Mindfulness of Thoughts and Sounds Settle into a comfortable sitting position.
Allow your back to adopt a dignified but comfortable posture.
Gently close your eyes or soften your gaze when you are ready.
Bring your awareness to your breath and breathing.
Allow your mindful,
Wise attention to ride the breath like a wave for the full duration of the in-breath and the full duration of the out-breath as best you can.
And there's no need to control the breath,
Just allow the breath to breathe itself.
And if the mind wanders away,
Whenever you notice that it has,
Gently escort it back to where you last left off.
And when you feel reasonably settled in the awareness of your breath,
Intentionally allow the awareness now to expand around the breath to include a sense of the physical sensations throughout the whole body.
While still being aware in the background of the movement of the breath and the changing patterns of the sensations throughout the body.
You may find yourself getting a sense of the movements of the breath throughout the body as if the whole body were breathing now.
Now you can expand that awareness to shift from sensations in the body to hearing and sounds.
Bring your attention to the ears and then allow awareness to open and expand so that there's a receptiveness to the sounds as they arise,
Whenever they arise.
And there's no need to go searching for sounds or listening for any particular sounds,
Instead as best you can just simply open your mind so that you can be receptive to the awareness of sounds from all directions as they arise.
Sounds that are close,
Sounds that are far away.
Sounds that are in front,
Behind,
To the side,
Above or below.
Open to the whole space of sound around you.
Be aware of obvious sounds and more subtle sounds.
Just like the sounds coming from inside of you,
From your internal world.
Also become aware of the space between sounds,
Aware of the silence.
As best you can be aware of the sounds simply as sensations.
When you find that you're thinking about the sounds,
Reconnect as best you can with the direct awareness of the sensory qualities of the sound,
Such as the pitch,
The tone,
The loudness,
The duration,
Rather than the meaning or the implications of the sound.
Whenever you notice that your awareness is no longer focused on sounds in the moment,
Simply acknowledging where the mind has moved to and then return your awareness back to sounds as they arise,
Just as they are from one moment to the next.
When listening,
Just listen.
Just hear what is heard from moment to moment.
And when you are ready,
Let go of awareness of sounds and refocus your attention to your thoughts as if your thoughts were events that happen in the mind.
Just as you related to sounds,
Focusing your awareness on whenever a sound arose,
Noticing as it arises,
Develops and then passes away.
So now,
As best you can,
Bring awareness to thoughts that arise in the mind in the same way,
Noticing the thought arise,
Focusing awareness on them as they pass through the space of the mind and then eventually disappear.
There is no need to make thoughts come or go.
Just let them arise naturally in the same way that you related to sounds arising and passing away.
Some people find it helpful to bring awareness to thoughts in the mind in the same way they might see thoughts projected on a screen as if in a cinema.
So you sit,
Watching the screen,
Waiting for a thought or image or dialogue to arise.
When it does,
You pay attention to it so long as it's there,
On the screen.
And then you let it go as it passes away.
Just being with,
From moment to moment,
With whatever is most obvious in your experience now,
A choiceless awareness,
Taking the next few minutes to do so.
