So we've been looking at cultivating the establishment of mindfulness.
And it's interesting because it's really sort of this middle point,
This middle path,
What my teacher calls kind of like the manual labor of establishing mindfulness and active non-interference.
Active non-interference.
So,
And what's the point really?
Like,
Why do we actively stop and be still?
Like we get something out of this.
I know that I do.
It's kind of a pivot away from trying to change what's happening in our life,
What's happening in the world.
Stopping and start looking more closely at what our minds are doing.
And maybe at first we look at what our minds are doing and we look at it with judgment.
And then the practice helps us to recognize,
Wow,
Look at all that judgment.
Not like it's something to get rid of,
Although it certainly doesn't feel good in the body to have so much judgment.
It doesn't help us sleep better.
But the recognition that it's there is useful.
I can use it.
I can use it to relax.
I can use it to let go,
To stop responding to my life that adds more judgment or unhappiness or dissatisfaction.
So there are these practices that we can do to break this habit of being lost in our thinking,
In our compulsions,
And to simply be aware of our experience,
Recognize our experience in the present moment.
So one of the things that we're doing is learning to pay attention to see what it is that complicates our attention,
Where we get caught from simply staying with the sensation of the breath in the belly or in the chest.
What makes it difficult?
Because the place that we get caught is the place that we're going to continually feel stress.
So if we get to know it a little better,
Really see how it operates,
Recognize it,
See it's arising,
Name it's arising,
Then that's how we actually stop acting from it.
So personally,
I have had a lot of self judgment.
So then with non interfering awareness,
I recognize self judgment,
The voice of it,
Like bring it into my awareness,
The story of it,
The habit of it,
The conditioning that perpetuates it.
This is the inclination of my mind,
This self judgment,
And it's not comfortable.
It's not a comfortable experience to see it,
First of all,
The inclinations of our mind,
But the value of it,
The value of it kind of tips the balance.
The seeing moves the mind towards balance.
This practice of mindfulness is so full of paradox,
Like the seeing actually supports the cessation,
The elimination of it,
You know.
So seeing the paradox is also very useful.
I shared this idea last week about how we are all always sort of reaching.
Like that's the human condition,
Like that's our collective conditioning,
This reaching,
Like the hardware,
Reaching,
Reaching,
And what are we reaching toward?
Well,
Letting go,
Of course,
Letting go,
Letting our life unfold,
Looking for happiness now,
Now.
So the balanced place,
The place between reaching,
Leaning forward,
And then sort of leaning back,
Leaning back just a little.
It could also be physical,
Like checking in with your body to see how much of life we're meeting leaning forward,
And maybe you can lean back a little bit.
I noticed that my leaning forward has a lot to do with around injustice and the culture and society.
I lean forward when there is inequality.
It's easy for me to get looped into my righteous thinking around economic inequality.
It's like a big fire for me.
So to notice that leaning forward and then to sort of check in and see,
Well,
Where can I actually lean back a little bit?
I sometimes think of practice like the way in which fish travel upstream.
There's a fluidity of the fish traveling upstream,
And sometimes it's smooth,
And the water isn't beating against the fish.
There's still that flow against the stream,
And sometimes there are rapids and rocks,
And then the fish has to sort of jump over to keep going.
And the practice of this being is to do a little bit of a meditation,
Is to do it with ease without getting stuck.
And that's the same practice for us,
To meet our difficulties and meet our challenge with ease.
There's still the leaping,
The jumping forward,
The moving,
But to move with ease and awareness,
To let go and let be like over and over and over again.
And this practice,
This establishment of mindfulness is kind of a way of life that we're establishing,
A life of ease.
And it begins with this recognition,
What's happening now,
Moment by moment,
These little moments just add up to our life.
I learned this instruction really early on on my practice path,
Three words,
Three words,
Here with this,
Here with this,
With this view,
With this judgment,
With this idea,
With this thought,
With this feeling,
With this sensation,
With this breath,
Here with this.
It's really so simple.
And the way in which we embody these simple words is just to sit,
Just to sit still in this body and start to recognize what's here,
What's here.
I think it's important to say that meditation is not a time to try and figure things out.
In a way,
We're actually relinquishing the functioning of the mind that analyzes,
And the mind analyzes pretty much everything,
Right?
So what we're doing when we sit is we're reorientating our attention towards our breath,
Or the breath in the belly can be an alternative where we can rest our attention.
And sometimes when people are first starting out,
The attention is drawn towards sound,
Like not the identification of sound,
But rather just the movement of it,
The arising and the passing.
And you may start to notice in this practice,
As you're paying attention to the breath,
How in a subtle way you can experience its spaciousness.
That spaciousness is kind of,
Is a kind of quiet.
It's a quiet that you can feel.
And when we practice every day,
Like that continuity of everyday practice,
Even if it's just for a shorter period of time,
What we're doing is we're setting the stage for meditation to occur.
We come into our body,
And maybe we sit in the same place every day.
And what we're doing really is just setting up the conditions for meditation to arise on its own.
And what you may notice in this setting it up,
This sitting practice,
Is that every experience in our life also arises on its own.
And it goes away on its own too.
And what the encouragement is,
Is for you to notice in your experience that everything is allowed,
Like even resistance to sitting is allowed.
And you can hear this as a directive,
Like this is what you're supposed to allow everything to be.
But as a directive,
It's not very constructive.
I think it's more constructive to notice that everything is already allowed,
Because it's appearing and it's disappearing.
Even that which is kind of in opposition of the practice of meditation,
All of our thoughts and all of our views,
They're just thoughts.
But even thoughts are allowed.
The teacher Adi Ashanti calls meditation the art of non-interference.
I really love that,
The art of non-interference.
That's really the art of meditation.
So I encourage you to try that on and to practice this.
Here,
With this,
With this,
Coming into balance and noticing where are you leaning forward in your life?
You can physically feel this and you can adjust back a little,
Let go a little.
Establishing mindfulness is always,
Always beginning again.
So holding that gently too,
Just allowing,
Allowing,
Allowing.
It's the juxtaposition of reaching,
Just allowing.
So I thank you for your consideration as we continue our establishment of mindfulness.
