Let's explore together this first quality of the way nature works,
Including ourself,
This quality of presence,
And can close your eyes,
Beginning to feel the inner landscape,
Including the flow of the breath in this inner landscape.
This feeling of expansion,
And for this first quality of presence that we'll be very tangibly touching in on again and again over these next few minutes,
Can be helped by that sense of letting go and release that we can feel on the out-breath.
You may even like to take a sigh and just notice that sense of as the breath leaves our body,
There can be a letting go and a settling.
And letting the breath be the natural,
Easy breath.
And continuing to notice now a little bit more at the shoulders,
This way that our shoulders can lay down,
Let go,
Release their extra tension,
And settle more fully into support of our torso.
And let's do that for the next three out-breaths.
Letting each out-breath invite our shoulders to lay down and let go.
Even if just a little bit.
And now beginning to notice the hands as they're resting.
And how the hands,
Like the shoulders,
Have weight.
And noticing the weight of our hands as they're resting.
And even letting our hands feel heavy.
Let them feel heavy and let them give their weight to the support beneath.
And again,
Let's take three out-breaths where the letting go and releasing of the out-breath can help our hands let go and lay down a little bit more.
And as our hands lay down into the support,
Noticing the felt sense,
The experience of connection and togetherness between our hands and however they may be resting right at that place of contact.
That contactful,
Mutual togetherness.
And the immediacy and tangibility of that felt experience.
And now beginning to notice our seat,
However we may be sitting.
And how just like our hands,
Our entire body has weight.
That lays down to the support beneath.
And on the next three out-breaths,
Letting go of this sense that we are holding ourselves up by ourselves.
And now,
Releasing,
Settling,
And laying down the burden more fully to the support beneath.
We can give it to the earth.
And the earth can take it.
The ground will 100% support each of us at our seat.
And even as much as we lay down to it,
It will 100% immediately,
Simultaneously match that with support coming into our body.
And on the next couple of in-breaths,
May even like to breathe in that support from the ground.
Like breathing in a fragrance,
Allowing ourselves to take it in.
And then noticing,
Right in the place where our seat makes contact with the ground,
The felt experience of body and earth together.
So tangibly,
Evidently,
Mutually,
In contact and connection with each other,
Right there.
And having noticed this felt experience of this quality of mutual flow,
Nature's mutual,
Contactful arising together,
In our seat and in our hands and in our shoulders.
Just knowing it's happening all throughout nature,
Completely pervading our own experience as a part of nature.
And if we allow it,
This experience of presence is something that's already streaming in our awareness,
Shoulders,
Hands,
And seat.
And our practice here is really as simple as not blocking that out.
So what would it be like to allow ourselves simply to feel and appreciate and notice these streams of felt experience,
Seat,
Hands,
And shoulders.
All laying down,
All supported,
All in this mutual flow of contactful connection.
And as they say in the tradition,
This may help us feel like we're sitting like a mountain.
We are sitting like a mountain as this mutual flow and can continue with eyes closed or may like to gently open your eyes.
As I share just a little bit about the practice,
So the approach here is that as a part of nature,
We share the same common qualities with all of nature.
And that practice can be this exploration and familiarization and a way to allow ourselves to feel nourished and resourced by these qualities of nature.
And so the quality that we were practicing here is the mutual flow quality.
That nature arises through all of this mutual connection,
Contactful,
Immediate,
Never one-sided,
Never one thing affecting another without also being affected.
And so we were practicing with our shoulders,
Our hands,
Our seat,
The earth,
With these very immediate and evident,
Even concrete in a way,
Aspects of our experience.
And this can be a way that we may feel some of the wisdom of the ages as something experiential and direct and personal right in our own experience.
For example,
The illusion of separation,
That nothing is alone.
And in a practice like this,
It becomes something that it's not an abstract idea or teaching or something we need to aspire to.
We simply notice it most evidently in our own experience,
That experiential knowing to broaden,
To include more of our experience and to stay as something that we can access more easily.
Even as we also can have this simple knowing that it's always that way.
It's always that way.
And this can be something that you choose to do in the start of practice,
Any practice.
And it's also something that you can use to start the first five minute interval of what I've come to practice over 15 years of practice.
This is the practice that I do.
I call it our presence.
Because by starting with these qualities and letting myself feel them,
Feel resourced and nourished by them for an hour,
I know that that may seem like a lot of time.
That I can come to access some things,
Trust in some things experientially,
These wisdom of the ages that would not be something I would feel would be within my realm of accessibility.
And so I'm offering this hour of presence just in case some other human beings out there may experience this in their own unique way.
But also experience this as a more accessible way to both practice and feel in touch with something that is not dependent on practice.
And so this is the first of these qualities and I'll be spending today sharing all of the qualities one by one and showing how they can be integrated together into a 30 minute foundational practice.
And then there's many options for the second half of that hour of presence where you can go in many,
Many different directions,
Many adventures once we have that feeling of our qualities of presence alive in our own experience.
So thank you all for practicing and exploring here this morning.
And I have just a little bit of time before the next session if there's any questions or comments about this practice here today.
