Hello and welcome.
Before you choose a position,
Notice one sound already present in the room.
Let it reach you exactly where you are.
Pick a position you can stay in comfortably.
A chair,
The floor or lying down.
Let the easy choice be the one you make.
Take a moment to arrange yourself.
Settle your weight,
Soften your shoulders,
Let your face relax.
You're welcome to shift again at any point as often as it takes.
Place your hands where they can stay,
On your legs folded together or open beside you.
Let your arms give up their weight.
Now your eyes.
Closing them works.
Leaving them open,
Gaze low and quiet works just as well.
Whichever you choose can stay for the whole practice.
Bring your attention to the places where you're supported,
The seat or the floor beneath you,
The surface holding your hands,
Your feet on the ground,
If they're able to reach it.
Stay with that contact a few moments more.
Let it be the steady thing running underneath everything else in this track.
Let one breath travel through you at its own pace.
An ordinary breath is exactly the right one.
We're turning toward meaning now,
And I want to be clear about what this is.
It stays close to your own life.
It works with one ordinary moment you've already lived.
The large questions stay exactly where they are,
And you can pick them up again afterwards if you want.
If at any moment this feels like more than you want,
You can stop following along and rest your attention on the support underneath you.
That is plenty and it is the practice.
You're welcome to stop here and let another day be the one for this.
Return to the sound you noticed at the beginning,
Or find a new one.
The air moving,
Something outside,
A machine somewhere in the building.
If the room is quiet,
Let the quiet be the thing you noticed.
Notice the temperature on your skin.
Notice the weight of your clothes on your shoulders.
These are ordinary things and they are here with you now.
Now I'd like to invite you to look for something.
See whether a moment comes back from the last week or two that felt worthwhile while it was happening.
Let it be a small moment,
The kind you would struggle to explain to somebody else as important.
A short conversation,
A task you finished properly.
A few minutes with a person,
An animal,
A piece of music or a view.
When one moment arrives,
Stay with it.
Let the details come back.
Where you were,
What was around you,
What your hands were doing.
If no moment arrives,
That's completely fine.
Stay with the sounds in the room and the support underneath you and let the rest of this be something you listen to.
Let yourself be there for a little longer.
Let the memory be as ordinary as it actually was.
Now look inside that moment for how you were being.
Something in it made it feel worthwhile to you and it has a quality to it.
Ask yourself this,
How was I being in that moment?
Let the answer be one word or a short phrase in your own language.
Useful,
Honest,
Present with somebody.
Take whichever words are truly yours.
Hold that quality with you here on this support.
This is something you already know about yourself and you learned it from your own life.
Now let's bring it forward.
Think of the next small thing you'll do after this track ends.
Making a drink,
Answering a message,
Walking into another room.
Bring the quality with you into that small thing,
The same quality in the next few minutes at the ordinary size it already has.
Notice how it feels to carry a quality U-value into a moment this ordinary.
The larger questions in your life can stay open for now.
This one quality is available to you today and it will be available again tomorrow.
Let the practice close here.
Let your attention come back to the room you're sitting in.
Let a fuller breath in if one is waiting.
Let your hands move.
Let your feet move.
Whether your eyes have been closed or resting open,
Let the room come fully back into focus now,
At whatever pace suits you.
Carry that quality with you and be kind to yourself along the way.
