In today's practice,
We will be doing mindfulness of hearing.
And as a starting point,
I invite you to just settle into a sense of gravity.
Noticing the contact points of your sitting bones on the seat or cushion.
Noticing the places where your feet or legs make contact with the ground.
Just tuning into the weight of your body in space.
Perhaps how the air makes contact with your skin.
The sense of warmth or coolness.
How the clothes make contact with your skin.
Noticing how your hands are resting,
Whether they're in your lap or on your legs.
Just feeling those contact points.
A sense of firmness,
Pressure,
Pulsing.
And then I invite you to take two or three deep conscious breaths.
Using the exhales to release,
Relax,
Sink more into a sense of gravity.
And having settled ourselves and grounded in a little bit,
We'll now invite our awareness to the field of sound.
And instead of just focusing really intently on one sound,
In this practice,
We're dropping into the whole field.
So we might notice the white noise of the room we're in.
Maybe some sounds from another room,
Sounds from the outdoors,
Whether that's traffic,
Crickets,
The sound of nature.
It's almost as if we are listening to an orchestra of reality.
Even if that's just one little gentle hum from a refrigerator or some electronic.
So taking a moment to really check out the different sounds,
Noticing the whole panorama.
You might notice that some sounds are louder,
Quieter,
How the sounds change.
They change in intensity,
Frequency,
Duration.
Maybe some sounds are pleasing and some are unpleasant.
Just noticing whatever is happening in the room.
Some are unpleasant.
Just noticing whatever seems to occur to you.
Continuing to have the attention ground in the whole flow of sound,
The whole panorama.
And inevitably,
You'll notice things apart from sounds.
You might notice different sensations in the body.
Perhaps things just like the pressure of your seat on the cushion or chair.
Maybe some discomfort in your back,
Pulsing in your forehead.
You might also notice different emotions or thoughts.
And that's perfectly okay,
Actually quite normal.
Actually quite normal.
And this practice of mindfulness of hearing,
We're not trying to laser focus in on anything in particular.
And we're really allowing the different parts of our experience to flow through.
It's just that we have this loose intention to,
At the center,
Have the flow of sounds,
But giving permission to all those things in the periphery.
All the different sensations,
Emotions,
Thoughts,
Those are part of mindfulness too.
Taking a moment just to see if right now you are relaxed or tense.
Sometimes there can be physical tension.
And that's just,
Again,
Part of the natural experience.
But if you happen to notice any mental tension,
Emotional tension,
Often this comes when we want something to be other than it is.
We don't like certain sounds.
We don't like the fact that we're thinking a bunch.
We want to be more relaxed,
More peaceful,
More present.
And so if you should notice any of these things,
These ways that you might be in resistance or wanting something to be different,
Just allow that to soften a little.
Giving yourself permission to have some resistance,
But also giving your experience a little more permission to be what it is.
Right here,
It's just like this.
There's sounds.
Also the feelings and thoughts.
An invitation to relax into what is.
As many times as our attention wanders off into thought or into emotion,
Into a spaciness,
As soon as we realize it,
We just gently,
Kindly,
Softly bring our attention back to the flow of sound,
Greeting it like an orchestra,
The interplay of the white noise,
The other noises.
Just letting it all flow through.
Mindfulness of hearing.
So we're going to take one final period of silence,
Maybe a little bit longer this time.
And here,
The invitation is really going to be to come into the heart of this instruction on mindfulness of hearing.
We're at the center of our awareness,
The center of our attention.
We're just noticing the flow of sounds,
The interplay of the white noise,
The other noises.
We're just noticing the flow of sounds,
The interplay of loud and quiet,
Piercing and sharp,
Different tones,
Buzzings,
The whole field of it.
But in that,
We're seeing that the point of mindfulness isn't to listen to sounds,
But it's to come into presence.
And by being present,
We have an opportunity to notice things like if we're tense,
If we're resisting something,
Or if we're relaxed,
At peace with things.
So perhaps just taking this final phrase into heart,
Relaxing into sound.
Relaxing into sound.
