Welcome to day one of the Clarity Experience.
I am beyond excited to start this journey together.
And all you really need to do is close the eyes and listen.
You'll need a couple of minutes of silence.
So if you have family members,
Children,
Pets in the house,
Just give yourself 10 minutes.
It can be before everybody wakes up or right after everyone else goes to bed.
Finding that space can sometimes be the hardest part,
But once you're there,
All you need is to sit.
You can do this with your eyes open or closed or just softening the gaze.
So in that comfortable spot,
In that comfortable space,
Go ahead and find your comfortable seated position.
Whether you're on a chair or on the ground on the earth,
Start to just notice your breath and start to be aware of the spine.
We begin this journey with the spine,
Bringing your attention to the very base of the spine first,
Seeing if you can pick up on any motion when you breathe in and out.
And then start to scan upward,
Walking your attention,
Your awareness up the spine as you breathe.
Noticing one vertebrae at a time,
One by one,
Moving up.
Imagine each vertebrae is like a pearl between your eyes.
You are taking the pearl.
Between each one of these pearls,
You are taking a velvet cloth and weaving it in and out.
Weave through the pearls,
This soft velvet cloth.
Imagine the velvet cushion polishes the pearls of your spine.
With this polishing,
The spine lengthens.
And think about the garland of these pearls becoming more and more luminescent,
Brighter,
Shinier.
Weaving to the very top of the spine,
Making its way back down.
And now begin to think about your day yesterday.
Just doing a little scan from the moment you woke up to the time you went to sleep.
Does anything in particular pop out for you?
Why is it you think that this particular moment,
Conversation,
Thought is coming to mind right now?
Shifting your awareness back to the breath,
Back to that weaving of the velvet cloth in between each and every one of your vertebrae of these pearls.
And take five deep breaths as you imagine that visualization moving up and weaving back down.
Notice now after those five breaths,
Were you able to keep the mind focused on the breathing,
Focused on the weaving of the velvet cloth on your spine for those five breaths?
What was the state of your mind during those five breaths?
If something else came up for you,
If something else popped up,
Simply notice it.
We are like PhD students of the mind.
Take the thoughts under a microscope and we examine them.
We stand back and observe them.
We take the thoughts under a microscope and we examine them.
We stand back and observe them.
Where are the thoughts coming from?
Where are they happening?
If we can observe them,
Do we feel them somewhere specifically in the body?
Where are they happening?
How many of our thoughts are original?
Original thoughts to us were original thoughts that we've had today for the first time.
Do you have one gentle,
Slow thought floating in or do you have many thoughts racing in your mind?
See if you can catch one thought.
Notice it.
See if you can notice the center of that thought,
The end of the thought.
Notice what the thought is.
Is it a sound,
A conversation,
Something that happened,
Something that was written,
You think you read,
Something that was written,
Something that you didn't know.
Notice what the thought is.
Something that happened,
Something that was written,
You think you read.
Just as these words written in sentences and the conversations,
There is someone talking.
There's always a pause in the conversations,
In the words that are written.
There are pauses.
The same goes for our thoughts.
There is always a pause.
In this silence,
Look for a place where one thought ends before the next one begins.
Like with the breath,
When we hold the breath,
At the in-breath or at the bottom of the breath,
Sometimes we have to put in some effort to bring your awareness to that space between the thoughts,
The gap between the thoughts.
Try to do that now.
Observe under that microscope.
Thoughts can be simple fragments,
Flashes of a visual memory of a conversation.
In between them,
There's usually that gap between the thoughts.
Through single-pointed concentration of the mind,
We are able to enter into the gap and stay there for a moment.
To simply observe it.
This may take some practice,
But don't give up.
It's like a muscle that we work in.
It's like a muscle that we're working in.
It's like a muscle that we're working in.
It's like a muscle that we're working in.
It's like a muscle that we work in.
It's like a muscle that we work out.
Giving yourself this space for stay can be the trickiest.
We are setting the tone for the rest of the course by trying to identify this gap.
Being patient with yourself.
It does take a couple of tries.
Remembering there is no way to do this wrong.
We cannot tell that we are in that gap until we have come out and back into conscious thinking.
So simply practice throughout this first day of the Clarity experience and throughout the rest of your day,
Training the brain to notice the space between your thoughts.
The gap between your thoughts.
Take another couple of breaths here with the option to stay here as long as you can,
As long as you want to connect to that gap.
To practice like a mind game,
Like a puzzle.
Where does one thought end?
Where does the other begin?
Where does the other begin?
When you're ready,
Bring the palms together.
We're going to create some heat in the palms,
Rubbing them together.
Rub fast,
Fast,
Fast until you get that heat.
And then simply separate the palms about basketball distance apart and then try to bring them together,
Feeling that energy in between the hands and bring them in towards the eyes,
Letting that warmth come into the eyes,
Fluttering the eyes open,
And slowly releasing the hands back down.
Namaste.
