So,
The work here is to be able to moderate the nervous system,
To moderate this autonomic part of our nervous system,
To be able to hack into it enough consciously,
Because it's happening autonomously,
More or less.
And so the more that we can modulate that,
We can modulate our consciousness as well.
Because when we're in stress,
Or when we're in relaxation,
The world,
We interpret it completely differently.
Our consciousness actually changes.
We actually are in essentially different parts of ourselves,
Or we are different people almost,
Under those different circumstances.
And it's useful to know that,
So that when you are in the severe stress response,
You can recognize that you're not really being very considered about what you're doing.
You're using automatic processes to solve problems.
In some cases,
That's very valuable,
When you're trained to do stuff under severe stress.
If you're a first responder or something,
Then all of your training comes into play,
And you just allow the training to solve the problems.
But when you're doing work,
When you're creating,
When you're doing things under maybe time pressure,
It helps to be able to move ourselves back into a calmer part of our nervous system,
Where the possibilities of what we can do open up,
And we become more creative.
In stress,
The possibilities close down,
And it's just quick,
Out of danger,
Into safety.
When we calm down,
We can open everything up,
And we can see much more.
We can be much more creative,
Really bringing that part of ourself forward.
And it's the same part that is untouched by trauma.
The same part that is really untouched by any of the experiences of life.
And so,
Let's spend some time just connecting with that,
Because that's really what we're here for,
Right?
Is to get us into that,
Become more acquainted with that part of our awareness,
Or that part of us,
Which I call awareness.
And when we look for the contours of that,
It's a very interesting search.
We don't exactly locate it,
Can't exactly find it,
Yet it's there.
But we do,
When we do rest in it,
When we pull back,
That's what it always feels like to me,
Like a pulling back from the chaos of the story,
Of the life situation.
We're able to pull back from that,
And just rest,
And see,
Feel clear,
And calm.
That's when all of these things that we've been talking about can fall,
At least temporarily,
And hopefully at some point permanently.
These painful things can fall away,
They have nothing more to grab onto,
Because we've taken our awareness back from the sticky story,
In a sense,
The draw of the ego.
So let's just take some breaths,
And see if we can drop into that a little bit here.
The beauty of meditation is that it allows us to bring what is generally an outward view,
An outward look from our mind into the outside world,
And bring it in,
And focus it on aspects of our internal world,
Including our body.
And of course,
The access to this is the breath,
The breath that is breathing us into existence in each moment,
The fundamental source of our lives,
Really,
Is coming in and out through the breath.
And our mind,
Beyond our conscious awareness,
Will decide whether we should breathe shallowly into the chest,
Or whether we should breathe more deeply into the belly,
And that's what's happening most of your day.
But now,
In meditation,
We can say,
I'm going to now direct my attention down into my belly.
I'm going to allow the breath to descend down there,
Allow that diaphragm to expand downward,
Allow that belly to come out,
And take this breath fully into my body,
Fully into my being.
I'm putting my attention on it in a way that requires as much of my attention as I can give it.
So a really helpful way to do that is to really explore that feeling.
What does it feel like to take that breath?
Searching through all those parts of the body that are affected by the inhale,
The inhalation.
And at the same time,
Maybe listening to the breath,
And then using the power of our mind,
Of our imagination,
To visualize that life breath coming into our being.
And that becomes a lot that we can train our focus on,
Which takes us away from the chatter.
The chatter doesn't stop.
If we're lucky,
We get to the point where we don't notice it enough that it actually appears to have stopped.
We focus on the breath,
Bringing all of the attention to the breath.
And the question,
The curiosity that you can also bring into this,
That can just almost hover in the background,
Is,
Who am I when I'm not paying attention to thought?
When I'm not thinking,
Who am I?
What is me?
What is this life?
And so that awareness that I talk about is almost like eyes inside of your being,
Just open wide,
360,
Taking in the data of experience without judging,
Commenting,
Categorizing,
Just experiencing.
And that's where you can start noticing the feelings in your body as you're doing this breathing.
You can also just notice the feeling of the living body.
And if you don't know what I mean,
You just,
That curiosity can look into your arms and your hands and your feet and your legs.
So I can say,
Put your attention on your hands and just notice the feelings in the hands.
Also notice that when you decided to put your attention on your hands,
There your hands are,
Very clear feeling.
But in the moment that you're paying attention to the hands,
Other parts of your body aren't quite as clear.
In fact,
They tend to disappear if we focused on the hands.
And then you can move the awareness to your feet.
Just focus on your feet and notice the same thing,
How the feet become more prominent in your awareness.
The hands kind of disappear a bit until you think about the hands again.
So where the awareness go,
The energy is.
And so with meditation,
We learn how to train this awareness to pay attention to what we want to pay attention to.
Whereas generally we're paying attention to what our mind,
Our thinking wants us to pay attention to.
So when you felt the hands and the feet,
You might notice that there's tingling or there's movement,
Subtle movement,
Buzzing,
Throbbing,
Any different type of feelings,
But these basic feelings of the life in your body,
The life as your body.
Taking a moment to acknowledging this life as something that is happening and that you don't really know what it is or why it's happening,
But here it is.
Here's the feelings,
Here are the sensations.
And bringing that awareness then back to the breath.
Always when you get a little bit pushed out to the side,
You start to hear some thoughts,
You start to pay attention to things that you didn't decide to pay attention to.
You can recognize the normal interaction with your mind,
Which is rather chaotic and out of your conscious control.
And then you just bring that looking back to the breath.
And for that one short moment as you take that breath in,
You'll notice no thought.
And if you can keep your attention on the out breath,
Still no thought.
And you just keep repeating and elongating,
Deepening.
And with each breath now,
With your mind,
With your imagination,
Start bringing into your body light.
With each breath,
Just imagine as though the breath comes in,
Light starts to fill parts of your body.
You can even imagine it as like a liquid light.
And with each breath in,
That liquid light starts to just expand into the belly,
Into the chest,
And then it starts to seep and spread down into your legs,
Into your arms.
With every in breath,
It just goes a little bit further and deeper into your system,
Spreading up into your neck,
Spreading into your head.
Almost like liquid gold coming and filling your entire body.
With each breath in,
Just trying to bring more of that light,
More of that liquid into the system,
Filling up every nook and cranny that you can find.
And then as you feel like you're able to get that into the body,
Then with each breath in,
Expand it outward,
Beyond your physical body,
So that it almost becomes like a bubble around you of just light.
With every breath in,
It just expands a little bit to the sides,
To the front,
To the back.
And this becomes a representation of you,
That awareness within you that we were talking about,
Giving yourself more space to be you,
To be that awareness.
And outside of that can be where the chatter lies.
Just gives yourself more space.
And as we have more space,
We tend to relax.
Things aren't quite as pressurized.
Combined with breathing into the belly,
Our nervous system deeply relaxes.
And that feeling that can be looked for,
That can be accessed in this state is that feeling of joy,
That gentle,
Vibrant,
Upward movement of feeling,
That if it gets strong enough,
It's almost like a giggle.
And the more space we make,
The more of that joy that we can access.
And then we're going to transition out by just taking a couple of deeper breaths,
Still having this nice,
Light bubble around you,
Allowing that to stay.
And just breathing a couple of times deeply into the belly,
Releasing that breath fully,
Starting to feel your body,
Feeling your fingers,
Feeling your toes,
Wiggling them,
And just gently breathing yourself back into opening your eyes,
Bringing the outside back in with a calmer,
More present state of awareness.
