Hi,
It's Brooks.
And welcome to It's Nice to Be Here.
We're gonna do a meditation that talks about how nice it is to be here.
And so I'd like you to find a comfortable place to sit or to lie down.
And you can close your eyes or not.
It's up to you.
And focus on your breathing.
Feel that breath come in and go back out.
The breath comes in.
The breath goes out.
The body's breathing you.
It's nice to feel life loving us.
Life always finds the time to breathe us.
To beat our hearts.
The breath comes in.
The breath goes out.
I'd like you to take your awareness and with that curious looking,
With your curiosity,
Take a look to see what it feels like to be here.
You're here.
What does that feel like?
Your hereness.
The sense of being here.
Here you are.
You can call it your sense of presence if you'd like.
Or just simply your here.
We're here because we're alive in this moment.
If we weren't alive we couldn't be here.
That might sound funny but there's something very profound in being here.
You could say that you brought your hereness with you to this meditation,
To this moment.
With that curious looking,
See what the current of here-ness feels like.
Feel how big it is.
How vast.
Wherever you go,
Whatever you do,
That feeling of here-ness is with you.
You could think of it as aliveness.
Perhaps you might notice it feels like a force.
A very powerful force.
To be alive is very powerful.
We rarely notice,
If at all,
That feeling of being alive.
Because we're always alive.
We're used to it.
And whatever's common goes unnoticed.
But if you think about it,
If we weren't here,
If we weren't alive,
Then we wouldn't be.
We wouldn't have this experience or any experience.
So being here,
Your here-ness,
Is your most valuable possession.
Where in your body do you feel the here-ness?
Take that curious look.
Hmm,
I wonder where it is.
Imagine that feeling of here-ness that you have within you.
Does it extend past the borders of your body?
Is it limited to just your body?
Or does it extend out like rays of the sun?
If you think about it,
This feeling of here-ness,
This powerful,
Alive feeling of here-ness,
Besides your feeling of this,
Perhaps,
Deep within others,
Is also that feeling of here-ness,
Of aliveness,
Even if they don't notice it.
I'd like you to consider that feeling that the alive here are feeling as feeling of life force,
The animating force.
That which moves the planets,
Rotates the planets,
That builds stars,
Is in you as here-ness.
And not just you but other people too.
And when we think of things this way,
This here-ness in ourselves and in others,
Then we can feel an affinity for others,
No matter what differences that exist between us and them.
There's that same current.
When we recognize that,
When we can see ourselves in others,
And this opportunity for greater affinity and connection with others.
If you're spending time with someone or you're thinking about someone and you happen to be focused on the differences that you feel between the other person,
Maybe you wonder how they could feel that way,
And then you remember that here-ness.
Oh yeah,
They must have that here-ness within them too.
So we've reached the end of our meditation.
So you can stretch,
Open your eyes,
Look around,
And congratulations on noticing that you're here,
You're here-ness.
It's nice to be here.
