31-Day Meditation Challenge: Day 21

Welcome! This is the twenty-first lesson to a 31-Day Meditation Challenge recently recorded in July of 2020 entitled "Seek and Find Within." The audio recording is divided into an opening discourse and a guided meditation.

The intro discussion speaks of mental strength as the ability to choose what we pay attention to, termed selective attention. It also highlighted the potential effect of this technique; thinking about gratitude during the day, and how profound that small effort is!

Enjoy.

Transcript

All right, Good evening everyone. Another day. Cool, So this is an integration day. We're just gonna spend a lot of time, You're gonna spend a lot of time on your own contemplating gratitude. And because this is the last day we're focusing on this technique, You know what I hope most of all you gain from this little experiment is that you found it easier to experience gratitude in your day-to-day life. And if you did find that to be true, The idea of gratitude emerged in a time or in a space that it usually wouldn't have. Maybe you're walking down the street, Maybe you were in traffic, Maybe you're eating a meal. If that did occur for you, That's you know fairly profound because what that means is only after 40 minutes of actively contemplating this emotion and let's say within that 40 minute span of practice that you performed over these last two days that you were distracted for 50% of that. And I think that's a fair number. And so 20 minutes of contemplating this emotion, This virtue, Provoked it within you in the following hours of your life. And so what that means is just considering an idea, Considering an emotion has a fairly immediate effect on sort of your personality and the output of your individuality into the world. And then if you just sort of want to push that a little bit further and consider that you can build upon your capacity to focus and you can build upon the intensity in which you feel the emotions you are selecting to feel, Let's say gratitude, It opens up this door that you know allows us to imagine that we could actually reshape our personality and our responses in an extraordinarily visceral way. That you can truly become sort of abundantly gracious, Abundantly grateful. And at that point you can sort of knit pick what emotions you want to choose, What emotions you want to embody, You know, And for whatever reason. And actually build them upon yourself or into yourself. So super super cool stuff. And again the evidence is if you just had this little flash of gratitude while you were eating your cereal in the morning, Who knows? That is the evidence of you know really powerful neurological change and the potential of that. Cool. So alongside that what I want to talk about, These Dharma discussions are invaluable to the development of a meditative practice because it's not just enough to experience but there is a value in understanding what you're experiencing. And so what we're doing with this is we are building mental fitness. Not just mental health, Right? But a capacity to have a truly strong mind. And that strength is determined by being able to select in whatever degree of intensity what we are focusing on. And the significance of that is we are we become or we are absorbed by what we pay attention to. And I think one of the first lessons that we discover, The first truths of our inner nature that we discover when we meditate, Is that we at first, Unless we take the time to meditate, Really don't have that much control over what our minds are paying attention to. And that goes for inner emotions, That goes for you know thoughts, And that goes to you know sort of opens up into what we're paying attention to in our environment. And so you just want to put these words in your head, Mental strength is correlated to selective attention or selective focus. And with that, Okay, So what are we all focusing on? Whether we have control over our focus or we don't. What we are focusing on is reality. And one key point in sort of a spiritual sense of what reality is, Or one of its qualities, Is that reality is simultaneous. Everything is arising and occurring and dissolving at the same time in the same breath. And this is one of the most potent definitions of enlightenment or nirvana I've come across. So we're really pushing this into like the heavy-duty spiritual direction. But enlightenment or nirvana is the capacity to feel that all states of being are happening at once. That in this moment I, Let's just speak for myself, If I was in a perfect state of sort of enlightenment where the the ego, The limitations of the ego were dissolved, I would be able to feel that in this moment I am simultaneously insecure about who I am, What I am, What I'm saying, What I'm doing. But at the same exact moment, Completely confident in what I am and who I am, I would be able to feel that within me in this breath there is hatred and there is love. There is hope and there is dismay. There is physical comfort and there is physical discomfort. And if you just sort of, You know, Took the time to scan through all the possibilities of what I could be or what you could be and break those into sort of their dualistic opposites or pairs, And then, You know, Move through yourself and feel them all existing concurrently, This sort of would open you up into the idea of, Again, What nirvana is as an actual experience. And what that means for us is when we're focusing on gratitude and we're sort of looking into the void of a numb emotional state, Which we spoke about yesterday, We tend to sort of occupy a numbness. So you want to like check in with yourself. It's like, I'm not super ecstatic right now. I'm not sad. I'm just sort of here observing. But when you take a time to sift through the void, The space of your consciousness, You will find gratitude. And it's not that you conjured it up. It's that you uncovered it. And if you took the time to think and sort of scan through yourself, You would find sorrow and you would find enthusiasm and you would find jealousy. Whatever, Whatever you imagine is arising or is existent within you. And so that's a really beautiful, Poetic, Powerful idea. And it might just change the way you interact with this sort of work and really empower your ideas of mental strength as selective focus. You just need to find what you're looking for in the world and hone in on it. And that thing, That substance, That environment, That attitude will absorb you. And in that, You sort of move or exist through it. Cool. So that's that. Yeah, That's that's all I sort of wanted to share today. So what's the practice today? We were using the mantra, This will not last, To provoke gratitude under the context of our immortality, The fleetingness, Fleetingness of life. But today I'm just gonna let it be up to you. You can think about things. You can try to feel things. You