A quality of relaxed alertness,
No tension,
Just being present,
Allowing all of the sensations,
The noise from the street,
The noise from your body,
All the sensations,
The thoughts,
To just come and go.
Be aware of your breath,
Let it stay in a very natural way,
Don't intentionally change its rate or its depth.
And be aware of the full breath.
If you'd like to focus somewhere,
You could focus in the abdomen,
Just where the muscle rises and falls with each breath.
Let that be the center of your attention,
And every time your awareness strays to the sounds on the street or to other thoughts or sensations,
The minute you notice your mind has strayed,
Just notice it,
And then very gently come back to the breath.
Now coming to the center of your chest,
Feel a warmth in the center of your chest,
As if you were breathing in and out now through a set of nostrils in the middle of your chest.
And when you breathe in,
You breathe in something that is very light and warm.
And when you breathe out,
You breathe out all of the tensions that gather in the course of the day.
And realize that right in the center of the chest is a place of rest,
Place of quietness,
It's a place of that witnesses,
That is just present.
It's a retreat,
It's a place you can go into to be quiet.
In learning how to serve others,
We need first to learn how to work with the things that catch us,
The things to which we have attraction or aversion.
So sitting in the middle of your chest,
Remaining there,
Just resting there,
Bring to mind some significant event that happened to you today.
Let yourself go back and remember the event.
Maybe that event has some residual excitement or aversion or guilt or sadness or agitation or anger or frustration.
Notice the event and now come back into the center of the chest,
Breathing in and out.
Let the event go.
Now once again,
Go back to that event,
Watching the way in which you change from your equanimous quiet self as you start to bring that event back into reality.
See the way in which that event pulls you out of that present center,
How you lose your center into the dance of life.
We all do it all the time.
And just keep going back and forth until you have worked with that event enough so that you can think about it without leaving that quiet place in the middle of your being.
So you can say about that event,
Whether it was attractive or aversive,
You can say yes and that one too.
Ah so.
Try one more event.
Let your mind just float over your day from when you woke up until this moment and see which events grab you.
One will grab you,
Either it will excite you or you will feel aversion or some deadness.
Whatever you feel,
Or you'll start to think about it very intensely.
The minute you find one of those,
Stop.
The fact that it is sitting there with all that valence or power is because you haven't digested it back into your center.
So when you find such an event,
Then come back into the middle of your chest,
Just breathing in and out.
Find your center and then from there look at the event again.
And keep floating back and forth out into the event,
Back into the center,
Until you can stay in the center and that event can be present just as part of the fabric of life without the pull or the push.
This is the process of digesting life experiences and bringing them back into the center.
This is the value of moments of meditative quiet at the end of the day,
When you gather together the strands of the day and bring them back into the center,
So that there is continuity in life from that place in the center.
From the place in the center you see your own comings and goings,
You see your own elations and depressions,
You see your own hopes and despair.
You see it all and yet you remain quiet in the midst of it.
And those events which are particularly dramatic or trying or continue over a long time or involve pain in the body or fear about death,
Those are the ones you work with a little more to keep them connected to your center.
But as that center gets stronger and you trust that you have a home inside yourself,
A home you can always go to by just sitting down and taking some breaths,
Working with the breath until you quiet down,
Coming into the center and then digesting the day's events.
Once you're able to do that,
Then you can begin to digest other people's sufferings and joy and offer them equanimity when they are lost on the roller coaster of life.
The drama of life is wonderful,
It's intense,
It's you know you're alive in it.
And yet without that equanimity to balance it,
It always has in it fear.
Only when you have cultivated the equanimity,
The space where you are always present,
Quietly,
Clearly,
Only then are you able to be with life,
With love,
With openness,
With safety,
Invulnerability.
A few more breaths into the center,
Right to the center of the chest.
It is said that God,
Guru and Self are one and the same thing.
For some of you,
You have a relationship to God,
For others you have a relationship to a teacher or a Guru.
For others you find the that place within your own heart,
The middle of your chest,
It's all the same.
Just from this place let a sound emerge.
It may be a very quiet sound or a loud sound,
Just a sound.
Might be OM,
It might be any sound.
