31-Day Meditation Challenge: Day 4

Welcome! This is the fourth 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. In this lesson, we're integrating the skills of stillness and strong posture. This is the last day of this lesson.

Enjoy.

Transcript

Hi everyone.

Alright,

So day four,

Integration day.

So as I explained yesterday,

Every lesson,

There's ten lessons throughout the course of this month,

Every lesson follows sort of like a three day schedule.

And on the third day,

You know,

You're gonna take it upon yourself without the guidance,

My guidance,

To sort of understand and overcome any confusion or resistance towards the particular technique or lesson.

And so,

Integration day,

All I'm gonna say before you get into your practice is,

You know,

What I think is the most beautiful analogy that sort of illuminates the the wonder of what integration actually means to us as,

You know,

Living people.

And so we all love a bright smile,

Right,

Filled with white straight teeth.

It provokes us,

It reminds us of compassion,

Of camaraderie,

Of beauty.

And so if you take one of those teeth out and you see it on the floor,

That little piece of what was once so beautiful because it is detached from the whole,

Represents something else entirely,

Right?

You see a tooth on the floor,

I'm sure there's horror,

There's confusion,

A whole sort of world of thoughts and ideas of how that tooth is on the floor,

Why that tooth is on the floor starts to plague the mind,

And it represents the opposite of what it did.

And so this is just sort of a quick metaphor to help us feel what integration can do for us and what disintegration can do for us.

And so today,

Consider that the technique of stillness and the technique of posture is disintegrated.

It's a tooth on the floor.

It's foreign,

It's alien,

It's misunderstood,

And in that it lacks its inherent beauty.

But throughout the course of these next 25 minutes,

I want you to integrate stillness and posture into the smile of your practice,

Okay?

And so I'm gonna leave it at that.

Three obstacles that I've been getting messages about.

Sleepiness in meditation,

What to do about it.

Discomfort in meditation,

What to do about it.

And then,

What is this first obstacle or this third obstacle?

Sleepiness,

Discomfort,

And maybe don't come to me.

So sleepiness,

The solution is simple.

Just take a second to hold your breath.

You're gonna inhale if you're feeling that fatigue,

That wobbly sort of torso effect.

Take a big breath in,

Hold your breath,

And hold your breath for as long as possible.

Let the CO2 levels build up in your body and at that point your brain is gonna turn on.

Why am I not breathing?

Why is CO2 increasing beyond its normal threshold?

That's the perfect mechanism to help you wake up.

And you can do that as many times as you need until you feel for yourself that you are alert enough to continue your practice,

You know,

Sort of with presence and with wakefulness.

The second obstacle is posturing again.

So over the last three days,

If you've consistently found that,

You know,

Sensations in your body are proving disruptive or distracting to you,

Take the initiative to put more cushioning underneath your hips or again sit in a chair or sit on a couch or sit on the side of your bed.

I promise you that,

You know,

Taking that step back often,

Often it's the ego,

It's our expectations we hold for ourselves that tell us to sit down and do what we sit in a way that we think a meditator should.

But if you just take that step back and strategically retreat,

Your practice is gonna flourish that much more quickly and with a lot more pleasure.

And then the third is time.

Okay,

So when you're in your practice and you're sort of left in the silence and in the the whirlwind of your thoughts,

A very common concern,

A very common distraction is how long have I been meditating?

How much longer is left in this practice?

Time to the yogis specifically is one of the three main expressions of maya.

Maya is the ephemeral illusion of reality.

And so time is always sort of moving forward according to our experience and it does a lot for us.

Knowing where we stand within time gives us a lot of comfort.

It reassures us of where exactly we exist.

And so when you take that away,

We become confused,

We become impatient,

We become aggravated.

And so this is very natural.

So if you start to question,

You know,

How much time do I have left?

How much time has it been since we started?

Enjoy the fact that you've lost track of time and how easily you've lost track of time.

Enjoy the confusion.

Take a few deep breaths,

Settle back in and then just appreciate it's certainly no longer than 20 minutes and we all have 20 minutes to spare.

Cool.

So with all that,

Let me set you all up and then you're off to integrate again stillness and strong posture into the growing smile of your practice.

Okay.

So find your seat.

Tilt your hips forward.

The value of an instruction,

The value of a technique is the consequence.

So it's helpful as a student,

As in a practitioner,

To always recognize the consequence.

As you tilt the hips forward,

The spine lengthens.

Rest your wrists on your knees.

If you're sitting on a chair or on the couch,

Rest the back of your hand on your knees.

Then everyone straighten the arms completely.

Spread your fingers wide.

Rotate your elbows down so they point towards the floor.

Now consequence as the arms straighten and rotate,

Your chest broadens and more often than not,

There's a little mental resistance,

A rejection of the straightening arms.

That's simply because it takes more energy.

Your body is programmed to conserve energy.

