So we've come together again.
This much we know.
And if we don't know anything else,
There's that.
There's the intention,
The action of physically coming,
In our case here to the beach,
And laying out your towel and sitting on it.
And these things have the flavour of a ritual when you do them again and again.
And rituals can be really important in the formation of a habit.
Addicts often say that it's the ritual as much as the substance that draws them again and again to the same activity.
So the preparation can be equally as important as the experience that follows.
So in our case here,
We come to the beach,
We make that journey,
We lay out our towel and we sit.
We greet each other,
We sit.
This is the beginning of the ritual,
And then what?
And then what?
Once you've made your preparation,
Made active your intention,
Then maybe we can focus on the gathering,
The gathering of mind into the body where we are.
Where we've brought the body,
We can also bring the mind.
And how do we do that?
Well we can start to notice.
And in our case we have the sea to look at,
To listen to.
We have the sky above.
A few clouds.
Wispy,
Fair weather clouds.
We have a clear,
Clean horizon.
And turning to the sensations in the body,
We have a soft,
Cool breeze.
And the sun just gathering its warmth.
Not too hot yet.
Just warm.
And what else?
And what else?
We might send the mind a little deeper into the being to notice what's going on inside.
And for me today I find a little heaviness.
What about you?
What do you find when you go inside?
That heaviness for me might be linked to an emotion that I could call sadness.
I don't know what it is,
There's no story.
Yet.
There's no insight into what that is.
It's just the is-ness of it.
Ah,
This heaviness around the solar plexus that might be linked to an emotion that could be called sadness.
And when the mind wants to run away and look at the why,
Why,
Why,
I'm drawing it back,
Back to the feeling.
The sensation.
And that invites breath.
Breath wants to be present.
And so I invite you to invite your breath to be present in your body with your mind.
And we can do this by placing the mind upon the breath.
And travelling with the breath as it flows in and out of the body.
Connecting the inner and the outer worlds.
As we breathe in,
We bring in some of the outer world.
It becomes part of us.
And as we breathe out,
The breath moves into the outside world and we become part of it.
So let's stay with that for a little while,
Mingling ourselves with the outside world through the breath.
In breath,
Inviting in some of the outside world in the air that we breathe.
Without breath,
Allowing ourselves to mix.
Not that we have a choice with the outside world.
And we can know that it's not just the lungs that breathe.
The skin breathes too.
So as the lungs inhale and exhale,
So the skin inhales and exhales.
Inside entering now through all parts of the body.
And inside escaping also through the whole body.
And we may sense an edge to ourselves in the skin.
That we have a clear definition of where we end and where the outside begins.
The other begins.
This is me,
This is other.
Inside of the skin.
But as we spend more time with this particular meditation,
We might have a sense that these edges are blurring.
But the more of me I exhale into the outside and the more of the outside that I inhale into myself,
The more I'm unsure what is me and what is other.
Where I end and where other begins.
And somehow this thought can allow a release of the mind.
This tightness that we often get around me.
This contraction around me and mine.
It can be painful.
And it can be a relief to notice that me is not so clearly defined and mine is not so clearly defined.
And maybe there's a little bit more of me in you than I thought.
And a little bit more of you in me.
And so I becomes we and us.
And I think this relates to a feeling that I had when I just took a dip in the sea right before other people arrived for the meditation.
And the word that came to me was immersion.
Immersion,
As I immersed myself in this clear,
Calm water.
I had a strong sense of immersion.
That where I ended and where the sea began was not so clear actually.
And this was a relief.
A relief from this heaviness that might be sadness inside me.
Some of it was allowed to let go a little.
Because this heaviness stroke sadness is not just mine maybe.
Maybe it belongs somehow to the sea as well or to you.
Maybe it's our heaviness,
Sadness.
And then there's not so much contraction around it.
And I might even find if I focus on it with this thought that it begins to lighten and dissolve and maybe even at some point disappear.
So they say that a problem shared is a problem halved.
Maybe this is the idea of focusing on the we and not the I.
The us of it all.
So meditation can be this kind of immersion where we lose our edges.
Where we become part of everything.
Where the I dissolves.
The I becomes we and us.
It can be.
And maybe we can think of lots of other times when that immersion happens.
When the mind is so engrossed in what it's doing there is a really pure sense of being.
Which might be called happy.
So what else is that for you?
What else brings about that state of immersion that can be called happy?
That state of dissolving of the I into the everything of it that can be called happy.
And it might be walking or it might be reading or sewing.
These contemplative activities that are not generally called meditation but can be meditative.
And that somehow feed that inner place by dissolving it.
By dissolving the contraction and the tightness in this state of immersion.
This state of pure being that can be called happiness.
So we'll sit for a while simply with this idea.
Maybe sensation.
Maybe it's not just me and my edges.
Maybe I'm more us and we than I imagine.
And then with this state of immersion that can be called happiness.
