Sounds, Deeper Practice Playing With Attention And Awareness

Sounds are explored playfully with attention and awareness. In this deeper practice, you learn to move your attention through the landscape of sounds around you, acknowledging the lessons of impermanence and emptiness. Ultimately bringing you to a relaxed, calm, and open mind.
No music.

Transcript

Welcome to this practice.

I am David and thank you for coming in to sit with me.

During this meditation together,

We will hold periods of time for you to practice in your own way,

Allowing this practice to unfold with your own experience woven through it.

So let us take our posture,

Sitting or lying down or even standing.

Whatever you choose is okay.

Always ensuring you are open to what your body needs right now and how best to care for its limits.

Feeling a little gentle movement,

A gentle sway even,

Settling into how you will hold your body with kindness and respect.

Muscles releasing where they can,

Loosening and becoming liberated.

Settling more now into a position of ease,

One that allows you to be wakeful and restful.

Becoming still.

Taking a moment to be mindful of the texture of this space you are in.

Sounds,

Temperature,

Movement,

Sensations.

Settling your attention on your face,

A sense of soothing,

Melting spreading across the face.

Softening your forehead,

Your eyes released,

No longer needing to witness.

Quieting your lips and jaw,

A mellow feeling falling onto your body like a gentle warm rain.

It is normal that we arrive at practice carrying the weight of our experience written into our bodies.

So give yourself full permission now to allow whatever you have carried here from your day to fall away.

Words to quieten,

Impressions to fade,

Releasing any pressures to be anywhere else,

To do anything else,

To be anything else.

Can I invite you to feel a subtle smile gently drawn across your lips,

In time this smile falling open into your body,

The whole body smiling.

Recognising in this moment your own humanity too,

Possibly an ache for something unnameable,

Or the miracle of what you could choose to be.

Feeling nurtured for taking this time to be present to the poetry of your own unfolding experience,

Whatever it is,

Calm,

Turbulent,

It is all okay.

This is your experience and you are not forcing yourself to be other than you are right now.

Allow yourself to simply start from where you are right now,

In this moment,

Opening a little to the sensitivity of your body held within a field of gravity,

Feeling weighted,

Feeling held against this ancient wisdom within the earth beneath,

That unconditionally supports you.

Settling more and more into here,

Into this particular now,

This existence of you right now,

Nestled within the eternal flow of moments falling into the next,

A magical fragment of infinity.

In this practice your intention is to explore resting in presence,

Finding your own experience balancing graceful effort and surrendering effortlessly.

In this practice we will use the sphere of sound to arrive at a more spacious quality of resting awareness,

An open receptivity to what is.

You don't need to do anything here when resting,

Just coming to a place of being rather than doing.

We are not lost or distracted.

We are fully present and fully aware,

Not directing our attention to anything in particular.

We're not trying to control our thoughts or force our experience to be a certain way,

Or to be a particular thing.

All we are is aware.

That's it.

Curious too,

What motivates you to practice?

Sensing what answers may arise without more thought.

For a sailor there is no favourable wind without a harbour to set compass to.

Can you sense the possibility of what motivates you to practice?

Relaxing the body with a few deep breaths,

Signalling to your body it is safe.

Paying close attention to the in-breath,

Lungs expanding,

And the out-breath releasing and giving back,

Aware of each breath as it flows through you,

Being aware of every breath,

Allowing your attention to fall onto the feeling of the breath.

Attentive to breathing in,

We know we are breathing in.

Attentive to breathing out,

We know we are breathing out.

Can we even be aware of the subtleness of pauses between each breath?

A grain of time?

What does this briefest of moments feel like for you?

A stillness possibly?

An anticipation?

A holding or a waiting?

A silence maybe?

Or pure presence?

Allowing this fragment of stillness to open just a little more.

And more.

Before your breath flows once again into the next.

I am curious too,

Can you allow this space to fall open wider still?

Opening like a window generously revealing its view to you.

Allowing this feeling of spaciousness to pour into the out-breath.

What does this feel like?

Maybe there is no sense of this for you.

A void.

Nothing you can touch with your mind.

But what does this feel like?

