Being With What Is

This meditation provides guidance to empty the mind and rest in open awareness. Tethering the mind to the breath helps to not get distracted and remain embodied in the present. It encourages being compassionate and fully accepting of oneself.

Transcript

Welcome to Being with What Is.

My name is Jane Cunningham and I will be your host today.

It may sound like a simple task to be with what is,

But oftentimes we are anything but present with what is.

The mind is infinitely distractible,

And the emotional body is packed with patterned reactions.

Common ways that we distract ourselves stem from our preferences,

Desires,

Judgments,

And triggers.

To be with what is means to be free of all that and to be open to what is in the moment.

Often our minds are busy cogitating about the past,

Or anticipating the future,

Or obsessing about something.

It is terribly easy not to be present.

For example,

Think about a difficult exchange you had with someone you care about recently.

Do you notice a difference in the quality of your presence as you come back to the here and now?

Is there an emotional charge that lingers?

If there is,

Take a moment and breathe it out.

For those brief moments,

You are not fully present as you are trying to remember the incident.

Though this is a simple example,

It shows how easy it is to have your mind somewhere other than in the here and now.

When you are truly present,

Your mind is empty,

Open to whatever arises.

Presence is that which precedes thought.

It is that moment of stillness before thoughts come flooding in.

Think about a newborn baby.

When a baby comes out of the womb,

It is awake and aware of the stimuli around it.

However,

It has no labels or concepts to interpret its experience.

It rests in baby mind,

Complete non-conceptual awareness.

Our essence is baby mind,

Wide open,

Non-conceptual awareness.

Pre-thought.

Every moment is an opportunity to abide in open awareness,

To be with what is.

The following meditation is about resting in non-conceptual awareness.

It's about coming home to your original,

Natural state.

It might seem odd to need a meditation to access your basic state.

We live in a world of massive stimulation.

No wonder most of us can benefit from a reminder.

Think of this as simply a pointer to the truth of who you are and to what you already know.

Allow this meditation to assist you to get back to your non-conceptual mind.

Please release any judgments of getting this right or wrong.

There is no right or wrong.

This is simply an exercise in awareness,

In being with what is.

It is an opportunity to step back into observer mode and to watch the consciousness that informs it,

Creates,

And expresses itself.

Imagine it like a movie,

And you are the audience,

The director,

The producer,

And each of the actors.

The movie is an adventure in consciousness.

Pristine awareness.

When you can sit back and watch the show without preferences,

Desires,

Or judgments,

You can enjoy it a whole lot more.

So let's get started with a meditation to be with what is.

Take a moment to get comfortable.

Remove any distractions.

Sit or lie down where your spine is fully supported.

Take a moment or two to fully arrive in this moment.

Let your breath serve as a pointer to this present moment.

Bring your awareness to your breath.

Invite your breath to breathe you as you get out of its way,

Breathing out any tensions in your body that constrict you,

Or any thoughts that distract you.

Imagine a waterfall of warm water washing down your head,

Your face,

Your neck,

Your shoulders,

Down your arms,

Washing away any tension,

Releasing it out your fingertips.

Imagine another wave of relaxation washing down your throat,

Your chest,

Your back,

All the way down into your pelvis,

Down into your legs,

Into your feet,

And releasing into the earth as if you could pull plugs out of the sole of each of your feet,

Letting it drain into the earth.

Feel the earth beneath you.

Sense into its calm stillness.

Draw in its grounding energy.

As you exhale,

Ride the breath to the very end of its wave,

Completely emptying.

Linger in the pause after the exhale.

As you inhale,

Breathe in spaciousness,

Filling up your body and mind with emptiness,

Like the vast sky.

See yourself as that space from which everything arises and everything dissolves into.

Feel the space within the cells,

In between the cells.

Feel the cells dissolve into space.

Rest in the nothingness.

Nothing to do,

Nothing to get,

Nowhere to go,

Just being.

Play with this for a bit.

Exhaling,

Emptying thoughts,

Feelings,

And sensations.

Exhaling filling up with spaciousness.

Imagine your mind as an empty movie screen.

Thoughts,

Feelings,

Sensations appear on the screen and drift off the screen.

Try to refrain from engaging whatever appears on the screen.

