Focus, Flow and Let Go

A brief overview and an exploration of three phases of practice: "Focus, Flow and Let Go." (Concentration, Witness and Surrender.)

Transcript

We have explored many different attentional strategies and different skillful means in our practice.

Sometimes I find it's helpful to think of attention like light.

You can take light and through a magnifying glass,

You can focus the light in a way that it can burn a hole through a leaf or you can simply stand in the open light and feel the spaciousness of it.

An analogy I find helpful is to think of meditation and different aspects of meditation.

We can think of them in terms of focus,

Flow,

And letting go.

Focus or concentration is a gathering of your attention.

There is a willful quality of calling yourself back again,

Here,

Here,

Again,

And again with a quality of calming,

A quality of re-arriving.

As you become more present and centered and relaxed and aware,

There is a natural awareness of both foreground and background.

With your anchor in the foreground,

The natural expansion of awareness descends everything that is moving and shifting and changing.

From here,

You can identify what is arising,

What is sustained,

And what is falling away.

The vibrancy and detail of sensation,

The play of thoughts and the narrative,

The play of emotion,

This matrix of thought and feeling,

And even different states change from this place of self-observation.

We've explored as well this capacity to drop technique,

To simply relax in awareness itself.

In any moment,

There is this spectrum of attention.

I'll be offering some spacious guidance,

Exploring these different ways of paying attention.

And you might begin by calling your attention to the breath,

Drawing the awareness to this felt sense of here and now.

Exploring an anchor that might be a helpful portal to establish yourself here.

Exploring this quality of both deeply relaxing and opening into the intimacy and the vibrancy of what is here in this realm of the senses.

You may notice how when you wake up out of a thought form,

The mind far away,

That there is a natural resettling and a re-arriving.

And that recognition of the mind far away,

There can be a re-softening.

Perhaps sometimes even a flood of new sensation to revisit the movement of the breath on the inside.

The aliveness of sound and this feeling tone in the body,

This presence of pulse,

Tingling,

Warmth,

Coolness.

And a more intimate awareness of the flow or the stream.

This matrix of sensation,

Of thought,

Of mood and emotion.

Noticing the fluctuations,

The arising and falling away form and sensing who you are as the observer.

This capacity to observe free of judgment,

Allowing and spacious.

From time to time you might inquire releasing of all technique.

Noticing any attempt to manipulate or control what is here.

To relax,

To allow.

To rest in presence.

To sense who you are as the space in which everything and anything arises and falls away.

Effortless at the same time awake.

Or feeling you buns.

At any time,

You can invite your attention back to your anchor to open awareness to the aliveness of the senses.

To re-relax and sense how intimately you can awaken to the aliveness of here.

Bring your awareness to open to sense and embrace all that is present and changing.

Open and allowing.

Understanding who you are as the sky.

Infinite space.

The natural flow of things.

So,

I hope that you get a great benefit from these answers injuries and From time to time,

It can be helpful to re-arrive,

To again open to the aliveness and vibrancy of here and now.

What is happening right now?

Can you be with us?

To again sense the flow of things,

This ongoing rolling play of phenomena.

Having this capacity to witness,

To observe all that is changing.

To inquire into what it means to let this be.

To gadble out all this knobs,

To In these remaining five minutes or so,

You might explore letting go of the practices of doing and inquiring into the practices of being.

You might sense the sounds,

Sensing a quality of the effortlessness of listening.

In your own way,

Sensing the space in which sounds arise or sustain and fall away.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Sensing the silence behind the sounds.

Reviews

This is mislabeled as a talk. It’s a guided meditation and a very good one, with lots of silent space for practice and very gentle, casual reminders to return our minds when they’ve wandered. It does start out sounding like the middle of a talk, but it’s a guided meditation.

I loved the quiet moments that Jonathan made space for in this meditation.

Absolutely beautiful!!🙏♥️

Thank you for this PERFECT meditation. This is exactly what I was looking for and needing. Perfect equilibrium among silences and guidance, perfect sublet tone of voice, perfect length, perfect content.I feel totally in peace and grateful.

Recenter, want so much as a talk but actually a good spacial meditation. This needs to be relabeled... So many others are labeled meditation when the talk incessantly, not this one- he leaves more than smoke time to center ground reflect let go...

I really enjoy the spaciousness of this meditation. Such a joy to soften into it. Thank you 🙏

This practise is an invitation to presence to awareness with bare attention. Dive straight in with guidance and ease with Sudir .

Letting go and being present-very satisfying

Wonderful guided meditation. Reminders and silence are just right. Thank you!

Great meditation with lots of silence.

Always wonderful and perfectly balanced.

Gentle guidance with just the right amount of space to experience fully the practice.

Very nice. Good, gentle instruction. Sileneces were very beneficial. Thank you.

Long silences very helpful and then being brought back to what is arising in the present moment. Thank you.

This guided meditation has few words allowing you to get quiet

Perfect - space in between - soothing voice - timing

Lovely, enjoyed the pauses