What feelings are subtly woven into this void?

What response can you sense here?

Maybe a bracing against this experience.

Remember,

Stillness is not an absence.

It's a presence.

Surrendering into relaxed and natural breathing.

Here we will use sounds as support within this practice.

At times holding a gentle focus.

At times moving to notice the soundscape around you.

And finally resting without effort to whatever is moving through your experience.

Let's start with gentle focusing on sounds.

Allowing your mind to tune into whatever sounds are present.

This could be sounds close to you.

Someone in a nearby room.

Or far distance sounds.

Children playing.

Laughter drifting.

Or the sounds of cars moving by.

Whatever you can rest your awareness on.

Choose one particular sound and use this as support or a sound object to sustain your awareness.

When you become aware your mind has wandered away as it does for us all.

We thank and reward our mind by remembering the feeling of the smile across your lips.

The sensation of your whole body smiling and feeling nurtured.

And then we gently pivot once again to our support.

Let's do this for a little longer together now.

See if you can let your awareness relax and softly settle on this particular sound naturally.

Without too much tightness or holding on to the sound.

Let's do this for a little longer.

See if you can let your awareness relax and softly settle on this particular sound naturally.

Let's do this for a little longer together.

Now let's move from gently focusing on a sound to noticing the texture of the soundscape we are in.

Here you don't need to pick a sound.

You don't have to focus or concentrate.

Just notice whatever sounds are present allowing your mind to freely move from sound to sound.

Let's do this for a little longer.

Notice how sounds may come and go but awareness itself is there all the time.

The ground from which everything arises and everything eventually dissolves and falls back into.

Fall back into this space.

This space within you that experiences sound.

Impermanence revealing itself to you.

Let's do this for a little longer.

Even if your mind has become caught in thought,

Running into more thoughts,

It's okay.

Just rest back on the layered fabric of sound that comes to your ears.

No matter how many times you need to do this.

Just notice where your mind is if caught in thought,

Images,

Impressions.

Gently let thoughts go.

Let ideas go.

Let stories go.

Can you even sense letting go of letting go?

Let's do this for a little longer.

Moving now onto just resting.

Open awareness.

No need to listen to any sounds.

Just allowing what you experience to flow and wash through you.

Letting your attention move as it wishes.

Be curious how your mind wishes to control,

Striving to get it right.

Notice this impulse.

This is part of your present moment.

Just notice whatever unfolds.

Thoughts,

Feelings,

Perceptions,

Impressions.

Flowing through all the time.

Changing,

Morphing,

Merging,

Moving.

Like waves on the surface of an ocean.

Yet beneath the surface is the calm,

Clear water of awareness itself.

Here we are simply resting in that calm awareness.

Whatever ripples through you,

Simply acknowledge the wave and rest within the stillness of the deeper ocean beneath.

Sensing the perfume of silence and stillness within.

What is this like?

Even if the surface of your mind is turbulent,

Beneath this there is always the calmness of awareness.

Your mind aware,

Whether still or turbulent.

Thoughts,

Images,

Impressions,

Sensations.

All quivering and rippling through in their own way.

Knowing in time,

Left alone,

Their energy fades and they pass away.

Acknowledging the lesson of emptiness reflected within these ephemeral ripples.

Finally,

Just sit.

Rest back with the mind just as it is.

Dissolve any sense of trying to meditate.

Allow yourself to float there.

Held.

If your mind is turbulent and chaotic,

It is okay.

Just stay longer with a specific sound support.

Sustaining your attention with that.

Remembering too,

All the while the body breathes.

Until you feel the mind relax and release a little.

Before you continue with your day,

Set a clear intention to dedicate this practice to inform whatever you do next.

Carrying with it the knowledge that you can return to this awareness whenever you wish,

Wherever you are,

With one full attentive conscious breath.

We may recognise that with this practice we playfully train our mind.

Learning at will to shift from directed attention to unfolding our attention into awareness itself.

With this as always,

The mind that comes to practice is never the same mind that leaves practice.

Thank you.

Reviews

I came to this quite tired and the shifting from focus to open awareness of sound was just what I needed. Thank you again David