And I invite you to close your eyes.
Just drop down into the body,
Into an awareness of the body,
Sitting or lying here.
And I'll start by sharing this poem by Rumi called The Guest House.
Simply allow the sentences to drop in and listen to it from,
Rather than an intellectual thought or course interpretation is happening as you listen,
Just allowing the words and the quality and feeling of the sentences to drop in.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning,
A new arrival.
A joy,
Depression,
A meanness.
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if there are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture.
Still,
Treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought.
The shame.
The malice.
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
I used to think that there's no more radical acceptance than this opening the doors to all our experience.
Not just opening our doors,
But inviting them in,
Welcoming both pleasant and unpleasant activities,
Phenomenon,
Experiences.
And those that maybe don't appear on our radar,
Which is the vast bandwidth,
If you like,
Of energy available for us to perceive.
And that is the tiny margin of all the energy frequencies,
If you like,
Out there.
So sitting with this sense of the radical acceptance that we're asking for here,
We're inviting you to explore.
What are the sensations you're feeling in the body,
Whatever thoughts,
Whatever emotions that are here for you right now?
Is it possible to allow them to arise freely in this guest house?
And these doors to this guest house that Rumi talks about are not so much our senses,
But actually the contraction of our emotional body.
Any contraction of tension you feel in your body,
Seeing if you can relax as you breathe out and open,
Up,
Soften those contractions.
So those are the gatekeepers to our experience.
And connecting with this breathing,
Associating it with this relaxing those contractions.
This close let us join earlier.
So this emotional body which controls the flow of information,
Or rather decides what is noise and what is signal,
Has very well preserved us and our ancestors.
So it's important to recognize their value,
Their usefulness.
They protected us.
They've created sometimes a moral framework through which we can live and feel good about ourselves sometimes.
Now we can feel that we're the good guys.
So this radical acceptance that Rumi talks about is also inviting us to relax and open those doors to recognize that these moral structures are the same apparatus of judgment and criticism,
Often culturally designated,
That we find appearing in our physical responses in the moment.
Wound up in the sense of right and wrong is our own self-criticism.
So when we see something we dislike approaching in our mind or in our body,
We tend to contract and close the doors.
So what's it like to just open and allow anything to enter?
We get a physical sensation,
An emotion or a mood,
An empty space,
An empty space,
An impulse or a thought.
Perhaps the most closely guarded,
The most judged,
The most critiqued of those is our impulses.
What should I do?
What do I do with this?
So what do I do with this feeling I'm having right now?
What do I do with this desire,
This want?
What decision do I need to make?
What if we answered those questions,
All of those questions with just one answer?
Breathe.
What do I do about this wondering mind?
Breathe.
What do I do about this agitation in my body?
Breathe.
What do I do with this internal fight between who I should be or what I should be doing and what I actually am doing and where I actually am?
Breathe.
What do I do?
Breathe.
What do I do?
Ah yes,
I understand what you want to say and hear that Guru said inaction is the only positive action.
No.
Just breathe.
Understanding is irrelevant.
One more funny thing is yes,
Yes there are signs of you being Seattle on the front page and there were many signs of you inrooms visiting other people,
I just wanted to give you an.
.
So the impulse,
The urge to act is a keystone in this whole structure.
Thoughts,
Emotions,
Physical feelings.
The noise turns into a signal when we think there's something we need to do about it.
If there's nothing we need to do about it,
Generally it remains in our unconscious.
That doesn't mean that doesn't affect what we do.
Most of our action is unconscious.
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There is no perfect mindfulness practice.
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