Come to find a comfortable seat for today's meditation.
This meditation will help us practice non-attachment to distractions,
Whether they be visual or audible.
As long as you can find a comfortable place to relax your body,
Feeling your sits bones ground down to the earth beneath you,
The crown of your head reaching up toward the sky,
Elongating your spine,
Creating an open space for your breath to freely enter and exit your body.
Closing your eyes or gazing softly toward the earth,
Start to bring awareness into your breath.
Letting the cool air enter your nose on inhale and the warm air exiting your nose on exhale.
Nothing to force here.
There's no certain rhythm or depth of breath.
Just allow it to happen naturally.
On inhale,
Feeling your belly expands like a balloon is inflating.
And on exhale,
Softening your belly back in toward your spine.
As you breathe,
You start to relax your body a little bit more.
Dropping your shoulders away from your ears and down your back.
Relaxing the jaw muscles,
Separating your lower teeth from your upper teeth,
Relaxing your tongue in your mouth.
Relaxing the tension behind your eyes and your eyebrows.
Bring your awareness to your breath as it enters your body.
And perhaps bring it to those locations in your body that are still holding on to some tension,
Discomfort,
Irritation,
Pain.
Scan your body and notice any of those spaces that are experiencing that.
And consciously bring your breath to that spot.
Oftentimes in meditation,
We realize that we need to relax and quiet the body as well as the mind.
You may find yourself relaxed in your seating position today physically.
But mentally,
Your mind may be jumping around thinking about what you need to do later on today.
Something someone said to you yesterday.
Perhaps you're distracted by sounds outside,
Cars driving by,
The siren of an ambulance,
Birds chirping.
And our natural instinct is to attach ourselves to those sounds.
We give those sounds stories.
We can be in the middle of meditation and hear the sirens of an ambulance drive by and we start to think about where it's headed,
Hoping that person is okay,
Safe and healthy.
We start to make up stories about what's going on out there in the world.
As soon as we do that,
We lose the present moment.
We go back to our breath,
Focusing on the inhales and exhales until the next distraction comes along.
Understanding the difference between our true selves and the individual who's experiencing the world is important for meditation.
Our true selves at the very core of who we are,
The essence of who we are,
Can be labeled as many different things.
In religion,
It could be soul,
Or it could be consciousness,
Awareness,
God,
The universe,
Love,
Whatever label you put to that.
Ultimately,
It's all the same thing.
It's the awareness,
The loving awareness in which everything occurs.
It's the understanding that we are that awareness and our senses,
Our sight,
Hearing,
Taste,
Touch,
Smell,
Are simply tools for that awareness to experience the world.
So if we can understand how to separate the sounds from the thoughts and the experiences,
We can learn non-attachment to those phenomenon.
Instead of hearing a siren drive by and labeling it as an ambulance,
Or labeling the story as an emergency or health concern,
We simply just hear the sound as it arises and dissipates.
No label,
No attachment.
That sound can be no different than a bird chirping,
Or the wind blowing,
The leaves rustling.
They're all just sounds.
See if you can settle into your meditation with non-attachment,
Focusing only on your awareness.
And when you're ready,
Bring your awareness back to your breath.
Your breath.
