The Still Root Within The Space

This guided meditation by Sharon Landrith is taken from the 2019 midwinter retreat in Crestone, CO. "The body is the instrument of receiving consciousness and reflecting it. Bring the attention to the body and let it drop until it finds a place of rest. The silent resting exists within the space that is boundless and without description or any dimension. They both exist in the same moment."

Transcript

Open up to that that has never been asleep,

Has never been conditioned,

Has never been soiled or tarnished or affected.

Open up to that.

And the most direct way is in the body,

It's the microcosm of the macrocosm.

The microcosm contains everything than the macrocosm contains.

But one is within and the other is reflected without.

And there'll be a certain point in your recognition,

Your self-recognition,

That the in and the out become all one thing.

It always has been.

And then that separation simply,

It just doesn't exist anymore.

But there is simultaneously,

And I don't know how to describe it because it can't be heard by the mind,

Is you can have a deep resting,

A deep anchoring inside of the body.

And at the same time,

It's boundless.

And both.

.

.

And sometimes that falls away.

I mean,

Most of my meditations at this point,

There is nobody,

There is nothing,

There's nothing to gain,

There's nothing to see.

It's just the dark ground eating and absorbing itself continuously.

That's all that's happening.

And then there'll be another phase,

I'm sure,

As there's been many,

Many,

Many before.

It never ends.

So it's helpful to begin to just open up to the global sensing.

And the global sensing is just,

Instead of the ears hearing only one sound at one time,

And then that sound is over,

And then another sound begins,

You open your awareness,

And it just becomes very spacious and open,

And it begins to perceive very subtle sounds within the room all at once.

So it may be a little sound over to the left of your head,

And something is happening a little bit behind you,

And then there's a little bit of a sound that's happening into the center of the room.

For some,

There's like an inner sound that has revealed itself,

And that's a good touchstone if that's happened for you.

It doesn't mean you've failed the test,

If it doesn't,

But it's kind of,

Oh I don't even know how to describe it,

A crystalline quality that kind of goes,

You get it?

It's kind of a sound.

And there's a sound in the silence,

And of course the mind can't grab that,

But you can enter into the silence,

And that's one of the gifts of this location and this center.

It's the gift of the alive experiential sound of silence,

And it's everywhere all at once.

There is no location,

There's no position,

And so you just open up to the actuality of what is,

Because the location of the sense of me and the location of I am the thoughts that arise in me,

There's a distinct location,

A distinct position,

And so you just bypass that.

It's very simple actually.

It is open,

And it's like this mic,

It's multi-dimensional,

It picks up everywhere,

And that's what you become.

You become an instrument of this alive space,

This alive life.

And then there's that sense of,

There's something awake,

It's aware that's actually behind the body,

And it's awake all around the body even though there's a sense of that it is just air,

There's nothing there.

But if you just open your attention to,

You know,

Be kind of this,

Kind of this horizontal open spectrum of receiving,

The body is the instrument of receiving consciousness and reflecting it.

And then you bring the attention without collapsing,

This openness,

You just bring the attention into the body and you just let it drop until it finds a place of of rest.

And that word is really quite accurate,

It's quite precise.

There's a resting,

And whether you have a kind of a hyper personality or kind of an anxious personality or,

You know,

You're kind of always on an alert personality,

It has nothing to do with this.

It has absolutely no effect on this deep rest.

It's just the attention is accustomed to riding the wavelets of anxiety or,

You know,

Kind of a restlessness or whatever you want to call that.

And it hasn't dropped into that that is always present,

Never touched,

Not ever offended,

Ever affected.

The deep holding,

The deep rest.

And it's within you.

Not some state,

Not some location,

Not some teaching in you,

As you are.

This is revolutionary to the concepts that we've all been impacted by.

It's direct.

And the more the attention is brought into itself,

Unto itself,

And allowed to just simply settle and rest,

And then not in any way diminishing or contracting the open spaciousness,

And both exist at the same time.

This silent resting,

This silent nourishment,

Support,

Profound stability exist within the space that is boundless and without description or any dimension.

They both exist in the same moment.

So just sense this still rooted presence within you,

Within your body,

Within your being,

And then moving through space at the same time.

The great interconnectedness,

The inner,

You are touched and affected and a part of everything that you experience.

So as you walk on the ground,

The ground and her beauty and her uniqueness is flowing up through the bottom of the feet and up through the channels within the legs and up through the central channel within the spine and the center of the body.

And the sun that is pouring into the body is being taken in and reflected back by the cells within the body.

Light opening to light,

That's the true deep nourishment.

We're looking for all of these pure foods and we're dismissing the most pure nourishment possible.

The dark ground,

The womb,

And the light that arises out of that and the light that pours from the sun.

And the air that contains the scent of the cedar and the pinon and the pine.

