So,
Welcome back and let's continue to explore together.
So,
Welcome to close your eyes and feel again into your inner landscape and feeling the breath flowing within this inner landscape.
And for this next quality of presence,
This quality of nature that we share with all of nature,
Let's begin to notice the sensations of the breath happening right at our nose.
This flow of air coming in and this flow of air flowing out.
With a sense like we've just sat beside a flowing stream,
We get to observe the flow of this stream,
This stream of air.
You may like to soften the forehead and even feel the space between your eyes.
And also notice the sensations in the space inside your nose.
And with this open-ended question of what's the finest sensation of flow I can feel there in the space inside my nose,
What's the finest flow I can feel of this flow of air?
And we can keep exploring with that open question just knowing that the point is that we won't find an answer,
That this flow is practically infinite in its fineness of finer flows within any flows that we feel.
So on this next breath,
Opening to how this experience of breath at the nose never resolves itself into a fixed grain size that's graspable,
Letting the forehead be soft,
Feeling the space between our eyes,
The space inside our nose,
Alive to this open inquiry into the free flow of nature,
The infinity of free flow right at our nose.
And I'll share an option or practice.
It can be nice if one likes to practice for a period of time with this.
And it's where we're going to notice the sensations in one nostril space and then shift over to the other nostril space in this soothing pattern.
So if you'd like,
Noticing the space of the right nostril as you breathe in.
On the out-breath,
Shifting over to the left nostril space,
Breathing in with noticing the left nostril space,
And breathing out,
Shifting back to the sensations in the right nostril space.
So it's in right,
The right nostril space.
Continuing with this open inquiry of what's the finest flow I can feel in this nostril space in this moment.
And how grasping any particular answer with concentration is the opposite of the point here.
It's like an opening into the bottomless well of infinity.
Ever finer flows within any flow.
And then gradually letting that pattern fade and notice with what sensitivity are you alive to the fineness of flow in the breath.
And then letting even that sense of noticing the nose fade.
And for the next few moments,
Not trying to manage your experience in any particular way.
And notice how this practice can help us not block out the fineness of free flow.
The freedom,
The practically infinite freedom of how nature arises as ever finer flows within flows.
Like the freedom of air,
Like the freedom we see in water,
And how that quality of freedom is everywhere in nature,
Including everywhere in our experience.
And welcome to stay with this sense of your inner landscape,
Your inner nature retreat that always has practically infinite freedom.
Either with eyes closed or with eyes open as we discuss a little bit about this practice.
And so this was a exploration,
A familiarization,
A way to access the second quality that we might notice about the way nature arises.
The way nature is together is that it's never stuck together,
Erased together.
Everything is comprised of ever finer flows within flows.
Even if we would like to think of it as the particles,
Physicists are continuing finding the ever finer particles within particle.
And for us,
Practically,
We tend to block out this fineness of the free flow of nature,
A lot of times with a sense of,
I've got it.
Maybe you notice that in the experience of noticing the flow of air at our nose.
Like,
Oh yeah,
I feel it.
Done.
What's next?
And we don't allow ourselves the fullness and the richness,
The infinite,
Irresolvable richness of every experience,
Including something as simple as feeling the sensations in this nostril or that nostril.
And this free flow of nature is everywhere.
And in this practice,
We offer this access point of the breath at the nose,
Simply because it may be a helpful access point.
But just know if it feels difficult for you,
This is not the only access point.
It's just that the air is something that we recognize as so fine and so free,
So,
I mean,
Just touching the air around us,
It goes everywhere.
There's clearly no grain size.
And so starting with the experience of air itself can be helpful in this way.
And in the practice of the hour of presence,
Where we allow ourselves to access and feel resourced by these qualities of presence,
This one tends to come as the second interval.
So the first interval can be very helpful to use the mutual flow to feel that contactfulness,
That subtle,
The immediacy of the body sitting like a mountain.
And then with this second interval,
It can be helpful to kind of attune our awareness that,
Oh my goodness,
There's more to this than we think there is.
There's this freedom that is accessible to us in the fineness of any flow.
And we tend to do that with the feeling,
The experience of the breath at the nose.
And then what we'll be heading into is that these seemingly separate qualities of presence,
Connection,
Solidity,
Settledness,
Mutual interaction,
And freedom,
Free flow.
The fineness of experience,
The inherent freedom,
That connection and freedom are actually not opposing,
Contrasting experiences at the level of presence,
But like any quality of presence,
They arise together.
And we'll see how we can feel that integration.
Well,
Nature's already integrated,
But sometimes we have to break it down.
What we do,
We break it down into manageable,
Exploratory chunks,
And then as part of our exploration,
We explore how they are actually not these separate categories.
But are one arising of the way of nature that then we practice and feel.
And I don't know about you all,
But I tend to like both connection and freedom.
And if you even think about our relationships,
Sometimes we feel like there's this trade-off between how I can feel more connected or I can feel more free.
And this kind of a practice does open up this possibility that fundamentally they are not in opposition to each other by following the way of nature.
They can arise together.
And that doesn't have to be the wisdom of something that I have to aspire to out there,
But it's something I can feel in my seat,
In my nose,
So immediately and evidently in my experience,
And then begin to feel it combined in another access point.
So if you would like to come back and join for this integration,
We will be heading into how things are both free and connected in our next exploration together.
