Sharpening The Mind

An introductory experience into the art of sharpening our ability to focus the mind using an ancient meditation practice. The principles shared here are simple and highly effective in helping us find a sense of balance and grounding through a somatic and subtle energy clearing followed by a foundational exploration of the art of meditating on the breath.

Transcript

Welcome back to Sharpening the Mind with Robert John Malone and Sacred Sound Services.

In many mystic traditions,

There is a foundational principle that all we experience in the 3D realm is mind,

And that what we are experiencing is part of a universal collective consciousness.

Here in our modern world,

We are consistently bombarded by external stimulus,

And it can be very challenging to find time and space to be able to hear your own voice.

So here I will be sharing a brief and simple practice that hopefully,

Over time,

Will evolve into something deeper and aid in helping you stay connected to yourself.

The principles of this practice come from the Buddhist tradition,

And are specifically a meditation known as Vipassana.

Vipassana translates closely to seeing things as they are.

So here we are working towards being able to consciously clear the mind field through the subtle awareness of simply noticing what is occurring in our mind.

Our awareness seems to be at times much like a lens at the end of a camera.

There are times it's beneficial to widen our awareness to see more ways of viewing something.

And there is also a benefit from having a laser-like focus at times that can notice the subtlest details of a moment.

Many believe that they do not have control over what not only shows up in their mind,

But what they do with it,

Or in other words,

How they react or respond.

But here,

You will see over time that our mind is very much like a garden,

And if we do take the time to tend to the weeds,

The seeds of the ideas and the dreams we envision blossom into their full potential.

In Vipassana,

There are three stages to the meditation practice.

In the first stage,

The main principle is about focusing the mind.

So again,

We will be using this core principle in a very simple,

Yet effective practice.

Find a comfortable place to either sit cross-legged or on your knees or on a bolster,

Preferably not on a soft couch or a lazy chair.

Sitting upright helps us stay alert and awake.

Now closing your eyes,

Just take a moment and notice what is happening in your internal environment.

As I shared,

Nowadays we are consistently bombarded by external stimulus.

Even right now,

You are receiving information from outside.

And few of us take the time to really check in with our internal environment.

So before we begin,

We'll start by clearing our subtle energy field.

You'll begin first by wiggling your fingers and your toes,

Taking a deep breath,

And then relaxing the hands and the feet as you slowly exhale,

Softening the arms and the legs.

From there,

Taking another deep breath.

Breathing in,

Noticing,

Is there any sense of movement inside?

Is there any sense of movement outside?

Taking another deep breath,

And relaxing the shoulders,

Relaxing the belly.

Beginning to feel into your body deeper.

Noticing the body temperature.

Again,

There is no right or wrong here.

Just noticing,

Is the body cool or warm to you?

Maybe you have a nice equilibrium.

From there,

Shifting the awareness to the surface of the skin.

Feeling the air temperature,

Noticing if the air feels cool or warm to our skin.

Maybe feeling the forearms or the cheeks.

Taking a moment,

Bringing our awareness up to the third eye space.

And keeping the eyes closed,

Gently beginning to look left and right,

Doing our best not to move our head and neck,

Just moving the eyes.

And as we move our eyes laterally inside,

Take a deep breath.

And as you exhale,

Relax the eyes.

From there,

Taking a moment to squint and just squeeze all the muscles in the face.

And relax on the exhale.

From here,

We begin to start our practice.

We'll begin by shifting our focus to our breath.

Breathing first with no technique.

Just noticing how we are breathing.

And again here,

We're not trying to change the breath.

We're just noticing.

Many of you will notice just by shifting the awareness to your breath,

It will naturally self-regulate a little.

Just allow whatever experience comes up.

Once you feel the breath soften or slow down a little,

Begin to shift your breath to breathing out just through the nose.

And here we begin to go deeper and deeper.

We do this practice today for approximately three minutes.

And when we're done,

I will slowly call you back.