can say phrases like thank you, Thank you, Thank you. Or I am thankful for this and I am thankful for that. Whatever tool you intuitively want to utilize to provoke that emotion or to recognize that emotion that always exists inside you, Use it. But once you start to feel it, Sort of like mental, Mental surgery or the Ikebana, Right, The the Japanese flower arranging, Once you feel gratitude, The emotion, You've struck it and it's sparked up, I want you to cut whatever, Whatever ideas or phrases you use to manifest it from the process so that you're fundamentally just holding or just experiencing gratitude detached from anything else. And, And in that it becomes really this sort of pure experience of the emotion and not necessarily what, You know, Where the emotion came from. And so this is just a little detail and that's, That's sort of it. Move, Move powerfully through this exercise today. Provoke your sincerity and of course manage your fundamentals. Be still. Breathe slowly. Those simple physical adjustments do so much to bolster your mental strength. Okay, Lovely. We have 22 minutes to practice. Comfortable seated position. And again right away, Once you assume this now familiar shape, Something changes. Try to feel that you're funneling your awareness into the most immediate experience of your reality, Which is what is closest to you and what is closest to you is in fact your body. And so if you take the time just to feel your body, Especially if you mistrust that, The significance of that effort, If you take the time to just feel your body you'll find you will become more mindful. In a strange sense of completeness, Wholeness, Safety, Stability emerges from feeling the body. Physical adjustments. Breathe more deeply into the belly. Feel it swell like a gourd. But as you exhale endeavor to stay tall and this will provoke wakefulness. Last bit of instruction. You're performing two actions. One action is to feel the subtle vibratory experience of the body, The tingling and buzzing of neural sensation, Maybe the flow of blood, The coolness of air temperature on the skin. And so you're feeling and that's pulling you deeper into immediate presence. But at the same time you're thinking about whatever it is you need to think about to provoke gratitude. Once you feel gratitude, Separate it from the thoughts, Memories, And ideas you used to create it. Just hold the emotion purely and independently. Feel that emotion in your body as well as in your mind. And notice if your mind is right and your practice is strong, Gratitude starts to absorb you. All right, Excellent work everybody. Happy you are all here. Slow down your breath one more time and you're off. You you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you slow down the breath and notice the consequence you consider what we are most grateful for is probably what we take most for granted. If we're grateful for the blue sky, We have to be grateful for eyes to see the sky. If we're grateful for the ocean, We have to be grateful for the skin and nervous system to feel the ocean. If we're thankful for family, We have to be grateful for a body that can perceive our families. That sensory experience feeds into your perception and your consciousness. Whatever you are grateful for depends on the consciousness of that object. What a yogi is most grateful for, What provokes that virtuous emotion into their heart, Is the fact that they are conscious. And as you sense your consciousness, The strange game is you're trying to find gratefulness and gratitude with this consciousness, Not realizing that that consciousness is the thing you are most grateful for. So feed the two into each other. Let the body disappear. Let all the external things disappear. Let the body disappear. Let the body disappear. Let the body disappear. Let the body disappear. I've often spoke about meditation as learning to occupy a position. This is it. The emotion of gratitude pulls us into this position because what we are most grateful for is the fact that we are conscious of reality. And when things are low, When things are hard, When there is illness, When there is loss, When there is suffering, A shallow idea of gratitude dissolves, But in hindsight we can look back. And most of us understand it was those moments that forged us and encouraged our consciousness to increase in some way. So again, In these final minutes, Feel that the consciousness you are using to pinpoint gratitude, The spotlight of that awareness that illuminates this emotion inside you, Is the thing you are most grateful for. And in that closed circuit, Let everything else wash away. And at this point you are extracting the seed from the husk, Birthing the soul, Atman, From the ego. At least this is how the yogis labeled it. But feel it. One more minute slow breaths. You bring your hands to heart center. Nice and slow, Unnatural patience. Swell into the belly. And picking up on yesterday's theme of Namaste, Externalize your awareness by listening to your room and appreciate that everything is occurring simultaneously, Whether you're aware of it or not. That there is sorrow within you as well as happiness. There is confidence as well as insecurity. There is an abundance of patience and a yearning to stay here, But at the same time there's dissatisfaction and an urgency to start moving again. A strong mind is better than a healthy mind because a strong mind learns to selectively pay attention to what it chooses to pay attention to. So focus on your patience, Focus on the world, And when you feel this connection between you and it, A private moment one-to-one, Just repeat Namaste in the mind. Notice here simultaneity. There is sincerity, But also insincerity. A spectrum. Thumb knuckles to third eye center, Focus on the star of sensation. Maximum focus, Feel nothing but that little burst of nerve sensation. Again, Exercising selective intention. For five, Increase focus. Four, Three, Two, Take a full exhale, Hold your breath with nothing in your lungs, Release your wrist to your knees, Random finger to each thumb, Selective attention. Rather than focusing on the stress or fear that naturally arises as you build CO2 in the body, Focus on tingling and buzzing, Focus on gratitude. When you need to breathe in through the nose and again hold the breath. Holding the breath as you now know increases physical sensation, Increases sensitivity, And wakes up the brain. Leverage that to focus more on the body and on the emotion. When you need to breathe normally, Do so. It's still just you in the world with your next breath in, Eyes open, Body stays still, Repeat in the mind, I am still meditating, Still conscious, Still connected to that which I am most grateful for, And as you look out into your room, Creative exercise, Just say namaste as if you were communicating to life itself through your walls, Through your possessions.