Welcome to this guided meditation and teaching.
I'm Michael Wormuth.
I invite you now to make yourself comfortable.
We will start with some music to help us turn our focus inward.
Thank you for listening.
We have heard the first step in solving our problems and ending our suffering and struggle is to become present.
Becoming present means paying attention to what we are actually doing and experiencing in this moment.
When we consider that we are doing something in this moment,
What are we doing?
For the most part,
We are resisting or saying no.
We are in contraction.
To allow peace to be revealed in our lives,
We must change that no to yes.
But we can't do that until we are actually conscious.
We can't just think yes and transform our experience.
We have to stop saying no.
When the no is not conscious,
No amount of yes will change it.
That is why we must become present.
We must enter into a deeper experience of ourselves in this moment.
In what way are we saying no to letting go of control and surrendering our will?
What is our experience of ourselves in this moment?
We want to become present to what is actually real right now.
Reality is discerned through experience,
Through our conscious awareness,
Perceiving our state of being in this moment.
We have heard of the paradox of using our will to surrender.
What it really means is that we are using our will to focus our conscious awareness.
Become interested only in the experience of this moment,
The experience of ourselves.
What can we perceive?
We are used to looking for answers to these kinds of questions in our mind,
In our thoughts.
That is not what we are looking for now.
We want to find the answer in our experience,
How it feels to be here.
What energy we can perceive.
It is not something we have been easily allowed to do.
Our conditioning has led us to be only interested in what the mind presents to us.
Thoughts and beliefs,
Experience of ourselves is determined to be dangerous.
The truth of who we are and what we are,
The peace and the freedom and the joy and the love that we seek,
Are not found in the realms of thought and the mind and its abstract way of thinking.
What we are looking for is found in the energetic experience of being us.
Here is a little experiment in using our will to focus and then let go.
Use your will to direct your attention to your breathing.
Just notice what your breath is doing.
That is using your will to direct your awareness.
You tell your consciousness to pay attention to your breath.
Once you have an awareness of your breath,
Change your focus.
What do you feel in contact with the ground or with whatever is supporting you at this moment?
Feel that contact.
Use your will to direct your attention to that part of you that is making contact through gravity with whatever is supporting you.
That is using your will again to direct your attention.
Explore all of you that is touching something.
Your back,
Your legs.
Just become conscious of all that contact with a supporting object.
Now let us change the focus again.
Focus on your eyes.
Even though they are closed,
There may be some light to be seen.
Just focus your attention on your eyes.
Again,
You are using your will to focus your attention.
Focus your attention on what you can perceive of your entire body.
Can you feel every part of your body at the same time?
This may be a little more difficult.
It requires that you relax your attention a bit.
The information comes,
But you are still using your will to direct your attention.
Do not use your will to direct your focus anymore.
Just pay attention to what you are aware of.
Don't analyze it or make meaning of it or anything.
Just notice it.
Be with it.
If you can keep your mind from getting distracted,
You will begin to sense a real presence within you and around you.
Do not try to control your experience,
But you can use your will to stay present to that experience.
You may begin to experience the sensation of being called deeper,
To let go.
This is what you long for,
To be authentically present and connected with reality.
Realize that reality is your authentic self.
It is the knowing of the truth.
Now you may sense that you can say yes.
You no longer need to say no.
What you want is to say yes.
Let yourself be taken over by this experience of reality.
Give yourself completely to it.
Simply means surrendering and letting go,
Giving up.
We know on some level within us the presence and power of the one consciousness is who and what we are.
That we are an energetic expression of that infinite,
Timeless consciousness.
It is a loving presence.
It is light.
It is free of objectionable qualities.
It is peace.
All we have to do is say yes and let it fill us.
Empty ourselves and be available and it will be revealed.
