Awareness Is Aliveness | Breathing Technique For Inner Peace

What is awareness? It is an intrinsic ability of our consciousness to know, and it can be expressed through our senses like our vision and hearing. If there is no awareness, there is no experience. In this meditation session, I talk about the 4 levels of the human ability to modify awareness. We will start by observing our breath and slowly become more aware of the energy of the breathing process. And as we feel inner peace arising, we move on. Format: Talk & Guidance. Listen & Meditate, Dhyanse.

Transcript

Hi,

This is Dhyan Se and you're listening to Dhyan Se Meditation Podcast.

This meditation session was given on 1st of April 2019 in Basel,

Switzerland.

Life is awareness and awareness is life.

I explain in more detail during this meditation session.

A very warm welcome to all of you in this Monday evening meditation session with me,

Dhyan Se.

I see a couple of new faces.

Welcome to you as well.

In today's session,

We are going to go a little bit deeper into what is awareness,

What are the different levels of awareness,

How do we utilize this awareness in knowing oneself,

In knowing the world.

So I will go,

I'll try my best to take you along into the depths of these understandings.

Hope you can follow what I'm saying.

If not,

Take it easy.

Just contemplate about it afterwards and follow my guidance during the meditation session.

Before we open the topic up,

I would like you all to take this moment and just think about what is awareness.

There's a lot of talk about awareness,

Self-awareness,

It's important,

It's not important,

Or it brings happiness,

It doesn't bring happiness,

It brings bliss,

And this and that.

So much talk about awareness,

Self-awareness,

And so on.

And I would like to know from you,

What do you think about awareness?

What does this mean to you when you hear this word awareness?

What is it that comes to your mind when we say awareness?

Feel alive.

Wow,

Very nice.

To be in the moment,

Present now.

What else?

Let's open this topic up together to understand what is this awareness.

To not get distracted by your own activity.

Yeah,

To not get distracted.

What else?

To understand things.

To be more open.

What is this awareness that this whole talk is about,

This whole concept of meditation,

Spirituality,

Mindfulness.

So many concepts are rooted in this one word,

Awareness.

What is it?

In your own experience,

Not what you learn somewhere.

In your own experience,

When you say awareness,

What comes to your mind?

What is the feeling?

Acceptance without words.

Acceptance without bias,

You said.

Realizing what you have and be thankful for it.

Realizing what you have and be thankful for it.

So many different shades of this one word.

Contemplate more.

What is awareness?

Go more with the feeling of it.

When you hear this word awareness,

What does this point to?

In your own experience,

Nobody is going to judge what you're saying.

So it's a discussion that we have here.

Knowing yourself.

Knowing yourself.

Knowing your emotions.

Knowing your emotions.

What else?

Throughout the meditation,

I use this word awareness all the time.

So it's important that we all have the common understanding of what is awareness.

When we say awareness,

What does this mean really?

Seeing.

Seeing.

Very simple and exactly seeing.

Sorry?

Realizing how your body feels.

Hearing.

So it's so simple.

When I raise my hand,

If I say be aware of my hand,

If you cannot become aware of this hand,

The whole world does not mean anything.

This awareness is your intrinsic ability of your consciousness to know.

It expresses through when you use your eyes,

It expresses itself as vision and you see.

When you hear what the trams outside are making noises,

You become aware of the tram.

So this is that ability for you to know.

And this knowing is the fundamental of being alive,

As you said.

We are alive.

What does this mean?

That we are alive?

It means that we are aware,

We are conscious and we try to know this world,

We try to experience this world.

If there is no awareness,

There is no experience.

Take an example of somebody in deep sleep.

When you are in every night you go to sleep,

When you start going to sleep,

You are dreaming,

But there comes a point where you are in complete deep sleep.

Every night you are in complete deep sleep.

What happens then?

Where are your worries?

Where are your plans?

Where are your thoughts?

Where is the whole world?

It's gone.

Where are you?

You don't even,

You're not even aware of yourself.

Every night you are in that state where there is no awareness.

The whole world stops.

So to be alive,

To be in this world is in a way driven by your awareness.

When you are aware,

Then you start to experience the world the way it is.

Now this awareness has different levels which you can train,

Which you can practice.

The first level of this awareness is attention.

When I say bring your attention to my hand,

Your awareness,

Wherever it was,

Immediately comes to my hand.

Then what happens?

In a few seconds it gets distracted.

You hear something,

Then it goes to the noises outside or it goes to your thoughts.

It goes to so many different things.

So this first level of awareness is this attention,

Which is the moment you want to point your awareness somewhere,

You call that awareness and you point it somewhere.

When you can do this more,

It becomes concentration.

