Welcome to this 10-minute guided meditation,
Loving kindness and gratitude practice.
Put yourself in a position where you will be comfortable and yet able to stay completely awake and alert.
Let's take a couple of deeper breaths in order to connect more directly to the body in the moment.
Now we will be doing an open awareness sit and with open awareness we are trying to strengthen the part of the mind that is capable of simply noticing whatever it is that we are knowing without getting entangled,
Caught up,
Starting to think about,
Analyze,
Fix,
Change,
Anything like that.
We just simply want to acknowledge what is being known and see how skillfully we can let it go and be receptive and available to notice the next thing.
Give yourself permission to not have to think about everything,
Not to try to fix everything,
Not try to figure everything out.
And this is extremely useful and empowering skill set to have.
So don't feel like you are being negligent or irresponsible if what seems to be an important thought arises and you're telling yourself,
Well,
I'm not going to think about that too much right now.
I'm just going to pay attention to what the mind is knowing.
This is a really,
Really important and useful thing and you will not forget anything that is super important.
You will do all the stuff that you need to do later in your day or whenever it is the appropriate time.
But for right now,
You're giving yourself a gift of noticing and letting go and it's freedom.
It's the ability to be really in control of how and when we do and say and act when we want to.
So find that curious alert part of your mind,
The aware part of the mind,
And either literally or just with the sensation or the knowing,
Ask yourself,
What is the mind knowing?
Remember,
All sounds can be categorized as the mind knowing sound.
All thoughts and emotions can be categorized as the mind knowing thought and emotion.
Sensations,
Smells,
Tastes,
If your eyes are open,
What you're seeing,
It's skillful and legitimate to have this,
What may seem to be oversimplified categorization of phenomena that the mind is knowing.
If the mind wanders,
We practice remembering what we're doing,
Simply paying attention to the part of the mind that is capable of acknowledging what is being experienced and is also capable of not getting wrapped up into what the mind is experiencing.
Remembering is one of the key components to a mindfulness practice.
Remembering to pay attention to your present moment's experience in this very special way.
And remember,
It's a gift to yourself and to everybody that you interact with.
It's so empowering to pick and choose which thoughts we will become involved with and which ones we will not.
This is healthy control.
There are many things in life that we cannot or should not try to control,
But our words,
Our actions,
And which emotions,
Thoughts,
And sensations we are going to become more engaged with is something that we can and perhaps should control.
And this mindful muscle,
This mindfulness muscle,
Allows us to notice what our relationship is to what we are what we are experiencing.
How are we interacting with the phenomena that we encounter?
The other profound gift,
The next profound gift we'll explore is the Metta practice,
The loving-kindness practice.
As you hear the Metta loving-kindness recitations and phrases,
Direct them towards yourself and acknowledge that you are a person in the world who deserves to be cared for,
Loved,
Acknowledged,
Healthy,
And your ability to flourish is really,
Really important.
So directing to yourself,
May I be safe,
Free from inner and outer harm and danger.
May I be happy,
Free from mental and emotional suffering.
May I be healthy and take care of this body in the best way that I know how.
May I know equanimity and compassion and empathetic joy.
And in the last few moments of our practice today,
What are you grateful for?
Can you feel gratitude towards anything?
And if you can,
Acknowledge it and try to let it resonate through all the levels of your being,
Mentally,
Emotionally,
Physically.
It's healing and it's soothing and it's nourishing.
And if it's a tough day where we don't feel much gratitude,
It's a one of those moments or days where we feel that it's just not accessible,
Then acknowledge that and give yourself permission to have the experience that you're having without judgment or the need to feel like you have to force a change.
We call this radical honesty and it's a really important part of the practice to say yes to whatever is here with us.
Remember that all these practices,
Mindful awareness,
Metta,
Loving kindness,
And gratitude are portable.
You can do them anywhere at any time.
And it's probably good to experiment,
Useful to experiment with having a formal practice and also seeing how much through the course of your day you can remember to tap into these incredibly powerful tools and resources that you can have with you all the time.
May your day be filled with peace and well-being.
