Now,

Of course,

How we perceive sensation is not black and white,

It's on a spectrum.

There's a gradient,

Right,

There's a gradient from pleasant through neutral to unpleasant.

So,

There's not like a hard boundary where it shifts from pleasantness into neutrality or from neutrality into unpleasantness.

So,

It's a gradient,

And we can just explore that with curiosity,

And especially being curious about the reactivity around it,

How with pleasant experiences the mind of attraction arises,

How with unpleasant experiences the mind of avoidance or aversion arises,

And how with neutral experiences the mind of ignorance arises,

Or we just tend to not pay attention,

We tend to check out,

There's a lack of awareness.

So,

I encourage you to just keep exploring that,

Being really curious about it.

And why are we exploring this?

Well,

This is really where we get hooked into living in a mechanical,

Habitual,

Conditioned,

Reactive way.

This is right where it starts,

And this is true for all our sense perceptions,

And also for our thoughts,

And for our emotions,

And how we experience the world around us through our sense perceptions,

And how we experience other people through our sense perceptions and awareness.

This is where all the reactivity begins,

And this is where being caught in that reactivity in a habitual,

Conditioned way begins,

And thus where we begin to actually lose our freedom.

This is right where we lose our freedom,

Where we lose our awareness,

Where we lose consciousness,

And we become very mechanical,

Very conditioned,

Somewhat robot-like beings,

Just responding in the way our mind has been conditioned to respond.

So,

This is really the place where we can begin to develop our fundamental freedom.

And one of the strategies,

As I've mentioned,

Is leaning into discomfort.

It's very easy to lean into pleasure and comfort,

And that can lead to clinging,

And even to greed and addiction.

However,

Leaning into discomfort,

Or unpleasantness,

Is kind of going upstream against our habitual patterns,

And thus it tends to wake us up.

And it has nothing to do with punishing ourselves.

We're not looking for discomfort,

But there's always discomfort.

And so we're really just making a choice to embrace the whole thing with curiosity,

Openness,

Gentleness,

Beginner's mind,

And so forth.

To really make the commitment to embrace the totality of our experience of living in a body as a sensory being,

That we are going to experience pleasure and pain,

Comfort and discomfort.

It's just part of being alive.

And we have our conditioned preferential mind,

And it's just that,

It's just conditioning.

And we can bring awareness to all that,

And really begin to live from a place that has greater spaciousness and freedom to choose how we wish to respond to life,

Rather than just being hooked into one reaction after another.

So let's just take a moment to sit,

Feel as deeply into the body as we can,

And be curious about sensations arising in different places within the body.

And noticing the pleasantness,

The unpleasantness,

The neutrality.

Noticing how the mind of attraction,

Ignorance,

Or aversion arises.

And just being curious about all that.

If there happen to be any sounds where we are,

Or if we're aware of any smell,

Odors,

Or tastes,

We could also be curious about how those arise as pleasant,

Neutral,

Or unpleasant.

And how the mind of attraction,

Ignorance,

Or aversion arises in relationship to those experiences.

With the eyes open,

We have the same experience with visual perception.

Pleasant,

Neutral,

Unpleasant,

And so on.

And with the thoughts coming and going,

You may notice that some of the thoughts are particularly attractive,

Pleasant,

Or some just seem to be like noise on the radio,

Not particularly grabbing your attention,

Always seem pretty neutral,

And then some thoughts might actually feel unpleasant.

You kind of wish you didn't have that thought,

So uncomfortable to have that thought.

And of course,

Same is true for our emotions.

If we're aware of any emotional tone present,

Any mood,

Subtle layers of sadness or gladness,

Peace,

Contentment,

Discontent,

Frustration,

Anger,

And so forth,

Happiness.

So,

At this stage of our journey with this introduction to the practice of mindfulness and awareness meditation,

The invitation is to be very curious about feeling physical sensation to begin with directly.

And being very curious about how it arises as pleasant,

Neutral,

Or unpleasant.

And being very curious about how this conditioned reactivity arises almost concurrently with that.

The mind of attraction,

Ignorance,

Or aversion.

And then as we would like with the stability of our practice,

We can do the same with our other sense perceptions,

Our thoughts and emotions.

But the place to begin,

The invitation anyway,

Is to begin with the body because it's in some ways the most workable.

And the advantage again of working with the body is that by developing that deeply felt physical presence,

It anchors us here in nowness and makes it easier to practice and work with the other sense perceptions,

As well as thoughts and emotions.

So,

You're invited to continue this session for as long as you have time or you're able.

And you continue working with being aware of pleasant,

Neutral,

And unpleasant.

And you're invited to have this emphasis in your practice.

We'll move on to other explorations in the next module.

And you can bring this into your daily practice as well,

Very much so.

Being really curious about how pleasant experiences arise,

Unpleasant experiences arise,

Neutral experiences arise.

And they may be related to particular sense perceptions,

Or it may be a collection of sense perceptions.

It may be that sight,

Sound,

Smell,

Taste,

That all comes together in a very pleasant way,

Or that it all comes together in a very unpleasant way.

Or being aware of when we're just kind of checking out because things are neutral.

So,

Inviting that gentle effort,

That gentle curiosity,

To really live in a sort of a continual inquiry into the experience of actually being alive,

Conscious,

Aware,

Right here,

Right now,

In our formal practice and in the midst of our daily lives.

So,

Thank you.

We'll see you in the next module.