In this meditation,
We'll explore finding rest in the midst of all the activity in our mind and body.
One of the ways we'll do this is by dividing all of that activity into smaller categories.
These categories are see,
Hear,
And feel.
See is anything visual.
So if you open your eyes,
It's what you see in the room around you.
But with eyes closed,
It's your mind's eye.
You can imagine a shape or color,
Or maybe even just the blankness behind the closed eyelids.
Hear is anything auditory.
You can hear my voice speaking to you now or maybe sounds in the room around you.
But it can also be your mind's ear,
A song in your head,
Or mental dialogue.
Finally,
There's feel.
Anything in body experience.
And we'll include taste and smell for simplicity in that category too.
It could be emotions.
We call them feelings because we feel them in our body.
It could just be the weight of your body in a chair or lying down.
It could be how you notice the temperature of the room through the air against your skin.
So anything that our body processes,
We'll notice that as feel.
Rest is present always in the midst of all this activity in those three senses.
And when I say rest,
I just mean calm,
Neutrality,
Softness,
Openness,
Anything that seems relatively less active than other aspects of our experience.
So with that,
Let's explore.
I invite you to settle into a comfortable but alert posture.
Eyes can be open or closed at any time during this practice to help with that balance.
Eyes open may help with a little more alertness.
While eyes closed might help bring a little more calm.
You can continue to refine this balance through the breath by taking a nice full breath in and noticing the energy of the fresh oxygen arriving into the body.
And then the natural release as you exhale,
The dropping of the shoulders,
The settling of the chest and the belly,
And just letting that relaxation spread throughout the entire body.
This natural release of the rib muscles and the diaphragm and the belly muscles as we exhale is a great place to start noticing rest.
Also in the pause at the end of the out breath before we begin to breathe back in.
So when we notice that release,
That relaxation,
That stillness before the breath begins again,
We can silently say to ourselves,
Rest.
And use that label as a reminder of what we're focusing on.
Opening our full attention to rest.
So try that now in the body.
Feel rest.
Maybe continuing to notice it in the breath or scanning through the body.
Whenever you land on an area that feels soft,
Gentle,
Open,
Neutral,
Any of those things,
Noticing it,
Feeling it rest,
And soaking into that experience.
Rest could be a sense of emotional calm or peace.
A lack of any strong sense of emotion could be considered neutral,
And that's rest.
We might find that we're continually pulled over to more active sensation.
Maybe a feeling of pleasure or maybe something discomfort,
An ache or an itch.
And that's a totally normal process.
We can build our mindfulness skills by just gently turning the lens of our attention back to rest in the body wherever we can notice it.
Now I invite you to move the lens of attention to the space of hearing,
Auditory experience,
And you might begin to notice a rest or relative quiet by asking yourself,
What's the quietest corner of the room that I'm in right now?
You might notice if that area of rest has a boundary where sound begins to become more prominent and just see if you can keep attention focused on the area that is quiet.
And feeling free to label rest,
To renew the connection of attention.
You might also detect rest internally in your mind's ear.
Maybe there's space around the sound or internal dialogue.
Maybe there's quiet in between the words.
When you notice that relative calm compared to sound activation,
Tune into it.
Just open towards rest in hearing.
If a specific experience of hear-rest changes and becomes active,
No problem.
It's a natural process.
You can just turn the lens,
Checking inner or outer hearing for a different area of rest.
Now I invite you to shift attention to the experience of seeing.
If eyes are open,
You may wish to see if you can detect a shape or color or space in your visual experience that feels neutral,
Soft,
Gentle.
When you settle your gaze on it,
It just feels calming.
You might also see rest with the eyes closed in your mind's eye or just by focusing on the gentle blankness of the closed eyelids.
Maybe there's some soft,
Gentle swirling or pixilation.
See rest using label of rest if that's helpful to stay on track.
Our mind is in the habit of feeling.
We're moving towards activation,
But we can use contrast to gently move back to this more subtle experience of rest.
When we see rest,
We're developing a clarity about our moment-by-moment experience,
Noticing aspects of it that we might not normally notice,
Developing a palette,
A taste for rest even in the midst of sensory activity.
If you notice feelings or mental dialogue or even images of doubt,
Questioning,
Am I doing this right?
Is this what this should feel like or look like or sound like?
Just notice that that is activity.
See if you can use the contrast,
The boundary of that activity to find the lack of activity on the other side of it or around it.
That lack of activity is rest.
Now considering your experience of see rest,
Hear rest,
And feel rest,
And which one was most accessible,
Where it seemed easiest to contact rest.
Make a mental note of that as something that you may wish to explore later in the day.
I invite you to turn your attention there right now.
As an experiment in how you might practice this in daily life,
I invite you to begin to transition attention so that you're keeping some contact with rest,
Either in see or hear or feel,
But letting a certain percent of your attention just notice my voice as I'm talking.
We call this background practice so that you're not giving 100% of attention to rest,
But you're still trying to maintain a small portion of attention there.
Maybe scanning for rest in the body,
Maybe noticing the rest around my words as I'm talking to you,
Maybe seeing the rest behind the closed eyes while you're also intellectually processing my words.
And just notice that although this may not seem as deep or as focused as when you were giving 100% attention to rest,
It's something that you can carry with you while you're still interacting with the world.
And so this allows you to take this technique of see,
Hear,
Feel,
Rest beyond just this time.
Great work.
As we conclude this formal practice,
Take a moment to congratulate yourself on taking this time to grow your mindfulness skills,
Concentration,
Your ability to put your attention where you want it,
When you want it,
Sensory clarity,
Your ability to be very clear about what's happening in your experience moment by moment,
And equanimity,
Your ability to open to experience as it unfolds without fighting against it or holding on to it,
And just appreciating it moment by moment.
Well done.
