Hi and welcome everyone.
My name is Amandine and I will be your guide today through this meditation based on awareness.
Let's start by finding a comfortable seated position either in a chair or on a pillow.
Make sure that your spine is comfortably straight,
Neutral and that your shoulders are completely relaxed.
Let your palms rest on your lap or on the thighs in a way that helps promote relaxation in your shoulders.
You can keep your eyes closed or leave them open with a soft gaze low looking at the ground ahead of you.
Bring your awareness to your breath and start to take deeper,
Slower and quiet breaths in and breaths out through your nose.
Keep your attention to your breath.
Let each exhale breath be at least as long as each breath in.
Bring to your mind all the qualities you would like to see in your mind.
Patience,
Steadiness,
Spaciousness,
Ease.
Notice how your breath changes.
Continue to focus on your breath with about 25% of the efforts of your mind zero in on your breath with an attention that is not too tight,
Not too loose,
Just right.
Focus attention.
With another 25% of your mind,
Notice whether or not you are still paying attention to the breath.
Each time you find that your mind has wandered,
Shift your focus back to the breath.
As you understand,
The second part of your mind acts as the noticer,
The witness.
It too is not too active nor too dull.
It's just there peacefully here.
It's the awareness that guides you back to mindfulness.
Continue in this way.
Watch your breath and notice when your attention is no longer on your breath.
Only return to the breath and do it as many times as you need.
In the beginning,
You will notice it often,
But with practice and experience,
You will realize that you less and less need to bring your attention back to your breath.
You will more easily stay there.
Eventually,
We notice that even the watcher needs a little part of the mind to watch it too.
So with a third part of your mind,
Notice whether or not you are still aware of your mindfulness on the breath.
Is the witness part of your mind still doing its job?
Yes,
There is now a third part of your mind that notices that.
And then what about the third part of the mind?
Is it too doing its job?
There is a fourth part of the mind further back that watches the watcher who's watching the watcher and so on and back and back and back it goes.
Follow for a moment the sensation of moving further back deeper into the origins of awareness.
Where is or who is the original witness?
As your mind gets lost or maybe confused or overwhelmed,
Simply rest.
Rest in the spaciousness of awareness in its limitless.
Without beginning and without end,
Appreciate that spacious,
Infinite,
Expansive awareness is simply you.
Infinite in its ability to notice,
Infinite in its ability to see,
To feel,
To listen.
Depressing in this sensation of spaciousness and open awareness and just feel it.
Just be.
When you feel like the mind has gotten small again,
Closing in on one train of thought,
One distraction,
Return the mind to the breath and repeat the process.
First part of the mind on the breath,
Second part of the mind witnessing the job of mindfulness on the breath.
Third part of the mind witnessing the witness.
Fourth part of the mind witnessing the witness of the witness and so on until you reach the felt sensation of open spaciousness again.
There you can rest and remain.
Spend as much time as you would like in this state of infinite potential,
Limitless,
Full awareness in this wide open space.
See if you can hold that sense of spaciousness and how long.
And when you're ready,
You can slowly start to pay attention to the sound far and then the sounds that are closer to you.
Start to move your toes,
Your fingers and slowly open your eyes and return to the space around you.
I wish you a wonderful rest of your day or your evening.