But again,

Notice the effect.

Bring a random finger to each thumb.

These are your mudras,

Your gestures that signify you're not just sitting down.

You're sitting down in an extremely conscious way.

To try to tap into the grace,

The finesse of these shapes you're making with your hands.

Shut your jaw,

Press your tongue into the back of your two front teeth.

Again,

Drop the chin just enough to decompress the base of your skull.

Then organize your skull so it is positioned exactly above the center of your hips.

That might mean you have to lean backwards.

That might mean you have to lean forwards.

Now as you inhale,

Breathe into the belly.

As the belly inflates first,

Feel the rib cage swell second.

Try to breathe all the way up into the collarbone and the base of the throat.

Now as you exhale to support your posture,

Pull the belly in,

But try to sit up with more length,

With more pride as you exhale.

And so it feels like the exhale is actually more active,

More engaging than the inhale.

Okay,

You're on your own.

If you get tired,

The body starts to wobble.

Just take a big breath in and hold.

Let the CO2 levels build.

That's going to wake up your brain and in that you can resume your practice with presence and wakefulness.

If there is pain at this point,

Or at any point in the next 20 minutes,

Tolerate it.

You're trying to integrate stillness and learn how to not react,

Learn how to not reject.

And if you get confused or distracted about what time it is,

How much time is left,

How much time you've been meditating for,

Appreciate that's a very common thought.

Enjoy the confusion,

Enjoy the dissolution of minutes and seconds,

And how easily time can be broken.

Let's take a deep breath in.

As you exhale,

Pull the belly in,

Lengthen the spine.

Again,

Very active exhales.

Okay,

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 you you you you you you you you you you you you you you now refocus on the experience of stillness itself acknowledge where your mind is or was and again redirect your attention to physical stillness and within that stillness your posture.

Meditation is about mastering our minds,

But the mind is at once powerful and subtle.

With the reputation of being untamable and wild.

So to gain leverage over this mind and to build the necessary skills,

Utilize the body.

And so I ask you here,

Over these last four days has stillness and strong posture earned its place in your routine?

Do you trust it?

Now try to sense that stillness is a gesture of control.

It's an expression of self-restraint.

And whether it's easy or difficult,

As you restrain your body's motor functions,

There is a sense of power.

There's a sense of confidence.

But notice at the same time it seems that you are overcoming or attempting to overcome the impulse to react,

To fidget,

To open your eyes.

I want you to feel the instinct that seems to ooze out of your body,

Compelling you to move with the world.

Slow down the breath.

And so our willingness to arrest the instinct to interact with our environment and to interact with the external takes power.

It takes wakefulness.

It takes second-to-second consciousness.

And for that reason we utilize our posture.

Very gently and subtly,

Think about the way a branch of a tree grows,

Invisible to the naked eye.

Tilt your hips slightly forward,

Straighten your arms,

And lengthen the spine.

And as you readjust your posture,

Always paying attention to the consequence,

Notice again a surge of alertness,

Confidence,

And authority.

And so you leverage that consequence,

Leverage your posture to reinvest into your stillness,

To impose restraint onto your instincts,

Which compel you to interact with the external.

So the key value of this first lesson is that through stillness we learn to internalize.

What meditation is,

Is the internalizing of our awareness.

And to prove that to ourselves,

We can't respond to our environment.

We can't respond to our discomfort.

We can't be bothered by time.

We can't be bothered by the future.

We can't be bothered by our relationships.

The reason internalizing is valuable is because it's there that we find the solutions to our suffering and distress,

And an answer to that deeply human question,

Who and what am I?

So take a second to contemplate that.

It's only from within ourselves that we can find a solution to that little buzz of distress and doubt that all people know,

But only some choose to acknowledge.

It's that distress that compels us to react and interact with our environment,

To change things,

To go new places.

And it's only from within ourselves that we can answer in any significant way that impossible question,

Who and what am I?

And so now adding a little ritual to the way we end our meditation,

Everyone bring your hands to heart center,

Something like a prayer.

Again,

Build your posture.

And to prove your consciousness,

To prove your control,

Increase your sincerity.

Slow down the breath.

And I'd like you to draw a line in the sand.

What is outside of me?

What is inside?

What is external?

What is internal?

And I'd like you to consider from this point on that meditation is about learning to occupy and explore the internal.

Let's take a deep inhale and a slow exhale.

Keep the eyes closed.

Let the wrists and hands float back to the knees.

And with your next breath in,

Open your eyes and just repeat,

I am no longer meditating.

I'd like you to appreciate that that transition,

You were meditating and now you're not meditating.

That transition is the externalization of your awareness.

It's the slingshotting back out of the mind.

Reviews

These are very nice practices whether you are new or are a more experienced meditator. Good skills to learn, nice quiet time to sink deeper. Thank you. ☮️💖🙏