Hi there,
And welcome to the session.
I invite you to take a long,
Slow breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
And then for you to just let your breathing come and go as it wills.
I want you to raise your left hand up in front of your face and simply look at it.
Observe your hand and see it as it is.
Gently wiggle your fingers and feel what you're actually feeling.
It's quite easy to imagine what your hand looks like or what it feels like,
But our imagination and reality doesn't quite match up.
And in this session,
We're going to explore the difference.
Keep your mindful focus on what your hand looks like and what it feels like.
And you'll start to see that you can observe your hands and you can observe your fingers.
But what you feel isn't separate.
You don't feel the fingers as necessarily separate entities.
Rather,
You feel a cloud of sensation.
You feel a tingling or a pressure or a pull that doesn't quite represent the reality of your hand.
Close your eyes and really focus on what you can feel.
Can you distinctly feel your five fingers?
Now,
Some of you will have a greater sense of proprioception than others.
But if you do feel five distinct fingers,
Instead,
I want you now to lower your hand and draw your attention to your toes.
Can you distinctly feel five toes that you expect to feel?
Or instead,
Do you feel a cloud,
A collective,
A wedge or a hoof,
For lack of a better expression?
What do your toes feel like compared to what you can sexually know them to be like?
The lesson that this activity teaches us can be applied in a practical sense to our mental phenomena.
We have a preconceived notion about what anger or jealousy or grief or pain,
Physical or mental,
Will feel like.
But our expectations and the reality of those feelings in the moment are often quite different.
So what we're going to do is sit in silence,
And when a thought comes up,
The first thing I would like you to do is label it.
Just a broad label.
It could be future planning,
Or it could be anxiety.
It could be memory.
Whatever pops up,
Simply label it and then observe it.
Don't try and change it or manipulate it or force it into a box.
Just look at it for what it is,
Because that's the reality of what is happening right now.
Let's give it a try.
When something pops up in your mind,
Simply label it and observe it for what it is as it is.
So now I want you to draw your attention to the sensation of your breath entering and leaving the nose.
Once again,
Don't try and change or control or manipulate the breath,
Nor what you're feeling.
Simply witness the sensations coming and going as they are.
What we're trying to do is break through the illusion of expectation,
The illusion of conditioning,
And start to observe the breath,
Mental phenomena,
And indeed everything as it is.
This is the essence of mindfulness.
We're doing our best to live in the moment and see things clearly.
So for the remainder of the session,
I invite you to close your eyes if they're not already closed,
And draw your attention to the sensations of the breath entering and leaving the nose.
If your mind wanders,
Acknowledge it and gently bring it back into focus on the breath at the nose.
Okay,
So just to tie today's meditation in,
I want you to look back at your hand again.
Move your hand,
Look at it for what it is.
Notice your hand as it exists.
Feel your hand as it exists,
Right now in this moment.
And for the rest of the day,
Anytime you see your hand,
I want that to be a mindful trigger.
Just take a breath and feel what you feel.
See what you see.
Hear what you hear in that moment.
Without interpretations,
Without changes,
Just reality for what it is as it is right now.