Allow it to simply run its course.

Whether it's a thought,

An impulse,

A feeling,

Or whatever,

Simply observe it without engaging it.

If you find that to be difficult,

Step back and insert more space.

Keep inserting space until your mind is completely dominated by empty space.

Allow yourself to identify with the vast spaciousness of awareness versus the myopic thinking mind.

Use your breath to help you orient and to create more space.

Breathing in space.

Keep stepping back as if your awareness were a telescope.

You simply pull back into a wider focus.

You keep pulling back wider and wider until you dissolve into open awareness.

There is no you.

There is just awareness moving through.

Awareness which is constant.

By allowing your mind to focus on the unchangeable,

It invites a settling into that which is constant.

What a relief to not be bounced around from thought to thought to sensation to feeling to trigger.

Let yourself have a vacation from incessant mental chatter.

Resting.

Breathing.

Being with what is.

Nothing to do,

No reactions to follow,

Aware of the crazy movie of your mind.

Returning to the spaciousness that you are over and over.

No judgment,

Knowing it's the nature of the mind to wander.

Not trying to wrestle the mind,

Simply letting it run its course without grasping or pushing away anything.

It's not about trying to stop thoughts.

It's about not engaging them.

Notice how not engaging thoughts affects your body.

Notice how it affects your breath.

Notice how when I bring attention to this,

You are cognizant.

You are not spaced out,

But you are present.

Your mind is naturally awake and aware.

What if you could trust your open awareness to respond to whatever arises in each moment?

There is no need to anticipate or to chew on internal conflicts or to resist what is.

But you can rest,

Awake and aware,

Ready to respond to whatever arises.

If the moment calls for a certain form of cognition,

Say doing math,

You are able to access that program in your mind instantly.

You complete the needed mental function and then return to open awareness,

Your home.

Recognizing that you can trust the wisdom of your basic state,

Your natural presence.

You can access memory or particular mental functions as needed at any time.

The more you rest in empty,

Open awareness,

The more clear your mind is,

Making it easier to call up particular mental functions or programs.

Resting,

Trusting,

Breathing,

Being with what is.

Notice your energy level.

When you practice resting in open awareness,

Do you find you have more energy or less energy?

Check it out.

What if you never expended energy worrying,

Ruminating or anticipating?

What would that be like?

Let's test it out.

Come back to the blank screen of your open mind,

Telescoping back into observer,

Inserting space,

Using your breath to help orient you to this moment,

Emptying,

Telescoping back,

Observing your thoughts,

Feelings,

Sensations,

Letting them drift by,

Continually returning to sky mind,

Resting with what is.

Nothing to do,

Nowhere to go,

Nothing to prove,

Just being.

Notice your energy body.

Are you building energy or are you draining your energy?

Typically,

When you rest in awareness,

You build energy.

Taoists suggest that we rest in open awareness about 80% of the time and the other 20% we engage in our executive mental functioning,

Like if we have to write a grocery list.

When we rest in open awareness,

Our intuitive capacity is able to shine.

Intuition is natural intelligence.

You don't know how you know something or where it comes from,

But you just know.

Intuition is able to break through because the mind is open.

It is not blocked from a myriad of thoughts jammed inside your head.

Envision downloading your mental chatter onto a disk,

Freeing up the natural hard drive of your mind so that it's more responsive and clear,

Empty,

Open,

Compassionate,

Knowing.

This is your natural presence.

I encourage you to continue on your own,

Experiment with natural presence,

With being with what is.

Observe your own mind.

What is truly constant?

What is changeable?

What drains your energy?

What builds your energy?

Trust your own experience.

Empty yourself of everything.

Let the mind become still.

The 10,

000 things rise and fall while the self watches their return.

They grow and flourish and then return to the source.

Returning to the source is stillness,

Which is the way of nature.

Lao Tzu

Reviews

Loved it! I appreciated the teaching, as well as the guided meditations and concepts. Especially connected with the warm water, waterfall/body scan technique. Viewing my “mental chatter” on a movie screen, though not engaging, then letting it drift off the screen like a movie credit does, was such a powerful visual for me…very helpful! Love the music, voice, picture and content. Highly recommend Jane’s
Meditation!!