So morning meditation,
So finding a place or a time where you can just take a few moments out of the doing,
The busyness,
To stop,
Come into stillness and turn towards your experience.
And really with this approach,
Rule number one is to remember that we live in a VUCA world.
It is volatile,
It's uncertain,
It's complex and it's ambiguous.
It's always been like this,
It always will be like this and we need to remind ourselves that's how it is.
And in a way there's nothing wrong in that.
Everything's changing,
We don't know what's going to happen next,
There is uncertainty,
There is complexity and somehow we don't know how it all makes sense,
A lot of ambiguity.
That can be exciting and challenging all at the same time.
So that is our situation.
Let's remind ourselves of that and let's accept it.
Now that might be hard to do,
Acceptance is a bit of a loaded word but let's just accept that that's how it is.
And from my experience it's really helpful to have that perspective because it softens the resistance and the struggle and it says that actually this is how it is,
This is how life is,
This is how the world is and maybe nothing has gone wrong.
Yeah I'm dealing with a crisis right now or I've got too much to do or there is an illness in the family or whatever it might be but it's just like yeah this is VUCA.
And when we accept it then we can reduce the amount of resistance we bring.
It's a very subtle but a liberating perspective shift and we start to see that VUCA is all around us,
That everything is always changing.
So with that in mind this is a short practice,
10 minutes or so,
Just to arrive and sit in the midst of VUCALITY.
So come to a sitting posture and just stop,
Breathe out,
Breathe in,
Breathe out,
Take a few conscious breaths and start to let the body settle.
Foundation number one is the body.
The body is always in the moment.
The body doesn't time-travel like the mind does.
So dropping the awareness,
The knowing directly in this moment what it feels like to have this body right now and just feeling where the body touches the chair,
Feet on the floor,
Hands on the table or the lap and relaxing,
Just relaxing.
Nothing to force,
Nothing to accomplish,
Nothing to change.
Meeting the body as it is.
And you might notice there's some mood or emotion or some tension,
Some tightness.
It all depends on what's happening in your day.
Maybe you don't have much happening and you might be quite relaxed.
Maybe there's some boredom and you might have loads of things happening.
You might be rushing around and struggling to keep up and then,
Well,
The landscape of the body will feel very different.
Mine is something like that today.
Lots of emails,
Lots of forms,
Many different things to do,
Sense of not enough time.
And the practice is to recognize that right now it's like this.
So I feel the sort of tightening in the body,
The contracting,
You know,
The muscles actually active,
Slightly tense,
Slightly contracted.
The breathing is a little bit shallow and the mind is busy working to try and get everything done.
And my approach to this is to accept it.
It's like,
Yeah,
This is how it is.
There's a little bit of irritability,
A little bit of wanting it all to be done and there's a sense of meeting the irritability and finding a skillful way through my to-do list.
What does irritability feel like?
As I mentioned,
It feels contracted and a bit tight and the breath is not deep and flowing.
So this space is for meeting all of that.
Not to change it,
Not to make it different,
But to meet it as it is.
And when we do that,
When we meet our experience honestly,
Compassionately,
Kindly,
Without trying to change it,
We find that it does start to change.
That tightness does start to soften.
The breath can start to slow down and we can find some clarity in amongst all this busyness.
Make peace with it.
So bringing the awareness to the breathing now.
Just letting the breath start to be known and start to recognise and realise,
Yeah,
I'm breathing.
Not to go looking for it,
But actually just letting it come into awareness.
Let it show itself.
The breath is quite a shy creature.
If we go looking for it,
Then we can start to control it.
But we're looking for letting the breath show itself and keeping it simple.
Just in-breath,
Out-breath,
In-breath,
Out-breath.
Just recognise there's an in-breath and an out-breath.
As you do this,
It's likely you start to notice thinking is happening.
That even though the body is sat on this chair,
That the mind is outside the room,
In the future,
In the past,
Dashing around.
See if you can see that.
This is what thinking does.
Thinking about shopping,
Cooking,
Domestic admin.
The day-to-day responsibilities of being a human in this world.
Bills,
Food,
Those kind of things.
But there's also the story of my life and what I want.
Where am I going?
What am I trying to achieve?
Conversations I've had,
Things that I'm worried about.
They also show up in the thought stream,
In the thinking process.
And just recognising all of the thoughts and letting them come,
Letting them go.
Not trying to stop,
Change or alter or get rid of thinking.
That would just be more thinking.
There's a bit of background noise in my environment.
The weekly visit from the refuse collection,
Picking up the bins,
Emptying them into the truck.
A bit of noise in the background you might hear.
So we have body,
We have breath,
We have thinking,
We have sounds,
We have a recognition that we live in a VUCA world and everything is changing.
And we also have the gift and the magic experiment that is being alive in this moment.
And the day that stretches ahead of us.
How are you going to live it?
What are you going to do next?
What's the most important thing?
So setting an intention as you continue your day into how you're going to meet it.
Maybe a little bit slower.
You might even think,
Well,
What's one or two things I really must get done today?
And focus on those.
And as best you can,
Relaxing,
Staying grounded,
Staying connected with the body.
And when you're ready,
If you had the eyes closed,
You can open them.
Congratulate yourself for taking this time for a practice of mindfulness and meeting yourself.
Waking up from the autopilot.
May you be safe,
May you be well,
May you have ease of being.
