Being with difficulties.
In this meditation practice,
I want to invite you to try something new.
To experiment with witnessing and sensing how thoughts,
Especially thoughts about something threatening or challenging,
And unpleasant emotions,
Can ignite bodily sensations and allowing yourself to feel discomfort.
I'm going to give you the opportunity to relate to difficult thoughts and emotions in a new way.
To accept them rather than resist them.
Allowing difficult thoughts and unpleasant emotions to be taken seriously.
To have their right to exist for the simple reason that they do exist from time to time.
Resisting them is denying one of our intelligences,
The body's intelligence.
The signals we receive through the body.
Let's begin.
Whether sitting or lying down,
Gently close your eyes.
If you are sitting,
Sitting in a dignified posture by lengthening the spine,
The feet are firmly rooted on the ground.
At the same time,
You're open and receptive.
Begin by bringing your awareness to physical sensations.
Parts of your body that are touching the ground or mat,
Chair,
Clothes.
Find a minute or two noticing these sensations.
Now bring your awareness to your breath.
Follow the changing physical sensations in your belly as the breath enters your body and leaves the body.
As your belly rises with each in-breath and deflates with each out-breath.
Breathing on the in-breath and deflating on the out-breath.
No need to control the breath.
Let the breath breathe itself.
Having an attitude of allowing nothing to be fixed or to be achieved.
Allowing your experience to be your experience without needing it to be anything other than it is.
Sooner or later,
Usually sooner,
Your thoughts will drift to planning,
Daydreaming,
Worrying.
It is not a mistake or a failure.
When you notice,
Smile,
Congratulate yourself and know that you are back with your experience.
Bringing an attitude of kindness to your meditation.
Bringing curiosity and patience to the experience.
Reminding yourself that your intention is to be aware of your experience and using the breath as an anchor to bring your attention back once it has wandered.
When you are ready,
Intentionally allow your attention to expand to include physical sensations of the whole body while still aware of your breath.
Change your primary focus to the body as a whole.
Noticing how you can zoom in,
In one place of the body.
Being free to tune into a particular part to explore it in more detail.
Notice how we can zoom out to hold the whole body in awareness.
Seeing the whole landscape of the body in spacious,
Open awareness.
You may sense the movement of the breath through the whole body as if your whole body were breathing.
Until now,
The instruction has been to notice where the mind is.
The mind has gone and gently and firmly escorting the attention back to the body or what we had intended to be focusing on.
Now there is a different way to relate to difficult thoughts and emotions such as concerns,
Worries or difficulties.
Instead of bringing attention back from a thought or feeling,
Allow thoughts or feelings to remain on the workbench of the mind.
Then shifting attention to the body.
And see if you can be aware of any physical sensation that comes along with any thought or emotion.
I want to invite you to further explore this option.
See it as an experiment,
Curious about a new way of relating to a difficult situation that you have perhaps never experienced before.
See if a particular concern,
Unpleasant or difficult feeling,
Thought or memory is alive in you right now.
If not,
You can experiment with deliberately bringing to mind some difficulty that you are facing at the moment.
It does not have to be too big,
Any person or situation or difficulty that you feel able to bring to mind.
If nothing comes up,
You can look to the more distant past for something or someone that has once caused you some unpleasantness.
If you choose to do this,
Bringing it to mind,
Letting it be here.
And when it has come,
Allowing it to remain on the workbench of the mind.
And carefully,
With softness and kindness,
Deliberately moving your attention to the body and sensing any sensations they bring up.
When you've identified a sensation,
Moving your attention to this part of the body.
Imagine you can breathe into it and out of it,
Not to change sensations,
But to explore them and sense them.
And perhaps even saying to yourself,
It is okay.
Let me feel,
Let me be open to it.
Breathing into it and out of it.
In and out.
See what space we're able to give it and how we can embrace it,
Including it in our experience.
And if it is too much,
If you feel that this is not good for you,
Take a step back.
And if it stops pulling your attention,
Simply coming back to the sensation of sitting or lying down and breathing.
Deepening an attitude of acceptance.
Opening,
Softening,
Not trying to change sensation.
Explore them with friendly curiosity and compassion.
Reminding yourself you do not have to like these feelings.
It is natural not to want them around.
It is okay.
They're already here.
Let me open to them and explore them as they are.
And when they're not pulling your attention to the same degree,
Bring attention back to the body.
In the last few moments,
Bring your attention back to the breath,
Focusing on sensation of in and out.
And wherever you're feeling your breath most distinctly right now.
Bring the breath to ground yourself in this moment.
Source of strength.
Source of presence.
A source of peace.
I'll ring the bell three times to mark the end of this meditation.
And take your time to shift into the next moment.
Thank yourself for being willing to feel.
And I will else great.
