Taking a moment to let your body become comfortable.
Respecting your needs just now.
Eyes open or closed.
Relax.
Breathe.
I invite you to let go of all thinking about meditation and how it should be and ask you to explore is it true that there is not already here stillness and peace before I try to make it quiet?
Is it true that peace,
The calm I wish to get to isn't already here in this moment?
Are the states we seek stillness and presence not already here before we meditate?
Before we try and manipulate this moment of experience?
No need to search for it.
When we sit to meditate our minds want to know what to do.
Want to know the experience of meditation.
So simply allow everything to be as it is.
If your mind moves away into thoughts spiralling into other thoughts Remember we are sitting with the intention to allow everything to be as it is.
Taking time to sense if you are allowing everything to be as it is.
Thoughts,
Feelings,
Sensations,
Impressions all woven into this experience.
Allow all of this,
Everything to be as it is.
There may be tension here for you now.
Could this indicate where we are not allowing something to be as it is?
All the while the body breathes.
Blood flows through rivers of veins and arteries.
Your heart beats.
You are not leading the way.
You are not controlling.
You are falling in behind experience.
Simply tracing its path.
Letting it be however it is going to be.
No manipulation.
Aware what is naturally flowing through your experience.
Nowhere to go.
Resting back into a simple state of listening.
Open receptivity to what is.
No manipulation.
No you interfering with experience.
Open listening.
Fluid listening.
Listening moving as it needs.
Feeling awareness diffusing in you like a drop of ink spreading in water.
Sounds.
Sensations.
Thoughts.
Images.
A sensorium.
Listening even to silence.
To stillness.
To presence.
With gentle effort.
Aware when you are manipulating experience.
Expressing effortlessness.
Letting go of manipulating experience.
Balancing effort and surrender.
Effortless effort.
Awareness flows where it needs.
Awareness rests where it needs.
Allowing awareness to move as it needs.
Mind.
Body.
Being.
Relaxing.
Heritage within awareness.
Letting go of control.
Letting go of the wish to relax.
Letting go.
No striving to sustain anything.
Thoughts.
Feelings.
Memory.
No striving to push away anything or to stop anything.
Awareness simply moves as it needs.
Everything arises,
Displays,
Passes as it needs.
This is how emptiness moves through you.
Everything spins and unspins.
Experience folds and unfolds.
Impressions bloom and furl and fade.
Sounds carried on air and mind fall still again.
Fluid listening.
Still life.
Awareness listening.
This the essence of meditation.
Nothing is held onto.
Nothing is pushed away.
Letting awareness be as it is.
No manipulation.
Forever unfolding more and more.
Heaving and flowing.
Consciousness breathing.
Following its own inner delight.
Awareness flows where it needs.
Awareness spontaneously caught by sounds.
Birds calling.
Murmur of voices distant.
Tenseations,
Vibration,
Tingling.
Awareness just listening to that.
Leaning into nothing.
Bracing against nothing.
Fall through what you think you know.
Just fluid listening migrating to the surface.
Just the rhythm and play of listening rippling.
Can you come to the place where you sense you are both nothing and everything?
There is nothing to seek as an answer when the seeker disappears.
This meditation will not end.
No bell,
No sound.
No signalling the end of practice and the beginning of our life.
Allow everything to continue as it is.
Listening.
Fluid awareness.
Always and ever was there.
Allow everything to be just as it is.
As we move into our day,
We move with no concept that this practice ends.
Just simply moving into our day.
Nothing else needs to change.
How different can our day be and for those around us,
Responding from this place of listening stillness?
