We're doing an awareness practice,
A resting in awareness.
What are your thoughts about that?
So one thing that would be really natural would be to have memories of other practices where we felt really connected and our mind is quiet.
We feel like we can rest in a deeper level of the mind.
So as you're bringing yourself into awareness,
Notice what that experience is like.
Oftentimes,
When we do a practice of relaxation or meditation,
The instruction is to become aware of our body,
Our breath,
Both the rhythm and the pace of the breath and the physicalness of the breath,
And also the energy of the breath.
Is your breath calm,
Continuous,
Smooth?
And when we notice our body,
Is your body relaxed?
Are your shoulders up around your ears?
What's going on in your body,
Your breath,
And then the lower level of the mind?
Almost entirely,
The body,
The breath,
And the lower level of the mind are what prevents us from going into deeper meditation or resting in awareness.
And it's also a pathway in.
So we're not trying to focus all of our attention on our physical body or on our breath.
We are trying to notice what's also here.
We bring our attention into this moment in time.
We know sometimes through direct experience and certainly through people who've written about it that awareness,
Our being,
Consciousness is always here.
But it's not something that we need to acquire.
It's not something that we're missing.
It's something that we can't experience,
Perhaps.
And for most of us,
It goes in and out.
We will have moments of deep stillness.
Our body and breath and the lower level of the mind kind of settle.
And without all of that distraction,
We notice what's also here.
So on a very practical level,
Resting in awareness means bringing our attention away from daily life concerns,
Away from the thoughts generated by the brain and the nervous system.
We have that layer of the mind,
And that's gonna always come through.
And we also pay attention or put our focus on our being.
And I study and teach in a yoga meditation tradition,
A Himalayan tradition.
And there's a phrase,
Ever pure,
Ever wise,
Ever free,
That describes our consciousness or our being.
And that we're like that,
Those qualities are that by nature,
Not by acquisition.
So bring your awareness into the experience again in your body and breath and the lower level of the mind.
You'll probably have some thought response to that.
Take a few deeper breaths.
And then bring your awareness to what it is,
The part of you that's observing,
Part of you that's aware of your experience right now.
Sometimes we would say that's the objective witness.
This experience that we have in our body and with our breath and with thoughts in the mind is something that we can observe.
I'm aware of my experience.
I can feel my body move as I breathe.
When I turn my attention to thoughts,
I can see what it is that's in my thought stream.
I'm aware of my experience.
And let your awareness also know what's deeper than that level of experience.
If we were to think about the mind as being like a lake,
There's the surface of the lake,
Which could be quite wavy.
And then the silence or the stillness in the depths of the lake is not affected by what's going on at the top.
Imagine that you're bringing yourself your attention or your awareness from the surface levels into that more still,
Silent depths of your mind.
From here,
We can notice our experience again.
So the brain and the nervous system might be generating thoughts.
And we can let those be in the background until we get caught in them.
And then we're gonna go off on some train of thought.
And notice that process.
We all have that going on.
We all have experiences of noticing and being present in stillness.
And we all have the experience of being swept away in a train of thought.
And what's really important is how do you come back?
Are you kind of yelling at yourself because you got distracted?
Like somebody yelling at someone to calm down.
It doesn't really work that way.
So the least amount of disturbance in the mind will be to gently and kindly just notice I've gotten involved in something and then bring yourself back.
Let the thoughts that are distracting you move into the background or back up to the top and come back in to the stillness in the depths of your mind.
We're moving from our experience to moving beyond experience into being.
Not to really think about that so much as to just put our attention and our intention to become aware of our being.
The space of awareness is another term sometimes that's used.
We might notice the space that our body is in.
We notice sensations,
We notice the experience our body is having including thoughts in the mind.
And all of that is arising and coming and going in a space.
We are aware of what is coming and going in that space.
The space our body is occupying ends and then there's empty space or there's the chair in the space or something.
Bring your attention to the space itself and resting your awareness in your heart center.
Let go of the experience in that space and notice the space itself.
And the heart center isn't limited to three or four inches around.
It's not limited to our body.
Let your attention rest,
Focusing on your being,
Your consciousness.
Our being,
Our consciousness is experiencing something and there's also the being or the consciousness itself.
So not to think about it but just to notice what's the space that's not limited by our body.
Let yourself rest in awareness of your being.
Thank you.