That you can hold your awareness at one particular point.

When I say concentrate on my hand,

What I'm saying is keep your awareness at my hand and not anywhere else.

So what you try to do is you try to focus,

You try to narrow down.

There is a bit of effort involved in making that happen.

In our daily life,

In our daily functioning,

We only use these two levels of awareness.

One is attention,

The other is concentration.

And not even fully.

The kind of lifestyles that we have today,

We have almost lost the ability of concentration.

Just try to even concentrate on any object,

Any simple thing for more than a minute,

Two minutes,

Three minutes.

And you see how your mind runs away and goes into thoughts,

Into plans,

Into past,

Into future.

And there is no ability left to concentrate.

So this is something which needs to be trained,

Which needs to be built back because it's very powerful.

The more you can concentrate,

The more you can direct your awareness and hold your awareness somewhere,

The more powerful you are.

Then you go one skill more advanced.

Then you come to a stage which is known as meditation.

Let me explain.

When you become aware of an object,

There are three elements in it.

One,

The object.

Second,

The observation or the awareness or the act.

Third,

The observer.

Three things,

Object,

Observation and the observer.

When you concentrate or when you are attentive,

You're not really worried about the observer.

You're not concerned about the process.

That's observation.

You're only concerned about the object.

If I say concentrate on my hand,

You're just concerned about the object.

You're not really concerned about the process.

You're not concerned about who is actually observing or concentrating.

But in meditation,

What happens is you start expanding your awareness away from the object to also the process,

Which is observation,

To the observer and everything else around it as well.

So concentration is narrowing down your awareness.

Meditation is letting it expand more and more.

At the same time,

You're not distracted.

So if you first of all train concentration,

It helps you to also meditate because then this effortless awareness on everything becomes easier.

First,

The effort to bring your awareness to one object and slowly expanding this to from the object to maybe the observer to maybe the process of observation and everything around it.

So much so that the entire space is in your observation,

Is in your awareness.

That's what meditation is.

There's one more advanced level of this awareness,

Which we don't have to right now go into.

It is for those who dedicate their entire life to practicing meditation,

To practicing concentration,

To practice how to maneuver this ability of awareness to advanced degrees.

And that is called as Samadhi.

Samadhi is a state where when this object,

This observation and the observer,

They all three collapse into one.

And this is not hocus pocus.

This is real experience of those people who practice this,

Who really take this as a serious practice and continue for years.

And it's possible for everyone to come to a point where you develop this ability of awareness to that extent that there is no separation between the object,

The observation and the observer.

This we don't have to touch in the session here today,

But just that you know to what extent you can develop your awareness,

To what extent you can develop this ability.

And by developing this ability of awareness,

You can know the world,

You can know yourself.

In spirituality,

In meditation,

In these practices,

The entire effort is to know more and more of oneself.

Because the more we know ourselves,

The better we can execute ourselves in this world.

When I say knowing oneself,

It can just mean on the surface,

Knowing oneself.

What are my thoughts all the time?

What are how am I reacting in situations?

What are my emotions?

That's one kind of superficial self awareness.

Then it can go deeper.

It can go into what is this energy that I have in me?

What is this life that is running in me to going even further deeper to who am I?

What is this?

We get 70,

80,

90 years on this planet.

What is this life?

What is this who am I?

And to more deeper questions,

If you ever have those questions,

There is only one way to know oneself,

To know these different levels of oneself,

And that is awareness.

That is this ability of awareness and doing this,

Experiencing this oneself,

Not reading about it,

Not hearing about it,

But really in your own experience,

Trying to go deeper in oneself.

If there is an opportunity in life,

If there is a question like that,

That is there in our mind.

For today's meditation session,

We will use a very simple object,

Which is the basis of many,

Many meditations.

And that object is your own breath.

It's very easy to bring your attention,

Your awareness to your breath.

And as your awareness settles more and more on your breath,

I'll guide you through the process and we'll go different levels of depth in your own being.

As long as you can follow,

Follow,

If not stay silent,

Remain aware.

The first level is the gross,

Means when I'll say,

Keep your awareness on your breath.

This means this physical gross feeling of breath,

Breath going in,

Breath going out,

The feeling of this breath that goes in your body,

Wherever it's touching,

All the sensation is creating.

You just keep your awareness in this physical part,

In this physical process and be in this awareness for a few minutes in this gross feeling of what is this breath and allow yourself to settle.

By doing that,

Your body will settle.

By doing that,

Your mind will settle.

Then we will go one level deeper to the subtle object,

Which is what is behind this breath.

It's the energy that is the prana that is flowing in and out of us.

I don't know if you have heard of prana,

But you could in a very simple way you can understand this as this energy that comes along with the breath.

