So I invite you all to come into a comfortable space.
I invite you all to come into a comfortable seated position.
Either sitting cross-legged on the floor,
Or in a chair.
Keeping the body relaxed,
And the spine and neck straight,
But not tense.
This will support your practice.
And you can keep the eyes either closed,
Or just gazing.
Whatever you're most comfortable with.
And for this guided meditation,
I'll just offer some pointers.
For learning to recognize,
And rest in,
The silence and stillness within our own hearts,
Our own minds.
So beginning any meditation,
We generally need to allow little time for things to settle.
Whatever's being stirred up in your day,
We simply begin by noticing.
With full awareness,
Whatever's happening here and now.
The condition of this bodily form.
Whatever aches or pains,
Sensations,
Tensions.
We simply notice this is the condition of the body,
Right now.
Connecting with each in and out breath.
As a skillful means of helping us stabilize in the present moment.
And we notice the mind.
In terms of the thoughts arising and ceasing.
If the thoughts are racing in all directions,
We bring awareness,
We bring mindfulness to that.
Without any judging.
No pushing them away.
But no clinging to them.
For this meditation,
Make the commitment just to ignore them.
You notice them,
But we don't engage.
Recognizing them as clouds floating in the sky of the mind.
That's all they are.
Nothing of substance.
So we don't need to fear them or resent them.
And now allow your awareness to be broad,
To be wide and spacious.
And by this I mean allow everything to come into your awareness.
The sounds,
The feelings and sensations in the body.
The thoughts and memories,
Imaginations,
Open up to everything.
Any smells.
Your mind is open and broad.
Not resisting anything.
But not clinging to any of them.
Like a wide open field.
Or like space itself.
Everything is allowed.
But nothing sticks in space.
And as you do this,
Adopting this wide open acceptance in meditation.
Can you notice the silence?
The background or substratum that pervades everything in your experience.
Between each thought,
Between each sound,
There is a gap where you can start to notice the silence.
But this silence actually permeates the entire experience.
And you can start to notice it.
The silence is containing all.
Each thought,
Each movement.
All sensory impingement arises out of and dissolves back into this silence.
This stillness.
All this space.
And these are simply words.
Just words I'm using to point to something that you can intuitively recognize for yourself.
Right here and now.
But you don't need to imagine silence or stillness.
We avoid thinking about it or conceptualizing it.
Rather,
We know it directly for ourselves.
It is the very fabric of our being.
And when we open and allow things to be just as they are,
In terms of the phenomenal world,
In terms of all sensory experience,
Then everything can just flow with no blockages,
Reactions,
Obstacles.
Because we learn to rest in this silence,
This stillness in our own hearts.
Can you sense that?
Can you recognize this silence within you?
Even for just a moment.
That's good enough.
This is the place of peace.
Of rest.
And when we learn to rest in this silence,
Without any sense of doing,
Achievement or getting,
We will naturally go deeper and deeper into our hearts,
Our true being.
And naturally and spontaneously,
Insights will arise.
Wisdom will come from this place.
This is the place where the ego is in abeyance.
And when the ego is in abeyance,
With all its neurotic thoughts and fears and desires,
Then we have access to the true wisdom within us.
So this is the true purpose of meditation,
To come back home,
Our true home.
Learning to rest in stillness and silence.
And realizing that this is the space where we can access truth.
And realizing that this is the space where we can access truth.
So I encourage you just to keep recognizing your own natural silence.
That's always here.
It's simply clouded sometimes,
A lot of the time,
By all the thoughts and emotions,
Distractions of our lives.
But the more time we dedicate to learning to rest into it,
The stronger the awareness of it will grow.
And this will follow us into our everyday life,
And we'll naturally begin to have more and more moments of recognizing and resting in this stillness.
Thank you.
May you all be well,
And may you all come to know your own inherent nature.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
