Welcome to our guided 15-minute meditation called the Inner Witness,
Including five minutes of silence toward the end.
So let's begin.
By now you're sitting down either on a cushion on the floor or comfortably in a chair or on a couch.
And if you are sitting in a chair or on a couch,
Take a moment to scoot all the way back in so that your back is beautifully supported by the chair.
And if your legs are crossed,
Go ahead and uncross them and put both feet flat on the floor.
And just let your hands rest however they fall,
Right there in your lap.
Sit up nice and straight,
Neither slouching back or leaning ahead.
And one final posture adjustment.
Lift the top of your head ever so slightly toward the ceiling without straining or stretching.
Just a slight lift separating the vertebrae,
While at the same time allowing your shoulders to drop and fall as low as they can go.
So again,
Lifting the heads just slightly while allowing the shoulders to relax deeply and fall as low as they can go.
Leaving your body frame in a relaxed but alert pose.
Ideal for meditation.
And now let's take just a minute or two to release and let go of all of the stress and tension and worry and exhaustion that we carry with us so carefully.
Bring your attention to the muscles of the face and just let them soften and feel all that tiredness draining away like water into sand.
Bring your attention to the neck and the shoulders and again release all of the emotions and grief and anger and tiredness and any discomfort or pain in the neck and shoulders.
Let that all go and slide away.
And moving down the body,
Let's do the same in the chest area.
Any tightness,
Tiredness,
Anxiety,
Worry,
Simply release,
Open and let go of all of that which does not serve our highest good.
Feel it all draining away like water into sand.
And now move our attention into the hips and the thighs and here too,
Release and let go.
And feel all of the preparations and absurdities and plans and anxieties.
Feel them all draining out of you,
Moving through your legs,
Over your knees,
Through your calves,
Across your ankles,
Into your feet and out of the bottom of the soles of your feet.
Feel it draining away as you release and prepare for a time of freedom.
Let it all drain out of the bottom of the soles of your feet into the floor and into the ground beneath the building.
Let's take three big deep cleansing breaths right here deep into the belly.
Breathe in,
And out.
And again in,
And out.
And again very deep into the belly and out.
And now simply allow your breathing to return to its normal natural rhythm.
And now I invite you to move your attention into the mind,
Into the stream of thoughts,
The river of thoughts that flow continually across the field of our awareness.
In a few minutes when we move into silence you will no longer have my voice to focus on.
And at that point your thoughts will pick up steam and get louder and more insistent.
So to prepare for that let's practice observing our thoughts now.
Simply notice that the mind's natural activity is to create thought.
Its job is and has always been the generation of concepts,
Judgments,
Feelings,
Memories,
Aspirations,
Plans,
Fears,
Joys.
And the last thing we want to do in meditation is struggle and fight against what is natural.
So instead of struggling against the flow of thoughts we are simply going to move out of them and look back at them and witness them.
In the Indian classic the Bhagavad Gita Krishna calls this the inner witness.
So we are going to practice shifting our identification from the thoughts to the one who is witnessing our thoughts.
As a thought arises watch it with bemusement the way you would watch a cloud moving across the sky or a leaf floating down a stream.
If we were sitting beside a beautiful stream and a leaf came floating down on the current of the water we wouldn't have an opinion about it.
We wouldn't try to stop it or as it went past we wouldn't try to cling to it.
We would neither resist it nor attach to it nor would we have a particular feeling about it whether it was good or bad.
Let's practice bringing that same eye to each of our thoughts when we move into the silence in a minute.
As thoughts arise simply watch them come and go without having to have an opinion about them.
And as you make this shift you are experiencing the most important shift in all meditation practice and that is simply to disengage from our habitual identification with the thought stream and move quietly into the inner witness.
So as we prepare now to move into the silence as thoughts arise simply shift into the witness.
I invite you now to open your eyes and feel free to move about as we shift back into our surface consciousness and perceive the room and the space around us.
And thank yourself for giving yourself this time of deep self-care and conscious awareness and know that as you return to your busy wonderful and exciting life you always carry with you this inner witness and can shift into that state anytime anywhere no matter what is happening around you.
Thank you for joining us for today's meditation on the inner witness.
Namaste.