And when you exhale,

It goes out.

So when you will,

When I will say,

Now let's move to the subtle object,

This would mean that you'll move away from just the sensation of the breath to this feeling of energy,

Which comes along with the breath.

And you'll have enough time to give yourself and try to experience,

Try to relate to this feeling of what this breath is bringing in and out all the time.

Can I feel the energy of the breath or not?

If you're able to do that,

Then we'll go one level deeper and so on.

So I will take you through these different levels,

Depending on how comfortable you feel,

How far you can go.

If you can go beyond the prana,

Then there is this third level,

Which is the sense of bliss.

When you are absolutely centered and your awareness is all the time on your breath,

And you could feel the prana,

The energy flowing in and out,

Then slowly you become very silent.

Slowly,

A sense of bliss starts to arise.

A sense of inner peace starts to arise.

And I would wish that then you focus on that.

Try to experience that inner peace,

That bliss,

That sense of centeredness that arises when you are keeping your awareness on the breath.

Any questions so far?

Not too complicated?

All right,

Sounds good.

Then let's close our eyes.

Take a nice deep breath.

Inhale from the nose.

And also exhale from the nose.

Eyes relaxed.

Your face relaxed.

And a very gentle smile on your face as we enter into this meditation.

Take another deep breath in from the nose.

And out from the nose.

And allow your body to relax.

As you breathe in and out,

Bring your awareness to your breath.

And gently watch your breath.

Observe your breath.

Feel your breath.

Let the breath flow naturally,

Effortlessly,

As you always do.

Try to keep your awareness on your breath as it flows in and out.

As your awareness settles on the breath,

Your mind settles,

Your body settles.

Let the breath flow naturally,

Effortlessly,

As you always do.

Don't force anything.

Gentle awareness on your breath.

If you get distracted by thoughts,

Noises or anything,

Simply bring your awareness back to your breath.

And continue observing.

Notice the flow of the breath touching your nose,

Your lungs,

Going all the way down.

And out.

And out.

As you observe your breath,

Your breath becomes shallow.

It softens up.

And out.

Bring back your awareness to the breath.

Stay with it.

Now with every breath,

Feel the energy that flows in and out.

And try to keep your awareness on this energy that flows as you inhale and exhale.

And out.

Feel the energy that flows with every breath.

And out.

Breath flowing in and out naturally.

And out.

Every breath becoming more and more silent.

And out.

With every breath,

Notice your silence.

Notice the sense of peace,

Sense of bliss in your inner space.

And out.

Awareness on the breath,

The feeling,

The silence.

And out.

And out.

Awareness on the breath.

The energy of the breath.

And out.

Your body is silent.

Your mind is silent.

And your awareness on your breath.

The energy of the breath,

The silence of the breath.

And out.

And out.

Now leave the focus on the breath.

And just remain aware of nothing in particular.

Silent and aware.

Stay silent and aware as you sit in meditation.

And out.

Let yourself go deeper in this silence with awareness.

And out.

And out.

Stay silent and aware.

And aware.

And out.

And out.

Stay silent.

Like this.

Completely still,

Silent and aware.

Now bring your awareness back to your breath.

And just notice how your breath is gently flowing in and out.

Notice how your mind is calm,

Your body still.

Bring your awareness to your body.

Feel all the sensations in the body.

The sensations in your mind,

In your head.

This moment to be thankful that you are alive.

To be thankful that you are healthy.

To be thankful that you are here,

And now in this present moment.

And with that,

Very gently and slowly,

You may open your eyes,

Slowly move your body,

Or stay silent with your eyes closed.

For the next couple of minutes,

I would like you to reflect on what you just went through.

The experience of meditation,

What went through your body,

What went through your mind,

How you felt.

Take a couple of minutes and on your own,

Just reflect.

Take your time.

And if you wish to move your body,

You can stretch.

Boom.

Okay.

In the last few minutes of this session,

We try to share if there is something to share from one's own experience,

If there are any questions,

Any doubts,

Anything about meditation that you would like to ask,

You would like to clarify,

We take these few minutes at the end of this session to go through them.

I don't like being sleepy,

Can you kind of prevent this?

Yes,

If you are feeling asleep,

It means that you are very tired.

I slept like 9 hours.

Sometimes you are mentally tired from things that you do during the day or just generally you are carrying all that tiredness and then when you give yourself those moments of meditation or awareness,

Then suddenly you become aware of that and you fall asleep or you get into that tiredness of the sleep.

So it's very normal in the beginning.

I can see that you need that rest while you do this meditation.