And you can sense and the body's sensing,

It's taking it in,

All of the moistness that's in the air.

It's quite unusual in the high desert.

And you notice the scents are even stronger because the moistness carries the scent of the trees and the aridness of the rocks and the and the movement of the air that flows through the body because the body actually is transparent.

We think it's this solid thing and that where attention is in our heads and we're thinking these thoughts and you know rumbling over here and rumbling over there and figuring it over here and whatever.

That's just what the mind does.

But if the attention is resting deep within the core of your being deep within the body and then open it up then it experiences itself as it actually is which is this vast,

Vast,

Vast interconnectedness of everything.

And that's why when we have delved deep into the conditioned self and there's a great integrity and willingness and courage but we can't seem to lift up out of it because all these this sort of web of thoughts that surround this body.

It's like a mantle of thoughts that surround this body.

We haven't really just stepped out of it.

You know it's the web of ancestors,

It's the web of culture,

It's the web of karma,

It's the web of current experience and we just you know we're constantly sort of it's moving in and out of the system.

And there has to be a certain point where you just simply see what it is and you're free from it.

And then if it comes back to be seen more consciously and more clearly then it will present itself otherwise it just drops away.

You're no longer under and surrounded that web of collective conditioning.

So you have to see,

You have to see for yourself that that web is a collective memory and it's just clouded this clear open mirror of being.

One of the old teachings it's just you just keep polishing the mirror,

You just keep polishing the mirror and then there's a certain point where the seeing is clear now.

The seeing and the reflection is one thing and it's clear.

And you can do all sorts of wonderful purification of the body and that's very helpful.

I mean we're really surrounded by a great deal of substances that are not natural and supportive of the body and its wisdom and its vitality.

But if you stay in the realm of purification you're staying in the realm that needs to be purified rather than resting in that that has never been touched.

Do you see?

And then if purification is drawn to out of wisdom it takes place.

But it's just like this pure open being and a deep-seated repression comes to the surface and then it seemed to be freed,

It's not seen to be identified as.

And it's the same way with the body there's certain layers of you know emotional repression,

Mental repression,

Ancestral inheritance you know kind of a density.

But if you keep your attention at that layer then you're in a spin.

It's very very very challenging to move out of it.

So you bring the attention back to that that is it's free,

It's vibrant,

It's alive,

It's vast.

And this beautiful expression called me,

The human expression,

The way it's happening within it.

And even the the great and profound Mother Earth she's happening within it and you're happening within her and on it goes.

It's all one being.

It cannot be separated out except in the mind and the memories.

And you can't take one less conditioned part of the mind and apply it to a more conditioned part of the mind and have any real true liberation.

You can rearrange the furniture to make it a little more appealing but there's very little liberation.

I'm sure you've noticed that.

Rest deeply.

Bring your attention to find that deep holding,

That deep resting and then just open up and expand and expand and expand and expand and open and open and include and embrace.

Be what you are.

And if you lose that rootedness then just come back.

It's like a,

I don't even know how to describe it,

Like a 10 percent that's always awake and rooted and still and the rest just opens up to what is.

And that changes,

You know,

It goes into more of a sense of stillness and stability and that vastness seems to just be imbued with that stillness.

And there's other times where it's more just the vastness,

The aliveness,

The interconnectedness,

The presence,

Everything.

And at other times you come in and you're more into relationship.

But even when you're in relationship and you're intimately enjoying and encountering whatever is in relationship there's still a sense of openness behind you and all around you and a sense of stillness within you.

It's a practice.

It's like everything else.

You can't be a great sailor or a pilot by just jumping in and taking off.

You practice,

You learn the functions and the structure of how it is.

It isn't anything like your mind and others around you have taught you.

It's nothing like that.

It's a new way.

And you have to have kindness and compassion until it remembers itself.

So just for a moment bring that sense of stability,

Rootedness,

Stillness,

And deep resting,

Deep holding in the interior of the body.

And actually it's almost like the awareness has these eyes and you start to see from within out.

And then at the same time there's no boundary above,

Below,

All around,

In front and back.

That's the reality,

The truth of who you are.

And you can call it whatever you want to call it.

And thoughts will happen in most cases,

Sometimes not,

But usually,

But they're just like wavelets.

They just kind of flit across the screen.

They have no inherent meaning.

And you just bring your attention back to its place of rest.

And then the attention and the silent ground are fused.

At a certain point they don't break off.

Identity may happen but it happens within that open consciousness,

That open field of aliveness of being.

And any kind of tension that develops in the body it's just sort of,

It's just like,

Let go.

Center of the forehead,

That's a real strong position of a false sense of me.

Just let it go.

The belly gets tight,

Perhaps pulled up,

Just let it drop.

The heart gets kind of constricted and just open it up.

Okay.

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