Continuing to breathe through your nose,

Focusing on the breath.

And again,

Not trying to control the breath in any way.

We're simply guiding it best we can gracefully.

If it wants to speed up at times,

We allow it.

If it wants to slow down at times,

We allow it.

Again,

We're seeing things as they are.

Learning to allow the moment to be as it is.

With no judgment and no expectation.

We will be here for two minutes and I will slowly call you back.

Now for some of us,

We're going to find this very challenging.

Hence why we do the practice called sharpening the mind.

You may notice at times we drift in and out of thought.

We may drift off thinking of our plans or agendas or some drama that happened in our life.

There's no reason to get discouraged here.

This is all perfectly natural with the nature of the human mind.

And so we will add one more dimension going deeper and deeper into the mind field.

In the Buddhist tradition,

The deepest layer of the mind is sensation.

So here we shift our focus even deeper.

Focusing on the breath through our nose,

And we begin to notice the subtle physical sensation of the air passing in and out just below the nostrils.

And again,

For some of us,

This is so subtle we may overlook it,

But just feeling the air passing gently in and out over the skin.

And we hone the mind to that space just below the nose.

Again,

Allowing the breath to breathe dynamically,

Breathing consistently,

No force,

No pressure.

If we notice at times we're holding,

We do our best to soften,

Surrender,

And let go.

And just allowing the energies to move through us as they need to in the practice.

Here feeling the gentle flow over the surface of your skin,

Honing in on that space just below the nostrils.

We will be here for two minutes,

And I will slowly call you back.

And wherever you are,

Before you open your eyes or move your body,

Just take a moment to really feel into this internal space.

Noticing the subtle shifts from when we started to now,

And noticing the subtle qualities of your current internal environment.

Remembering again,

Every day is different.

Every moment is different.

There is no right or wrong,

Good or bad.

We're simply noticing what is happening right now inside.

Keeping the eyes closed,

Begin to wiggle your fingers and your toes,

Maybe gently rock left and right,

Taking a deep breath,

And a gentle sigh.

And keeping the eyes closed,

Take a moment to squint your eyes,

And again,

Breathe,

And relax your face.

Taking another full breath.

And before we open the eyes,

We'll slowly bring the fingertips up to the eyelids,

Gently pressing in a little bit against the eyes for a gentle massage as we inhale,

And gently exhale.

Keeping the fingertips on the eyelids,

Pressing in two more times,

And a gentle sigh,

Softening.

Last round,

We press in a little bit and up towards the nose.

And then slowly relaxing the hands down,

We begin to open the eyes,

Gently allowing the light back in,

Looking around the room,

Moving slowly,

Noticing the shapes and the colors.

From here,

Allow your eyes to relax to the horizon line.

See if you can shift your awareness and just look at your vision as a whole screen.

Notice,

Can you see the peripheral edges at the same time?

Not focusing on one object here or there,

Just looking at everything that's in front of you as a whole.

Notice how this feels.

Taking another full breath,

And a gentle sigh,

Letting go of any technique or practice.

I pray you found something insightful in this practice that aids you in your inner journey.

May you continue to develop this practice deeper and deeper,

As traditionally we would do this for approximately 10 hours a day for three days before beginning the next stages of the meditation.

Again,

If you found this beneficial to your life,

Please share and comment any experiences you may have had.

If you've enjoyed this meditation,

Please see some of my other material on Insight Timer.

Thank you.

Namaste.

Reviews

Great art work ! Great voice and production 🙏 I would very much like you to guide a longer practice less for beginners. The next stage. I appreciate if you do not feel that you could introduce other techniques . I very much enjoyed the open eye total scan at the end. Thank you 🙏

I stumbled across this meditation thinking sure I’ll give it a go….. to my surprise this was so beautiful, peaceful and perfect for what I needed. I feel so at peace at this moment. Calm and yet alert.
Thank you so very much for the wonderful experience. I’ll be coming back and also checking out some of your other meditations. 🙏🏻💕