Listening With Awareness

Hello.

This will be a short guided meditation for anyone looking to get started in their practice.

Before we begin,

I recommend wearing something comfortable and getting into a comfortable position.

Not so comfortable that you would fall asleep,

But comfortable that you can maintain your attention.

To start,

The easiest way to slip into the meditative flow state is to begin by stopping,

Stilling,

And just listening.

If you simply sit down,

Close your eyes,

And allow yourself to hear all the sounds that are going on around you,

No matter what they are or where they are coming from.

If you are in an office,

Outside,

In your home,

On the bus,

Or anywhere,

Just listen to the general noise of the world around and within,

As if you are listening to a stream or the wind.

Don't force anything.

Don't force a single aspect of anything you are doing.

Just try and be a little slow,

Perhaps even a little childlike.

Don't try to identify the sounds you are hearing.

Don't put names on them.

Don't identify feelings,

Sensations,

Thoughts,

Anything at all.

Simply allow them to play and echo in and out of your vessel.

Hear them and let them go.

Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear.

Let your body feel whatever it will feel.

Let your mind think whatever comes to mind.

Don't judge any of it.

There are no proper sounds or improper sounds.

There are no proper feelings or improper feelings.

The perceptions that you have are neither right nor are they wrong.

And it doesn't matter if somebody coughs or sneezes or drops something.

It's all just noise.

It's all just sound.

I want you to listen to the sound of my voice.

Just as if it were noise.

Meaningless noise.

Don't try to make any sense out of what I'm saying,

Because your brain will take care of that automatically.

You don't have to try to understand anything.

Just listen.

As you pursue this practice,

You will very naturally find that your mind and ego can't help naming the sounds,

Sensations,

Perceptions.

It will continue to identify them.

You will go on thinking and talking to yourself inside your head automatically without even trying to.

It will bubble up from seemingly nowhere.

But it's important that you don't try and repress those thoughts by forcing them out of your mind,

Because that will have precisely the same effect as if you were trying to smooth coarse stone with a butter knife.

You're just going to make the problem worse.

What you should do instead is as you hear sounds coming up in your head as thoughts,

Sensations,

Or feelings.

Simply listen to them.

Not as separate.

Not as special.

Just as the general noise going on.

Just as you would be listening to the sound of my voice.

Or the noise of cars going by.

Or rain in the distance.

So look at your own thoughts as just noises.

And soon enough you'll find that the so-called outside world and the so-called inside world come together.

That they are happening all at once and all together.

Your thoughts are happening.

The wind is happening.

The world is happening.

Everything is simply a happening.

And all you're doing is watching it.

Listening and breathing.

Just as you are just listening.

Just breathe.

You don't have to focus on the breath or constrain it or constrict it to your will.

Allow your breath to run just as it wills.

Allow it to be just as deep as it will.

Or as shallow.

As long or as short as it will.

Don't do any breathing exercises.

But just watch your breath.

Breathing the way it wants to breathe.

Notice everything.

Attend to this experience equally.

But don't do anything at all.

You will notice that when you're not thinking about your breathing or you're listening or you're thinking,

They all just go on the same.

This is the curious thing.

Is that we can be looked at as both voluntary and involuntary.

You can feel that on the one hand we are doing all of our actions and on the other hand that they are happening to us.

That is why breathing is the most important part of meditation.

Because it is going to show you as you become aware of your breath that our distinction,

Our definitions,

Our hard and fast divisions that we make between what we do and what happens to us is rather arbitrary.

So that as you watch your breath you will become aware slowly but surely that both the voluntary and the involuntary aspects of your experience are all one happening.

One experience.

One moment of nowness.

Now at first this may seem a little odd,

Scary,

Or even confusing because you may think that you are just a puppet of reverberations,

Genes,

And chemicals.

And that we are just passive witnesses of something that is going on completely beyond our control of even being ourselves.

Or we may think that we are doing everything,

Which would be a terrible responsibility and a position of which we are not qualified for in our own right.

It would be like having to wake up every day and will the sun to shine,

Or move the currents of the oceans,

Or continually remember to make your heart beat,

Or your stomach digest food.

Luckily this is not the case.

The truth of the matter is,

Is that both things are true.

You are both the universe happening and the happening of the universe.

You are the nirvins in your skin that turn electric vibrations from food and water into the energy that heats the air and raises the temperature.

You are your eardrums that convert the vibrations which you are hearing now from the air into sound,

And in that way you are creating the world.

But when we are not talking about it,

When we are not trying to philosophize or complicated with our limited language,

And there is just this happening,

Happened,

Happen,

This beyond any name we could come up with.

Listen to your own interior feelings and thoughts just as if they were something going on,

Not something you are doing,

But just happenings and watching,

Your breath and listening.

As a happening that is neither voluntary nor involuntary,

You are simply aware of these basic sensations,

Not judging them one way or another,

Simply attending to their happening.

Then you begin to be in the state of meditation.

But don't hurry anything.

Don't worry about the future,

Don't fret about the past,

And don't worry about the progress that you are making.

Just be entirely content to be this,

Watching and listening.

Whatever is happening,

Then there you will be,

Right where you are,

Right where you started,

The mass of energy that is the universe looking back at itself,

Simply being.

Rest in this without worry of time,

And come out of it,

Just whenever it feels right.