Hi everyone and welcome to week three's meditation on exploring the different qualities of our experience.
So finding a sitting posture that you feel supported in,
Feeling yourself be upright and awake as well as open and receptive in the chest and in the heart,
Letting yourself be at ease,
Fully relaxing and fully settling into this moment,
Really giving yourself permission to be here,
Taking notice of your feet touching the floor and your thighs and your buttocks,
Rooted in your chair or your cushion,
And imagining yourself sitting just like a mountain,
Rooted and grounded and still.
You may take a couple deep breaths in to find your breath here,
Letting the belly fill and expand,
Letting it soften as you exhale,
Just letting the breath really drop deep and down into your body,
The rising and the falling of the belly,
Then letting your breath be natural,
Letting your attention settle with the feeling of the breath,
Moving in and out.
You may even expand your attention to feel the whole rising and falling of the body,
Feeling your whole body sitting here just like that mountain.
Now taking any notice if there's something in your current experience of the body that feels pleasurable for you,
It could be that you start to feel there's some pleasure in this slow winding down of the mind as you rest with the breath and the body,
Or the feeling of relaxation,
Of not having to do anything,
Of letting go of your agendas for a few hours or minutes,
Maybe even an emotion of gratitude or peace or calm.
No matter how small it is,
See if you can connect with it.
Notice where the feeling of pleasure lives in your body,
And also take notice of your attitude in the mind towards whatever is pleasurable.
Is there a feeling of liking,
A feeling of wanting this pleasurable feeling to stay around and continue?
Just noticing our relationship with what's here and what feels good.
If the attention begins to wander,
Just calling it back to what was pleasurable in your experience,
Or if nothing is strong and calling your attention,
You can always return back to the feeling of your breath.
Now bringing our attention to something more ordinary and neutral in our experience.
We often overlook what is ordinary because it doesn't grab our attention right away,
And neither does it push away our attention either.
This could be your sensations of the breath as it moves in and out of your body,
The very ordinary feeling of breath,
Or it could be the feeling of your feet touching the ground or your hands resting in your lap,
Or maybe even the sounds in your environment.
There may be a very normal and ordinary quality to the sounds that are arising and passing in the background.
As you let your attention rest with what is ordinary,
Also pay mind to what your relationship with what's ordinary is.
Do you feel the tendency to want to move on to something more interesting?
Is there a slight feeling of being bored?
Just see with the genuine curiosity what the tendency of the mind is.
Now letting our awareness settle on something that is more uncomfortable or even painful in our experience.
In our experience,
This may be some ache or discomfort that you feel in your body after sitting here,
Or this could be an emotion that's lingering in the body,
A feeling of worry about something coming up,
Whatever it may be.
Notice how the mind wants to step away from it,
How it often wants what's unpleasant to change,
And see if you can instead bring a sense of kindness to what's painful or uncomfortable,
Or uncomfortable.
Allowing yourself to unhook from the stories and ideas about the painful experience and instead sensing into what the sensations feel like in the body.
Staying soft and staying relaxed in the body is an expression of your care and your kindness towards yourself.
How can we hold what's tender and painful with a bit more care and love?
How can we learn to turn towards and send it away from our pain?
In a few moments,
Our meditation will come to a close,
But take notice that as we've sat here,
That we've explored experience falling into one of these three categories,
Pleasurable,
Ordinary,
And painful.
And in noticing how we respond to these different flavors and qualities of experience,
We can then gain insight into ourselves.
I welcome you all to open your eyes,
And as you continue with your day,
Keeping a soft attention on these different qualities of experience and the tendency of the mind to want to lean in or lean away from certain experiences.
I thank you for sitting with me.
Have a wonderful day or evening.