So try to take this as an indicator to give yourself a bit more rest and when you sit for meditation,

Slowly,

Eventually when your practice builds up,

You will see that you will be much more awake,

Much more aware and not falling asleep during meditation.

So take this as a sign that you need a bit more rest,

Which you usually don't allow yourself,

Even if you had slept 9 hours last night.

Anyone else?

Any questions?

Any doubts?

Anything to share?

How many times do you think you can meditate when you get bliss?

It takes a while.

It depends on so many things.

It depends on your lifestyle,

It depends on how much rest you give yourself.

So it's something subjective and what we do here,

What I try to teach here,

What I try to bring here is not aimed at practices which go in thousands of hours.

The idea is to bring something that you can integrate into your daily life,

10 minutes,

15 minutes,

20 minutes.

And when you start doing that,

You see that it doesn't take long,

It takes a matter of days.

I don't know if you ever gave yourself 20 days,

30 days,

Just a month of every day building this as a practice.

You'll see that it becomes so much easier when you do this every day,

Just for even a month,

Than coming to it after a week or after 3-4 days.

It's always difficult to get in,

It's always difficult to tune in.

So that would be my general answer.

If there is anything specific that you find that in your practice is not clicking,

Is not happening,

This we can discuss offline if you want.

Because sometimes it might be that you are using a technique that doesn't fit you,

Sometimes it might be that you understand it wrongly and do it wrongly.

So it's good to just talk about it one on one to see where is the problem,

If there is any problem,

Or it's just a matter of how long you give this as a practice,

How much time do you give this as a practice.

And at the same time it's very normal for the mind to wander around.

We have lifestyles where we are not sitting and meditating 10 hours on a mountain doing nothing else than just meditation,

So it's normal to have your mind being busy and going here and there from your day.

But that's exactly why we put a counter weight to it,

Which is to sit down,

To give it space.

In the beginning it's running all over the place,

But the more you settle in silence,

The more you settle awareness,

You'll see that it will also stop jumping around and giving you more room to be.

And more and more it will become disciplined for you to sit silently and to sit comfortably.

Anything else?

For me it's also difficult that I live off of my brain,

That I still have to do pictures in my mind,

I guess.

It's not that I'm distracted from other things,

But still I'm watching my brain.

I don't want to be aware of how it should be,

At least not like a subject in your brain.

I'm watching pictures of how my brain is calling.

I don't really understand it.

What does it mean to be aware of the breath?

You can start with this visualization,

If that comes easy to you,

That you're visualizing that you're breathing and there is a picture of how you are breathing.

Is that how you feel it?

That's a starting point.

When you do that more often,

You will see slowly that picture fades away and suddenly you come more and more to the reality,

Which is away from your visualization,

More to the feeling.

So visualization is what your mind is projecting for you.

When your mind is super active,

It doesn't allow you to even be aware of what's happening in your body.

It gives you constant substitutes,

Answers to what you want to do.

So when you want to be aware of the breath,

It gives you a picture of what's happening in your system and you start to focus on that.

It's okay.

Start with that because even in that visualization that you're breathing in and you're observing yourself breathing in and out,

Slowly your mind settles,

Gives away.

And without you making an effort,

You will jump from this visualization to your body and then you will start feeling it in your body.

I'm breathing in and out,

I'm observing within my body,

Breathing in and out.

This will become feeling.

So from visualization to feeling and that feeling would grow more and more to that extent that it will not remain physical anymore.

It will become more and more subtle,

More and more thinner,

More and more softer,

More and more deeper.

This is a journey which you will have to take from your imagination visualization of the breath to the physical feeling of the breath,

Then to the subtler feeling of the breath and yourself.

Breath is just one prop.

It's just one object.

It's the same story with our entire life that we are not even aware of our body.

We are only visualizing everything through the mind.

And that's exactly why we meditate.

That's exactly why we bring this practice in so that we move away from the projections of the mind to the reality.

The first reality is the body,

The physical body that yes,

I am.

And then it goes deeper and subtler into other layers.

So try this.

And as a technique,

If you find it difficult to focus on the breath,

There are many more other techniques.

There are many other objects where you can use them as your technique in these sessions.

Every time we do a totally different technique which has a different object or a different method.

Try it out.

I'm also putting these sessions out on social media,

On YouTube and so on.

So just go through the previous sessions and if you like something else,

Practice that.

Whatever you like,

Whatever technique you like,

Stick to that for a while and then see where it takes you.

Alright,

If there are no more questions,

It's eight o'clock.

I would like to thank all of you in joining me in this meditation session.

And wish you a lovely rest of the week.

Namaste.

Reviews

A beautiful practice. Namaste.

Thank you for another good talk and meditation. ☮️💖🙏