Come into a posture that supports mindful listening and that supports your practice.
Whether you are seated or lying down,
Just a position that's easy for you to hold and be in for a while.
Each time that we sit,
We rebuild a structure.
I use a systematic approach because something new is learned each time that we rebuild it.
New synapse patterns get established or reinforced.
We begin to expand the way we understand moments of experience.
This understanding enhances the recognition of what is suffering and lets us see more clearly our power to choose.
Pre- things are.
Instead of saying,
I want it to be different,
How about being where we are and seeing if there is a way to be present for anything that is arising as part of our experience.
It's important to remember that we're not practicing resulting.
We are practicing practice.
Results are only a small amount within our control and we have much more choice around practice.
Intention developing clarity of intention around our choice.
Intention is in this moment here now.
So beginning our formal practice.
We arrive here in this moment.
In the room you're in.
Here.
Here.
Now.
Sensing the space around you.
Placing mindfulness front and center.
Staying in the body.
The body as it displays itself.
The way it is felt.
Right here.
Right now.
Compared to the fact that we want to receive the body experience.
Receiving without judging,
Comparing or fixing.
Without judging the body as good or bad.
Without comparing it as better than or worse than it was or how it should be or even to someone else's experience that we might imagine.
We receive experience as it is revealed in the body.
Bringing a direct attention to those aspects of our experience that provide a base,
A ground,
A ground for our exploration.
It's like base camp on a hike.
How our base camp is this very body.
If we get lost,
We can just return back to the felt experience of this body.
You can feel the feet touching the earth.
It can be the bottoms of the feet,
The sides of the feet,
The backs of your feet,
Touching the floor or the cushion or the bed.
Just the feel of the feet touching the earth.
We can sense our back body.
Sense a feeling of weight underside.
The sits bones,
The backs of the arms.
The whole back body.
Not hovering,
Not pushing or pressing.
Just allow the weight of your body to rest on the earth.
Weight underside.
And if you're sitting,
Sitting in the bones,
This feeling of ground as the body is held by Mother Earth.
Sensing the relative stillness,
This grounded feeling in the lower half of the body.
Centeredness.
Relativeness,
Relatively still.
Staying with the body experience,
Incline the mind to notice the movement of the breath.
Let's begin to sense all of the wonder of the breath.
First it's just breath.
Then it's the wind element as our understanding deepens.
We receive the experience,
Receiving the breath.
Not an intellectual notation.
We're dropping into our felt experience here and now.
There's no need to push aside any of the other bodily sensations,
Including the body and the breath together.
The energy of movement and vitality is felt in the body.
So we feel the breath more and more.
It becomes more this elementary experience of wind.
This energy of movement.
The aliveness is larger and our personal stories drop into the background.
Just taking this energy as our object.
We incline the mind towards the recognition of our vital body.
This energy.
It can show up as a thing itself.
Perhaps you sense vibration or pulsation.
It can be an electricity-like feeling.
Can be intense or a low level.
Maybe there's a feeling of a spreading of relaxation.
This very active pulsing feeling.
Just experiencing that level of beingness.
Resting in this space for a while.
Such a more spacious experience of life.
Vital body and vital body can move back and forth between these levels of consciousness,
Of awareness as we grow in our practice.
We can notice these levels of experience that happen in the body.
The levels of experience that happen in our energy.
Again,
Through sensing,
Pulsing and vibration.
Movement in stillness.
The chi body,
The prana body,
The energy body.
Our vitality.
So precious,
This aliveness that courses through us.
We take it for granted.
Such a gift to be alive here now.
Focus now on your own.
Next time I fence my kalat Elise in the grass I find myself My Galapagos your awarenessfed Penny and will see through the impure atmosphere.
Enjoy.
Thank you.
