Sounds and thoughts meditation.
Finding a comfortable upright seated posture with the shoulders relaxed and beginning to ground yourself in the body by sensing the contact points with the floor and the surface you are seated on.
Then slowly shifting your attention to the breathing sensations in the lower abdomen and staying here for a few breaths.
And now,
Shifting the focus of your attention to your sense of hearing,
Opening up your awareness to sounds coming from near or far.
Sounds coming from the outside,
From the inside,
And perhaps from within your own body.
So we're not searching for any sounds,
But simply receiving them just as they are.
Paying attention to the pitch of the sound,
Whether it's dominant or more in the background,
Its rhythm,
Whether continuous or intermittent.
And so inviting curiosity into the quality of the raw sound you hear.
And noticing any tendency to label sounds as they arise.
For example,
Saying a plane or birds or a bell.
And also noticing the tendency to judge whether you like the sounds or not.
And so noticing how easily you can get distracted by stories and associations that the sounds can create.
When you notice this happening,
Just coming back to the raw sensory quality of the sounds themselves and allowing them to be just as they are.
And inviting you to experiment with receiving sounds as if you're hearing them for the very first time.
Just resting in this awareness of sounds with a sense of wonder for our human ability to hear so much.
Noticing the moment new sounds come into your awareness.
How they blend in with other sounds.
How they linger on for a bit.
And then disappear.
Then new sounds arise.
And seeing if you can also notice quieter moments between sounds.
And now,
Shifting your attention away from sounds and back to the breath for a moment.
And so coming back to sensing the movement of the breath in the body and staying here for a few breaths.
And from this sense of being anchored in the breath,
Shifting the focus of your awareness to your stream of thoughts.
Starting to notice more broadly if the mind is very busy with thoughts.
Or whether it is generally more settled.
And now,
Narrowing the focus of your attention to get a closer glimpse.
Perhaps there are thoughts about this practice.
Or thoughts about what will happen afterwards.
Thoughts about a past event.
Worries about a future event.
So letting whatever arises,
Pleasant,
Unpleasant or neutral thoughts,
Just come and go on their own.
In the exact same way you observed sounds coming and going.
So there is no need to control your thoughts in any way.
Just resting in the awareness of your stream of thoughts.
Seeing them like clouds in the sky that appear,
Sail across and then disappear.
So viewing your mind as the sky and your thoughts like the clouds.
Sometimes you can see regular white clouds.
Sometimes dark grey ones.
Your mind remains as spacious as the sky.
With these thoughts clouds simply passing through.
So seeing if you can view these thoughts as natural mental events arising in the mind.
And recognizing that you have the choice to observe them from a distance.
Watching when they arise,
How they stay for a while and then disappear again.
And some thoughts may be quite stormy,
Charged with some stronger emotion.
So seeing if you can also be open to receiving this as part of what is already here.
So simply acknowledging your experience just as it is.
Whether pleasant or unpleasant.
Observing from a distance.
And if you notice that your mind is getting caught up in the story of a particular thought or feeling.
It is okay when this happens.
So just noting where the mind got lost into and then gently and firmly returning to observe the coming and going of thoughts and feelings as events of the mind.
And if your attention is being repeatedly pulled away into the stories created by your thinking.
Making the deliberate choice of anchoring yourself in the breath and the sense of the whole body breathing.
And taking the time you need to stabilize your awareness back in the present moment before returning to the practice of observing thoughts and feelings.
And now as we come to the end of this practice,
Inviting you once again to turn your attention to the sensations of breathing in the body.
Sensing for a few moments the full in-breath and the full out-breath.
