Welcome to the open awareness meditation.
Allowing yourself to settle into your posture.
Settling the muddy pool of the mind and setting an intention to be awake and alert during this meditation.
As a way of beginning bring your awareness to the breath and notice where the breath is most vivid for you.
Either at the belly,
The chest,
The back of the throat,
The nostrils or perhaps the full column of the breath.
Wherever you feel the breath the strongest,
Bringing your attention to this place in the body and just breathing in and out from that place.
As if this was the most important thing you had to do in this moment.
And now shifting your focus to sound.
The sound inside the room,
My words,
Outside the room or your house.
Perhaps the sounds inside your body.
Receiving sound rather than searching for sound.
Listening to the quality,
The tone and the pitch.
Sitting with sound.
And now shifting your focus,
Your primary focus to the body.
Where you can mostly feel the body.
So that might be as you are holding your hands or where your hands are resting.
Perhaps you may feel the contact or the pressure.
Might be your feet on the floor.
It might be stiffness in your body.
Feeling into the sensations of the body.
And now letting go of any specific focus of attention on the breath or sound or the body.
And open your attention wide to all that is passing and arising in your experience.
So that may be the breath,
An inhale or exhale breath.
A sound in another room.
It might be an itch or a sore spot on the body.
It might be a random thought or a feeling.
So opening wide as if now we're having this panoramic view.
And notice where you're being drawn to.
So if you are being drawn to something in particular,
Take your attention there.
Observing whatever is dominant or compelling in the mind and the body at that moment.
Become present to it and then open wide again to that panoramic view.
Creating space for all your present moment experience without any particular focus on anything.
Knowing that you can shift your attention to anything that you've been drawn to.
Notice and then open your awareness wide again with no particular object,
No agenda.
And if no experience is asking for your attention,
Rest in awareness itself.
Opening to whatever experience is arising.
You might notice the constant transient nature of your experience.
And letting go of any effort to focus on anything in particular.
Let go of the struggle.
Release the effort.
Let be free of grasping.
Notice what you are noticing every moment with a new moment beginning.
As if all these phenomena were like contents arising just like the weather in the sky.
And if you're experiencing any storms of anger or confusion,
Restlessness,
Perhaps anxiety,
By giving these feelings space they will gradually diminish.
And if at any moment that you feel unbalanced or overwhelmed,
You can always come back to the anchor of the breath,
Sound or the body to stabilize.
And if you get caught up in a story in your mind or lost in a drama where you feel a bit unfocused or scattered,
Come back to the breath or an anchor of sound or the body to stabilize.
Feeling free to come back to an anchor at any time and then releasing again,
Opening to whatever else is arising.
Allowing you to practice for a few minutes.
You you you you you and now allowing yourself to refocus on the sensations of breathing.
And expanding out into the whole body as you breathe in and out.
Feeling the entire body rising up on an inhalation and falling downward on an exhalation.
As if the body was a unique single organism connected and whole.
Feeling into the whole body.
As I bring this meditation to a close with the sound of the bells.
You
