Hello.
Welcome.
Thank you for taking the time for meditation for yourself today.
Today we will do a 15 to 20 minute meditation practice exploring the sensory experience through inner nature and outer nature and the interaction between inner and outer.
We will start with a sense of feeling,
Physical sensations,
Kinesthetic awareness of the body.
We will start by just settling into the body.
Perhaps there is a little bit of movement or adjustment to find a comfortable position that your awareness can stabilize in.
And as you begin to settle into your body,
You may be drawn to a particular physical sensation automatically.
Or you may also notice other sensations,
Hearing,
Smell,
Sight,
That draw your awareness away from the physical sensations or even inner dialogue.
If any of those things arise,
No problem.
When you recognize that,
Just coming back to the physical sensation in this moment.
The most concrete physical sensation is often a feeling of contact or pressure with the feet and the legs and the pelvis and the sit bones as you are sitting with your seat with the earth.
Other physical sensations that may arise in inner nature is awareness of the movement of the body with the breath.
You may find that you want to track or take note of each physical sensation.
Or you may like to stay with one particular sensation for a period of time.
As your awareness settles in inner nature and the physical sensations,
You may start to feel or become aware of more subtle inner sensations,
Such as tension or discomfort within the body.
Or you may feel pleasure or a release of tension at times.
Feeling the sensation of the breath in the body.
Even attuning attention to the quality of sensation in the in-breath or the out-breath.
You may have already noticed that awareness is also present to outer nature or the interaction,
The physical sensations that outer nature brings.
The solidity of the earth below you.
Gravity pulling you down.
And on a more subtle level,
Perhaps there is an awareness of the temperature of the air.
Feeling on your skin.
Or perhaps movement of the earth's breath or the air around you.
You may also become aware of the presence of the warmth of the sun or the coolness of the clouds.
We will begin to allow the awareness of physical sensations to move into the background and bringing the sense of hearing into the foreground.
Noticing that the senses arrive from that outer nature.
And with inner nature,
Perhaps on a more subtle level,
The sound of the breath and sound of the heartbeat perhaps.
The sounds of outer nature.
The birdsong.
The sound of the breeze.
Human made mechanical sounds.
And you may even notice on a very subtle level,
The sound of your thoughts.
If the sound of your thoughts take the foreground,
No problem.
Just allowing the sound of your breath or the sound of the symphony of nature to come back into the focus of your awareness.
Allowing yourself to be bathed by the sounds.
And perhaps noticing if there's an affinity towards a particular sound or an aversion towards a particular sound.
No need to label the sounds,
Just receiving all the sounds.
And if you notice distraction from the sound of your thoughts,
Or reactivity to sound,
Or other sensations,
Just returning back to hearing.
We will then begin to shift our awareness briefly on the combined sense of smell and taste.
With inner nature,
Perhaps you notice your own smell.
Taste yourself.
Qualities of sweetness,
Salty or bitter or sour.
And perhaps becoming aware of outer nature of smell and taste.
Perhaps there is a scent of herbs or flowers or organic earth or rain.
And if you open your mouth for just a moment,
You may get a sense of the quality of taste of the environment around you.
Very subtle sense of awareness.
You may get a sense of dryness or wetness or alkalinity or acidity or saltiness or metallic or sweet,
Both through your sense of smell and taste through the outer environment.
And then as you feel ready,
Shifting your awareness to the sense of inner sight,
Inner nature,
Vision.
Before you open your eyes,
Being aware of the play of shadow and light beneath your eyelids.
And then slowly beginning to open your eyes.
Just taking in light and shadow.
And then perhaps gradually increasing to noticing shape.
And then color.
Then you may start to notice texture and detail.
Then beginning to open to the wide panorama of sight.
To gaze out in the distance to a center point in front of you.
But not focusing on that center point.
It may be at the horizon.
It may be slightly lifted,
Or slightly lowered,
Depending on how your eyes see.
And your awareness is wide angle vision.
The full circumference of vision.
Peripheral vision from side to side.
And top to bottom.
And you're just seeing.
You may notice movement.
Or again,
Light and dark.
You may notice insects or birds.
But not focusing on the details.
Just a soft gaze into the distance.
Opening your vision as wide as the vista allows.
