Being comfortable,
If possible,
Means no matter what's going on,
It means that maybe there's a way to be okay with thinking states and feeling states that are not okay.
So just like when the weather is difficult,
Uncomfortable weather,
It's raining,
It's cold.
It's an ice storm,
It's really hot,
It's really dry or whatever.
Sometimes we can meet hot as hot or cold as cold or wet as wet.
And partly being okay with being uncomfortable,
Not trying to pretend that we're comfortable.
So being okay with the discomfort that there is can be part of arriving into the ground,
Into our body and into our lives.
So letting what's uncomfortable be uncomfortable,
But not letting our whole interest go to what's hard,
What's difficult,
What's torturous,
What's tense,
But allowing some of us to relax into the ground,
To feel at home.
And today as you're arriving,
I'd like to suggest the possibility of remembering a time or playing with the sense of feeling expansive.
So maybe a time that you were on top of a mountain or a tree or you were by the sea and the wide horizon.
Brought you in touch with some kind of wideness in your mind and heart.
Or sometimes along with a sense of relief or arriving or feeling safe and loved,
Some kind of generosity or expansive quality can happen.
So if you feel like it only,
If you feel like it,
Allowing a memory or even imagination of feeling expansive to happen in your body and mind and getting a sense of what it feels like in your body,
Especially if you like.
Or maybe it's possible without any memory or imagination to kind of trickle down,
Like so trickle would be a small flow,
A tiny little flow almost drop by drop.
Down into some more quiet under layers of your being.
With some kind of fragrance of meditation to it,
Some kind of fragrance of not having sides,
Not having limits to the body or to the mind.
So just playing around with that as we arrive.
And where our thinking mind might come in and say that whatever we're remembering is not good enough,
We can hear that voice,
Feel how it feels in the body,
Maybe touch into the sense of the ground.
And disbelieve that voice.
So even a little bit of a sense of expansiveness with the breath.
Or even that little bit of expansiveness with giving up that exercise that Jaya just suggested.
Or just letting your body nestle into the ground,
Into its here and its now.
Letting our bodies forget the mind calendar,
The mind clock,
And letting the body open up to its own rhythm.
The body with its own flows and its own weight and solidity,
Volume,
Meeting the ground,
Meeting the air.
As if held really gently and yet firmly by two cupped hands of life,
Of here,
Of here,
And only here.
In here and only here,
Maybe with the gentle motions of breathing,
The steady contact through gravity to the ground.
This mammal body remembers being okay even when things are not okay.
The possibility of a contentment,
Forgetting the question,
What shall we do now,
And awaking the question,
Shall we do anything now?
The fullness of being within that mammal body with its own stream of warmth and breath and connection to the ground.
If you're new or have lots of experience with meditation,
Doesn't change the preciousness of your life.
Immeasurably precious.
Whether you have many knots,
Tangles,
Tornadoes in the mind or heart,
Only a few or a lot of stillness in space today doesn't change your value as a person,
Doesn't make you more or less precious.
The preciousness in this passing life,
Immeasurable.
Whether you're new or experienced with meditation,
Getting a sense of what thinking feels like in your body right now.
And just noticing if there's a lot of thinking,
Many directions,
A few directions of thinking.
If you notice a sense of more tension or speed or flatness,
Dryness,
Fire,
Heaviness.
What if that's not your fault but just the way things are happening in this ecosystem of ourselves?
It's not the ecosystem's fault if there's a fire or a flood.
There's just a fire or a flood.
Or perhaps something more pleasant,
Perhaps a beautiful sunrise.
Whatever you may find.
Is it possible just to feel for a few more moments where there might be some tension in your body that goes along with tension in thoughts and emotions?
And just feeling that print.
Just a print of what happens in life,
Things happen.
And then is it possible to come back to feel gravity?
To feel for an okayness even though not everything is okay.
Joining the ongoing rhythm and flow of our bodies on the ground in the air.
We are not what we think we are.
So noticing thinking as thinking,
Perhaps pausing to also feel briefly in your body the areas of tension or fire or flood or blankness that go along with the fat thinking.
Just briefly acknowledging that print of compression over energy,
Under energy,
Speed,
Wind,
Rain,
Heaviness,
Whatever it may be.
And feeling what else?
Falling back into gravity,
Letting your body realign.
As if we could fall into our own laps or fall into the lap of the earth or the moment.
Our bodies heavy.
Our breath as it is,
Maybe soft.
And perhaps gathering somewhere in your body.
Or if your body is difficult,
Then perhaps gathering around a sense of a wish for this lifetime,
This lifespan.
But if possible,
Just that really simple place in your body that you can actually feel the sensations there happening by themselves,
Felt by themselves.
If there's a lot of force in the thinking and emotion,
Then sometimes coming into our feet can be a great way to go,
As if there are magnets in your feet for your interest and sensitivity,
Feeling capacity,
To be welcome in our feet.
Or if there's a little bit less force in thinking and emotion story making today.
Perhaps the lower belly or the back of the body.
And almost secondarily,
Loosely,
Also kind of wearing our breath movements.
Letting that river of sensations just flow right through intimately through your feeling capacity.
The sensations in themselves,
Nothing special.
Not for or against you.
But perhaps some sense of a living quality.
As we allow the naked sensations to be felt fluidly.
Unnamed,
Uncaught,
Unowned sensations.
Unnamed.
Unnamed.
Unnamed.
Unnamed.
Unnamed.
Unnamed.
Eventually we realize when we're caught up in thinking about sensations,
Rather than letting them be felt something in a human being that's able to do that.
To feel and wake up to the difference between thinking about sensations and directly feeling sensations.
Sometimes we may notice that we are partly feeling the sensations directly and partly going with an image or description in the mind about the sensations or about some other place and time.
And isn't it amazing that there is something in us that wakes up?
That can notice something in me is feeling directly,
Something in me is thinking,
Imagining,
Remembering,
Planning.
And perhaps then we could fall back a little further or fall in a little further,
Do a little less.
And trust some kind of deeper,
Wider base of our mind that can already be aware when I'm in direct perception,
When I'm distracted.
Maybe we can relax a little bit more into the ground,
Into our already ability to be present,
To feel and to wake up to the difference between thinking about sensations and feeling them.
Something in a human being that can notice when I am distracted,
That can notice a sense of I am.
And let that be just part of what's flowing by in the stream of direct experience.
Here are sensations.
Here is thinking.
Here is what thinking feels like in my body just now.
Here is a sense of am.
And here is relaxing back down into the ground.
Trusting maybe a wider mind and already presence that we can't do on purpose,
But we can kind of fall into.
We can allow sometimes.
May there be peace on this earth today.
You.
