Welcome!
This is the last of a series of 10 meditations on being present now.
These meditations have progressively gone from the 15 minutes of the first to the 30 minutes of this last one.
I'm Italian and I speak English as a second language.
So if you find my accent and my grammatical and lexical errors too distracting,
I'm sorry but these meditations are probably not good for you.
As usual,
We start with mindfulness of breathing.
If we need,
We can take a few deep long breaths,
Breathing in and breathing out deeply.
Breathing in,
We can also pull up our shoulders towards the ears and breathing out gently and slowly we let them go back down.
And then slowly we let our breathing become natural,
We don't force it anymore.
We breathe in and out according to the need of our body,
Of our mind right now.
So if we need to make a long breath,
We inhale and exhale deeply.
If our breath is short and light,
Then we become aware of short in-breath and very light soft out-breath.
It doesn't really matter how our breath is,
What matters is our awareness.
We are training a special quality of the mind that we call awareness or mindfulness and to do so we use the breathing.
So that awareness has an object,
Which is a process because breathing is a process,
Always changing,
Always moving and we keep our mind on this process of the breathing.
Because once we have developed awareness,
Mindfulness,
We open the door of wisdom because we start to see more clearly into our mind.
By keeping our attention,
Our wise attention on the breathing,
We see thoughts,
Emotions,
Sensations that are happening inside of me.
And this helps me to really comprehend,
To really know who I am,
How I function.
Instead of being identified with the thinking or with the emotions,
I realize I can become aware of the thoughts and the emotions and so I am not them,
Those are just transitory states that are passing through my consciousness,
Through my awareness.
Breathing in,
I feel the air coming in the body.
Breathing out,
I feel the air going out of the body.
And if I realize that I am stuck into an emotion or a thought,
I am not aware of the thoughts and I can let go.
Stop grasping things.
I can open my hands if they are closed and physically let go,
Let go of the grasping,
Of the attachment to my transitory states.
They're just transitory,
They're just passing.
I cannot grasp anything,
There's nothing to grasp because nothing stays.
Everything is always moving,
So the grasping is an illusion that creates only tension in the body and the mind.
All I can do is just be,
Be present,
Awake,
Aware of all that's happening.
I'm not asleep.
So I know I see my thoughts,
My feelings,
My emotions,
But I'm not identified with them anymore.
I am like the blue sky and all the thinking,
The sensations,
The emotions are like clouds passing by through the sky.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Just be.
With my hands wide open.
My shoulders relaxed,
My chest open,
My head relaxed.
There's no tension.
I let go with kindness.
I'm not pushing away anything.
I'm letting everything to be just the way it is.
With patience and kindness and using the breathing.
Maybe I need to make a deep,
Long breath.
And breathing out,
I let go.
Of all that I'm grasping.
And if I feel that I cannot really follow the breath,
I can always use body sensations.
Maybe the buttocks pressing against the cushion or the seat.
The legs.
I can feel my feet maybe touching the ground or touching each other or the other leg.
I feel these sensations.
A burning.
An itching.
Warmth.
I can feel my hands.
My head.
My shoulders.
The upper part of the back.
Every time I breathe out,
I can let go.
Let go of all the ideas I have in my mind right now.
The appetite gasp.
If there are sounds in the environment,
I hear them.
And I can mentally repeat sound.
Sound.
Pleasant,
Unpleasant or neutral.
I just let it be in the background.
I don't follow the thinking that's maybe building up a meaning around that sound.
It's just a sound.
I hear it because I'm awake,
I'm alive,
So I hear sounds.
But then I slowly and gently go back to the breathing,
To the in-breath and the out-breath,
To the rising and falling of the abdomen,
To the expanding and contracting of the chest.
And I can see clearly when that sounds,
Actually when it's coming out of my new senses.
And to help the process of letting go gently with kindness we can use the loving kindness meditation we can repeat mentally a few words may I be well may I be happy may I be safe may I be at peace breathing in may I be well breathing out may I be happy may I be safe may I be at peace breathing in may I be well breathing out may I be safe breathing in may I be well breathing out may I be happy and we don't know what it means to be happy there are no ideas we don't know it's just a kindness wish that we are nurturing into our heart if it helps we can also bring our hands on our heart and feel it this warmth for ourselves first it's really important to love and accept and embrace ourselves just the way we are so that we can embrace and really love the others and first we can start really by placing our hands on the heart and feeling maybe the chest slowly rising and falling under the hands and repeat the loving kindness words breathing in may I be well and breathing out I can let go let go fold attention so all the ideas that I have about being good or being well there's nothing we have to do here just connect to ourselves just being present to ourselves breathing in may I be well and breathing out I'll let this well-being spread across my body reaching all the cells in my body may I be well may all the people around me be well may I be at peace and may all the people around me be at peace and be well and may all beings be well and it doesn't matter if I don't feel all the love that I would like to feel right now we are training the mind towards goodwill towards benevolence and kindness so it is really important just to repeat those words even if we don't really feel any warmth or any love inside it's a training and we have to trust that if we practice the mindfulness of breathing the mindfulness of sensations and loving kindness meditation slowly we will feel more and more kindness more and more peace inside deep peace that allows us to face life challenges in a wiser way because we become less and less reactive to things situations people as we develop this space inside the space of awareness of body sensations the ability to stay with us just the way we are without escaping without wanting to run away to be different to push away things that we don't like this training allows us to stay still and so when a life challenge arrives or something even threatening we can stay still we are capable of staying still not reacting to the situation but feeling deeply and so being able to choose in a wiser way for ourselves and others we just have to be patient and cultivate day by day awareness of little things when we walk we can be aware of our feet touching the ground we can always use the breathing and body sensations because no matter what no matter where we are or what we are doing we have always the breathing with us or body sensations and bringing back our attention to the breathing or to the body sensations allows us not to get lost into thinking or get caught into an emotion building up stories in our mind that prevent us from making good wise choices if we react to things if we believe in all the stories that our mind makes up we cannot make wise choices but if we are able to stay still and feel the sensations in our body feel the breathing again we have time the time to make a good choice without reacting so thank you for being here and sharing this mindfulness practice thank also yourself for sitting here being present being with yourself thank you thank me for just being staying healed
