Welcome everyone.
Thank you for being here.
Thanks for sharing my love of silence and meditation.
I really appreciate this chance to practice together.
As you get settled or find your place and let your body come in,
Maybe it's a good moment to just check the inner weather in a really relaxed informal kind of way.
Not too intensely or not too much,
Not too focused.
But just as you're getting settled,
Remembering to silence and turn off and plug in and support your knees and your head and kind of,
By the way,
How is the head?
How is the heart?
If we could get a sense of the body-mind and with its sort of electromagnetic field so we can actually have a feeling of the space around us and within us.
That the inner world is not really so hidden.
And as we get settled,
As we let the breath come into a rhythm.
Secondarily,
By the way,
How is your head space?
How is your heart space?
How is your energy level?
As if it would just be like going outside and feeling what's the wind,
Speed,
Temperature,
Humidity.
Cloudy,
Clear,
Cold,
Hot.
It might help us give up on the kind of sense of having a project of making the inner weather always be the same or something like that.
So just letting it be like the weather,
Not fully in our control and maybe not much in our control.
We can wear a raincoat,
Put on a layer,
Take off a layer.
We can adjust to the weather.
And what is it like in your body to realize that you can let go of some sort of inner project of making the weather always be calm or always be bright or always be perfect in some way.
And you can just let it be an acknowledgement that there is weather and weather changes.
And we're in weather.
We live in weather.
And we can live in weather.
What is it like to drop any sort of subtle or strong project to try to do away with weather,
To do away with change,
And to let it be that there is weather and weather changes and we live in the influence of weather.
It matters to us.
So you're allowed to have weather going on.
Ups and downs and ins and outs.
And maybe as if weather is sort of what might be floating along on top of a river,
Starting to go under the water.
Coming into your body,
Coming into your deeper,
Maybe more secret or quiet knowings of what's important in this life.
And the simple contact with the ground.
Maybe opening to sense temperatures around your body,
If you like,
Within and in different areas of your body.
And what if we just allow a few moments just being here.
Letting there be changing influence of weather,
Of our situation.
That's all allowed to be.
And you're allowed to be in this as part of this.
And also maybe somewhere a sense of a secret or quiet knowing of what's important,
Of what you would find important if you were allowed to.
And you are allowed to.
Or just,
Ah,
As if resting your head on the ground,
Maybe literally resting your head on the ground.
Letting your body rest into the ground.
Letting your worries rest into the ground.
And sometimes letting things fall to earth.
And allowing some things maybe to fall out or fall apart.
While maybe other things seem to sort of fall into your lap or into your heart.
Or into your notice.
And just allowing things just very tenderly to come to your notice.
As if you are the river.
Also changing and all that weather reflecting on your surface.
But more down inside yourself,
A little more quiet.
A little more heavy.
Giving into your ground.
Listening to your secret innermost depth or heart.
Love.
Maybe feeling what you would devote yourself to if you could.
Or maybe what you do devote yourself to.
What is most important.
And just feeling that if you like.
Or just enjoying being here without any agenda or demand for a while.
Yeah.
Your body and your life like a stream,
Heavy and liquid flowing.
In its own way.
Finding,
If you wish,
Somewhere that could be like a magnet in your body or in your mind,
That sense of what's important.
And just quietly being gathered in here.
No need to direct from the head.
Maybe also getting underneath resistance,
Compulsions,
Trying to get it right and so on.
Just so quietly underneath.
Like maybe a child in their own world while the adults are busy talking and doing.
Underneath all of that.
Right and wrong,
Good and bad,
Past and future.
In your innermost secret depth or heart.
Or in a simple place in the body.
Like it's a center of the universe.
Resting in,
Staying deeper and letting life flow.
Letting the body have its life,
Letting the sensations come and go.
Letting the body have its life,
Letting the sensations come and go.
Letting the body have its life,
Letting the sensations come and go.
Letting your body maybe be heavy and letting yourself be in touch with the depth of your being.
But somehow it's also lightly present.
A sense of being lightly present.
The way a stream doesn't hold back,
Doesn't hesitate.
Sometimes the flow is more filling somewhere,
Sometimes it's more falling or fast.
And sometimes connecting to depth and to ground and letting the body fall into the earth,
Fall into the ground.
And a sense of being drawn as if by a magnet somewhere in your body or to your sense of what's important.
Sometimes with that gravity and staying,
Letting the body be heavy,
We can also start to feel sometimes or recognize a sense of opening or softness or spaciousness.
At the same time as the sense of gravity or magnet.
At the same time gathering in a kind of spreading out sometimes can happen.
A possibility of remembering that somewhere in you,
In a childlike way,
You know how to connect with yourself and with life.
To remember your already full participation in life.
To feel full of life.
And to let that be both gentle and delicious.
To be already in already enough.
And to let that be both gentle and delicious.
And when we find ourselves distracted,
Drifting in a sense of past or future or an imagined now,
Judgment,
Shame,
Blame,
Hurry,
Worry,
Excitement,
Hope,
Fear,
Planning,
Remembering.
We can just so casually feel how is that thinking in the body?
And just so informally,
Not urgently.
As if the thinking and emotion is a balloon with a tiny little hole in it that's slowly coming back down to the ground.
To the gravity on the body and the gravity of staying with your magnet or the inner gravity of sensing what's important.
So lightly and gently coming back to a sense of the flows of the body,
The flow of experience,
That fluid,
Uncatchable momentary experience.
Relaxing,
Letting experience escape,
Letting it arrive and be vivid and be gone.
And resting even underneath the river of experience.
Maybe along with the literal regular gravity,
We start to feel a kind of inner gravity.
A subtle gravity of connection with aliveness.
Beyond ideas and even if there are ideas,
A kind of electric connection.
A subtle interest.
Down into a more childlike realm underneath the radar of right and wrong.
Where you can just so simply,
So very simply feel life as it is.
Letting yourself be with life.
And letting life be with you.
Within you,
Around you.
And almost a sense of being with life the way we might say a woman is with child.
Life so within us.
Growing towards awakening.
May there be peace.
May we find our willingness and curiosity about what is real.
About what is important.
To live in harmony with what's true,
With aliveness beyond ideas.
For the benefit of many,
Including ourselves.
Thank you.
