Welcome,
My name is Helen Quayle.
Today's practice is coming home to awareness.
I'll guide us in meditation through different levels of contact with self,
Opening to what we can call non-dual,
Unbounded,
Infinite awareness.
So,
When you're ready,
Take your posture.
A posture where you can be alert and awake,
But relaxed and comfortable.
There's no need to be cross-legged or on the floor.
Just check in with what your body needs today.
And because this is an embodied practice,
We're including all levels of being.
Just take a moment to ease the shoulders in particular.
Minor clicking to roll them one direction three times and another.
All of us hold attention in the shoulders.
And then just turn the head to one side and the other,
Not forgetting the breath.
Inhaling to the centre,
Exhaling to the side.
Inhaling to the centre,
Exhaling to the side.
Inhaling to the centre,
But gently leading with the chin up on the inhale back to centre.
And again,
The chin down.
We'll do that one more time.
Supporting connection with different systems of the body.
And then come to a stillness.
Make sure that your feet or your seat,
Your buttocks,
Are in contact with something solid,
The floor.
Just notice the stance of your body,
Its openness,
Its tightness.
Notice anything that might have changed a little bit just from that short movement practice.
And with the eyelids closed,
Turn your awareness to the centre of the head.
And we'll just rest here for a moment,
Aware that body continues,
All of the biological functions of the body continue.
Breathing continues with its own natural rhythm.
Awareness,
Attention is resting in the centre of the head.
Now let it drop down to the centre of the chest.
And take a stance of inquiry.
Inquiry without a goal other than being available for open awareness.
So not seeking a particular kind of meditation or experience,
Or when we meet that inner self,
We let it go.
Opening as awareness in and through the centre of the chest.
Shift into the air around the body.
Same awareness inside,
Outside.
Same is the awareness in which all happening is known,
All sensation.
You are unhooking from the thoughts,
The sensations,
Emotions.
And this unhooking is such a skillful,
Can be such a subtle skillful.
Micro-movement to the awareness that is omnipresent,
Is already here in and through everything.
And objects will arise,
Thoughts most commonly.
We do not follow.
We do not follow a narrative.
We let go and open.
It's a falling.
And every time that we find we've come to an idea,
Oh this is it,
Got it.
Or I haven't got it.
We let that go too.
Open awareness is not an emotion,
It's not a thought.
It is the indescribable which contains every thought,
Emotion,
Stillness,
Movement,
Fullness,
Emptiness.
And it's in the air around us.
Come back in to the centre of the chest.
Is it here?
Is there any way it cannot be here?
Centre of the brain,
The whole body.
In the body,
Around the body.
Don't try.
Just be available for this focus and keep letting go into open awareness.
If more subtle states of consciousness emerge with experiences or visions or different kinds of sensations,
It's all perfectly good as well.
But it's the same practice in this orientation of letting be,
Letting go.
Really unbounded freedom.
Choice that's available moment after moment after moment.
Without leaving this open awareness or leaving being conscious and attuned to it,
We can now include awareness of the breath.
Not letting attention fall inside that.
Just practicing opening to unbounded awareness and being with the breath in this instance.
Just notice.
Here we are.
Here this is.
Always.
Keep returning any time.
Keep letting go.
When you're ready to move to completion of our practice,
You can breathe in everything that has emerged,
Realised,
And allow it to move through you naturally with its own intelligence as you go about your day.
Thank you for meditating.
Much love.
