So we have been establishing mindfulness together.
And just to point out that we're continually and ongoingly establishing mindfulness.
It's not like once you've established some continuity of practice,
You're done.
But mindfulness does become a natural part of how we navigate our life and our experience.
It becomes more of how we meet our life.
And on Tuesday,
I shared with you what the teacher Adi Ashanti described as the art of mindfulness.
He refers to it as the practice of non-interference,
Non-interference.
So recognition is the way in which we know what's happening.
Just the simplest knowledge,
The recognition of what's occurring.
So the instructions that I've been offering in the guided meditation is to still the body,
To let the attention rest in the belly,
In the breath as it moves in and out.
And what happens when we do that is our attention quite naturally moves away from the mind and drops into that simplicity of breathing.
Maybe not for a very long time,
But it certainly does drop in without much effort really.
So by taking the first few minutes of meditation to bring attention to the breath and to feel it,
To really feel into it,
This allows the nervous system to quiet down.
It establishes in a way the physical balance between the body and the mind.
And of course,
There are going to be challenges.
One of the first challenges for many of us is just to arrive in the present moment,
To really be established just here.
If you're lost in the mind or the imagination,
You can just simply remember the breath and feel it once again.
It's that simple,
The recognition.
Breath is kind of like a ballast on a boat.
It brings you back to equilibrium.
So the first thing that we do in establishing practice is this commitment.
And it is a commitment to be still,
To be still in the body.
So we come together,
We find a place that's comfortable enough where we can sit for the whole meditation period in stillness and recognizing that if your body moves,
Every time your mind moves,
Every time you feel some anxious energy,
The mind won't calm down.
So by allowing your body to be still,
Eventually your mind will follow.
Sometimes I notice,
Like in the practice,
I'll be sitting,
I sit on a bench and sometimes I wiggle my feet together.
I touch my toes together.
Even that touching the toes,
That movement,
I notice what's happening in the mind.
There's an agitation.
So to really allow the body to be still.
And it's not a struggling stillness.
It's very relaxed.
Like you're not rigid.
There's nothing rigid or contrived about it.
It's kind of like an inquiry really in what it's like to be still in a completely natural way.
And the commitment to be still is kind of a reorientation of like out of the conditioned mind,
The mind that's constantly moving.
And in that stillness is a very natural state of awareness,
Recognition.
It's simply by being still and relaxed,
Relaxing into that stillness,
The field of awareness naturally presents.
And from this relaxed awareness in the stillness,
Our practice is to open to and allow everything to be exactly as it is.
This is non-interference,
Allowing everything to be exactly as it is.
The natural state of our awareness is allowing things to be as they are.
And we can feel the quality of letting everything be as it is.
Every sound,
Every feeling,
Every thought,
It has a quality to it.
And it's not always peaceful.
But the natural state of awareness allows everything to be simply as it is.
It doesn't interfere.
It doesn't evaluate.
The evaluation is what causes stress.
Then this shouldn't be here or this should be here or it should be different than it is.
That evaluation is what is stressful.
So when we simply allow everything to be as it is,
We're letting go of all control.
We're letting go of all control and allowing,
Not interfering.
And this is when we really get to see all the ways the mind tries to control experience,
Right?
And that's the stressor.
So in practice,
We're letting go of control moment by moment.
We're letting go of our preferences moment by moment.
And we're allowing our body and our nervous system to feel what it's like to let go of control.
What does that feel like?
What does it feel like to allow everything to be as it is?
How does that imprint on our body?
What we're working on is this developing,
We're developing this capacity to be present.
And it takes a lot of repetition.
There's a tremendous amount of repetition,
You know,
Coming back,
Starting over.
And one of the real keys of making this repetition work is the approach that we have to it.
We approach it,
This coming back with ease and care.
So when the mind wanders off,
It's very easy to have aversion to that,
Like,
Oh,
I'm such a horrible meditator.
And there's like this upset with the story,
With the perception.
But the whole process of coming back,
If you just come back,
Without the evaluation of being lost,
It can be very relaxed.
We're coming back to the silence that I described.
You can think of awareness as a spacious silence.
All the instructions on meditation have to some degree,
Ease embedded in them.
And silence,
Silence is natural and relaxing.
And the natural stillness of our body is allowing everything to be as it is.
And then the movement to when you get lost to begin again,
Just Oh,
Here I am.
Here I am.
I'll begin again with this breath.
So it's useful to not interfere to be receptive and open to receive our experience.
And the art of this receptivity,
This non interference is to be both relaxed and at ease,
But also to have a sense of commitment to it.
Sort of like,
Okay,
For this 30 minute session,
This is what I want to do.
I'm establishing being here.
So I'm going to be still,
I'm not going to interfere and add anything to my experience.
I'm just going to meet what appears and return to my breath over and over again.
This is really the art of it.
So thank you for your consideration.
And I am happy to take any questions you may have.
