I'm Elliot Dash,
Welcoming you to Beyond Meditation,
Stillness is Your Natural State.
We begin with a short teaching,
Followed by a meditation practice that offers a direct experience of the teaching.
Today's session focuses on the essence of the meditative mind,
Our natural stillness.
We usually begin with one or more of the traditional forms of meditation that help calm the mind.
For example,
Mindful meditation,
Mindfulness meditation,
Guided meditations,
And so on.
At first there is a distinct demarcation between the formal session called meditation practice and the rest of the day called post meditation.
During our practice,
Our mind shifts from restless to calm.
And daily life resumes,
As most often a return to the usual tenacious mental chatter.
These early efforts seek to calm the active mind and diminish the influence of random thoughts.
To move the needle on the continuum from restless mind to a calm mind.
The techniques of early meditation practice are fine for getting started.
They are an important stepping stone.
But if you were satisfied with the newly gained ability to temporarily calm the mind and thus stop your efforts there,
The very practice that helped you to achieve an upgraded mental state will become an obstacle to moving beyond to a larger experience of self.
And it is in our larger self that we experience natural stillness.
Stillness and clarity which progressively bring the stress and suffering to an end,
Revealing our expansive human possibilities.
This stillness is not on the continuum with restlessness.
It is innate to our larger self and inherently stable as long as we live in this natural self.
Natural stillness and presence are always available right here,
Right now.
They are our foundational state of being.
However,
They are obscured by our mental chatter.
As we quiet the mental chatter,
We transcend our personal trauma and enter the space of our natural and deeper self.
There we discover what is said to be a peace and inner stillness that surpasses understanding.
This state of inner stillness remains as long as you dwell in a natural self.
It is undisturbed by the movements of the mind or the challenges of daily life.
It is the source of a sustained wellness and wholeness.
It will amaze you to discover how simple it is.
It takes time and practice to stabilize this capacity.
Let's begin.
Let's close our eyes and first calm the mind,
The usual coarse noise of the mind with a simple effortless use of our breath.
This method automatically deactivates the brain centers,
The neural default mode responsible for the restless mind.
Then we will drop into the natural stillness of our true self.
In those moments when you touch a natural stillness,
You will know through your own experience the difference between stillness and mental calm.
Here's how we do this technique.
We take a deep breath in,
We blow it out,
And on the out breath we empty out the content of our mind.
We imagine emptying out the content of our mind.
And then we hold the breath.
When we hold the breath,
The relationship of the respiratory centers to the neural default mode is such that the mind naturally goes into a place of stillness,
Awareness,
And non-cognition.
So you just dwell in that.
Deep in breath,
Blow out,
Emptying the mind,
Then hold breath for a comfortable period of time and rest in that simple,
Still,
Clear awareness.
We'll do it together,
But you do it at your own pace.
We'll do it for a couple of minutes because your pace may be different than mine.
We'll do it for a couple of minutes.
The longer you hold the breath,
The longer you experience that state of awareness,
Stillness,
Ease and peace.
Just dwell in that.
Remember that into the next in breath,
And then blow out and further empty out the mind.
Continue with another minute or so and just experiencing how your mind is slowly dropping into a place of stillness.
So simple,
So effortless,
No struggle.
The longer the breath hold,
The longer the stillness.
Remember,
You can do this at any time that your mind seems out of control,
Including for a few minutes during your daily activities,
In which case you can even do it with your eyes open.
Now return to normal breathing,
With the breathing being slow,
Harmonious,
Quiet,
Still,
Because this does the same thing.
It suppresses the activation of the neural default mode.
So just a slow,
Even,
Natural breath.
Seeing that stillness,
That awareness,
We're going to drop in to our natural self,
To our natural stillness.
Just as we leave our shoes outside of a sacred space before we enter it,
Here similarly we're going to leave our personal self,
Our identity,
Our thoughts,
Our feelings,
Our past history.
Just let them be.
Let them go.
You'll be able to pick them up at the end of this exercise.
Let gender go,
Age go,
Your sense of an individual identity.
Just drop into a simple,
Easeful presence and awareness.
If you need to take a few breaths and breath holes,
You can do so at any time.
Just the ease,
The clarity,
The absence for the moment of a sense of personal self,
The absence of past history,
The absence of your identities,
Your gender,
Your age.
Just awareness,
Just presence,
Just being.
That's who you are.
Nothing to create,
Nothing to imagine.
Just letting go of who you are not and experience what's left,
Who you are.
Real,
Clear,
Aware presence.
No effort,
No struggle.
Just letting go and letting be.
This is a place that is still naturally.
That stillness is not on a continuum with restlessness.
As long as you are in this place of presence and beingness,
You will experience this stillness.
And let's have a sense of the deepest self,
Of who I am before,
My acquired personality,
My ego structure,
Who I've been from the very beginning.
Home,
Home,
Home.
Still in that place with a sense of ease and peace.
You might notice the difference between calm and stillness.
It's very subtle.
This has a clarity to it,
An ease,
A naturalness.
It feels like home.
Feels like it's always been there and it has.
Freed from the dominance of ceaseless and tenacious mental activity,
Our usual sense of self softens,
Becomes more porous,
Slowly,
Slowly dissolves.
What remains is our primal foundational awareness,
Clarity,
And natural inner stillness.
That stillness is not the calmness of our ordinary mind.
It's nothing we create.
It's what's there,
What reveals itself.
We let go of everything that we are not.
That stillness,
That natural self,
Is the ground of our being and is uninterrupted by the flow of life's circumstances and challenges.
It is quite different than what we customly call the quiet or the calm mind.
Both that quietness and calmness are on the same continuum of the ordinary personal mind.
The stillness is the innate quality of the natural self.
That's the net.
Notice the awareness,
The openness,
The spaciousness,
The ease,
Even of the mind,
The ordinary mind.
Manifest thoughts,
Feelings,
Or images.
They come,
They go,
Without any attention from you.
You remain in the place of awareness and presence and beingness,
Your natural state.
You may wish to practice dropping into your natural stillness and natural self.
You may wish to practice dropping into your natural state.
