A simple guided sitting meditation.
This guided sitting meditation will help you to learn to simply be and to look within yourself with mindfulness and equanimity.
Allow yourself to switch from the usual mode of doing to a mode of non-doing.
Of simply being,
As you allow your body to become still,
Bring your attention to the fact that you are breathing and become aware of the movement of your breath as it comes into your body and as it leaves your body.
Not manipulating the breath in any way or trying to change it,
Simply being aware of it and of the feelings associated with breathing.
And observing the breath deep down in your belly,
Feeling the abdomen as it expands gently on the in-breath and as it falls back towards your spine on the out-breath.
Being totally here in each moment with each breath,
Not trying to do anything,
Not trying to get any place,
Simply being with your breath.
You will find that from time to time your mind will wander off into thoughts,
Fantasies,
Anticipations of the future or the past,
Worrying,
Memories,
Whatever.
Can you notice that your attention is no longer here and no longer with your breathing?
And without judging yourself,
Bring your attention back to your breathing and ride the waves of your breathing,
Fully conscious of the direction of each breath from moment to moment.
Each time you find your mind wandering off the breath,
Gently bring it back to the present,
Back to the moment to moment observing of the flow of your breathing.
Using your breath to help you tune into a state of relaxed awareness and stillness.
Now as you observe your breathing,
You may find from time to time that you are becoming aware of sensations in your body.
As you maintain awareness of your breathing,
See if it is possible to expand the field of your awareness so that it includes the sense of your body as a whole as you sit here,
Feeling your body from head to toe and becoming aware of the sensations in your body.
Now as you sit here once again,
Allowing the field of your awareness to expand,
This time expanding your awareness to include thoughts as they move through your mind.
So letting your breathing and sense of your body be in the background and allowing the thinking process itself to be the focus of your awareness.
And rather than following individual thoughts and getting involved in the content and going from one thought to the next,
Simply see each thought as it comes up in your mind as a thought and letting the thoughts just come and go as you sit and dwell in stillness,
Witnessing them and observing them,
Whatever they are,
Just observing them as events in the field of your consciousness as they come into your awareness and they linger as they dissolve.
If you find yourself at any point drawn into this stream of thinking and you notice that you are no longer observing them,
Just coming back to observing them as events and using your breathing and the sense of your body to anchor you and stabilize you in the present.
As the meditation ends,
You might give yourself credit for having spent this time nourishing yourself in a deep way of dwelling in this state of non-doing,
In this state of being.
