Now is the time to meditate and to turn on your interior lights in your mind.
That means your battery gets more charged rather than drained.
So if you like to sit down in your meditation posture,
Whatever that happens to be.
And I've been,
Actually I'm still teaching a retreat at Jhana Grove.
I come in here and I go back in the evening to teach a retreat from Singaporeans and Malaysians and I told them the most important part of your posture,
Your eyes closed,
Your legs,
Whatever they happen to be,
The most important part of your posture is your mouth.
Please smile.
Meditation is not going to the dentist.
It's nice,
Peaceful,
Free.
Because when you smile,
It brings you the correct attitude towards meditation,
An attitude of making peace,
Being kind and being gentle.
With your eyes closed,
You become aware of your body,
Just sitting here,
Like you're on an island in a sea of other people but you can only feel your body,
Not others.
So as you're sitting here experiencing the feelings and sensations in your body as well as my voice,
See if you can relax your body.
Stop holding it so tightly.
Loosen up.
Let go.
Allowing the shoulders to droop,
The knees to relax.
So everything starts to feel comfortable.
What you've been doing is developing awareness of your body together with kindness.
The kindness relaxes,
Eases.
Oh yes,
Please turn off your mobile phones as well.
And when the body relaxes,
Just notice the delight of a rested,
Relaxed body.
We always have to run around to get here on time.
At a busy week,
There'll be many tensions inside your body.
See if you can relax all of them.
Let them be,
Let them go.
Thank you.
When your body is really relaxed,
Let it go.
Let parking your car with the interior light turned off,
Locked,
You know it's going to be there for you after the session is finished.
You don't need to worry about it.
Instead,
Put your attention on relaxing your mental world.
Just the same way,
You were kind,
Released all the tensions,
All the fears in the body.
Do the same with your mind.
Let the mind become more loose,
Expansive and soft.
In order to relax the mind even further,
To let go of all the past and all the future.
To achieve that,
I invite you to do the little mental exercise of imagining you're carrying two heavy shopping bags,
One in your left hand,
One in your right hand.
In this imaginary exercise,
You've been holding these shopping bags a long time,
So long that your arms ache and your shoulders hurt.
You can imagine two heavy shopping bags aching arms and hurting shoulders.
When you look at the shopping bag in your left hand,
On the outside are written the four letters P-A-S-T,
The past,
Because in that bag you keep all your memories,
Both good and bad,
And you carry them around all day.
That's why your mind hurts,
It's tired,
It aches.
You look at the shopping bag in your right hand and there's letters on the outside of that F-U-T-U-R-E.
Because in that bag called future,
You put all your anxieties and dreams and hopes,
Your fears and plans.
You carry around that so long,
That also makes your heart ache and be tired.
Feel their weight in this imaginary exercise of the past and the future.
And then imagine yourself leaning to the left,
So you can lower the bag in your left hand to the floor.
Do it slowly.
When it meets the ground,
The weight disappears.
You uncurl your fingers from the handle,
Straighten your back,
Lift your arm up,
So your left arm is hanging loosely by your side,
Resting,
Relaxing,
Re-energizing.
You let go of the past.
And then you notice in your imagination the bag in your right hand representing your future,
So heavy,
Such a burden to carry all the time.
You imagine your back leaning to the right as you lower the bag to the ground,
Again slowly.
When the bag representing your future meets the floor,
The burden is gone.
You move your hands away from the handle,
Right arm hanging loosely by the side.
You let go of the future so you can relax,
Recuperate,
Re-energize.
Then you imagine those two bags by your legs,
The one of the past to your left,
The one of the future to your right.
You put them down.
No one is going to take them away.
You're going to have to carry them later,
But not now.
This is a time for rest.
And you're standing in this magic place between the past and the future called now.
And throughout the 30 minutes of meditation,
Don't pick up those bags.
Leave them down there.
You deserve to rest.
Because you remain in what's left,
The place between the past and the future,
Now.
And be kind to this moment.
Smile on the present moment and the present moment will smile back at you.
Have a happy attitude and the present will be happy.
Just being in the present moment with kindness,
Relaxing.
To go to the next stage is called silence.
To know what I mean.
Listen not just to the words,
But to the spaces between my words.
In those gaps,
You will find silence.
You're aware without giving things a name.
Be aware of the silence in this very moment,
So free of many burdens.
And then keeping the present moment in the silence,
Can you be aware of your breath?
Noticing the breath as it goes in and the breath as it goes out.
Breathe naturally.
As the breath comes in,
Say to yourself in your mind,
Not with your mouth but with your mind,
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathe out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Carry on like that.
Breathing in peace,
Breathe out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathe out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
See how still you can become,
Where hardly anything moves.
It's like a calm lake in the mountains with not a ripple on its surface.
What does peace feel like emotionally?
You want nothing,
You're not forcing yourself to do anything.
Totally at peace in this moment.
Just being here at peace.
Still,
Content.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
Breathing in peace,
Breathing out let go.
So how does it feel having a relaxed body and a peaceful mind?
People often talk of peace of mind.
They don't know what they're talking about.
In meditation you can come face to face with peace of mind.
How does it feel?
What's it like inside right now?
And why?
This is the result of maybe 25 minutes meditation.
Enjoy it.
Enjoy the peace.
Enjoy the peace.
Enjoy the peace.
And now we're going to ring the gong three times to end the meditation.
Please listen to every sound of the gong and let the ringing,
The resonance from the Korean gong take you out from your meditation.
Very good.
So now if you'd like to get yourself.
.
.
