The following practice is a meditation on spacious awareness.
And although scientists continue to debate the percentage of each,
What is indisputable is that everything,
Including the human body,
Consists of both matter and space,
Form and emptiness.
So in this meditation,
We will primarily be focusing on this space,
This emptiness.
So to begin,
I would invite you to find a comfortable posture that you can maintain relative stillness,
A posture that's both wakeful and relaxed,
Sitting or lying down.
And just settle in.
So as you begin to settle into the body,
I'd invite you to bring your full awareness to the posture that you're currently in.
Maybe beginning at the feet,
Just taking your time to come into awareness of the felt sense of each part of the body as it makes contact with whatever you're sitting or lying on.
Just noticing the points of pressure,
Contact,
Support.
And just moving up the body to notice the spine,
The torso,
Bringing awareness to the shoulders,
Just letting them relax.
Noticing the arms and the hands,
Just allowing the hands to soften.
Letting the neck and the head relax.
And yet at the same time remaining wakeful,
Interested,
Curious.
And perhaps you have already tuned into the breath.
But if not,
I invite you now just to turn your awareness to the breath.
Settling in to receiving each breath.
And just staying with each breath as the air becomes the breath at the nostrils through the whole breath cycle,
All the way to the breath leaves the nostrils again,
Becoming the air.
Sensing how we take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide through each of these miraculous breaths.
And there's nothing to control.
There's no reason to make the breath be any particular way.
Just resting in the awareness and receiving each breath.
And if the mind is wandering,
That doesn't need to be a problem.
And just as you notice it,
Direct it back just to the breath.
We can keep coming back over and over,
Just settling.
Even if the mind is busy,
In our awareness,
We can notice this and continue just to come back.
Come back to this beautiful breath,
Miraculous breath.
Now,
Just to make a slight shift,
We're going to shift awareness from the breath itself to the little space between each in-breath and each out-breath.
And again,
There's nothing to make happen.
This is just a natural part of the breathing cycle.
The in-breath arises,
And then there's a little space,
And the out-breath releases.
So we're bringing awareness to this little gap,
This little space between each in-breath and each out-breath.
And just as you can notice this space,
This gap between each breath cycle,
I invite you now to expand your awareness to all the spaces in the body.
The space between the organs,
The space between the joints,
The space between the bones and the cartilage,
And the spaces within each cell in the body.
We know this to be true from science,
So there's no need to try and actually have a felt sense of it.
Here we can use the imagination to support the practice of touching into this spaciousness,
The spaciousness that is part of this body.
That is part of this body.
Resting in the awareness of this spaciousness.
And if the mind wanders away,
Just bring it back to this spaciousness in the body,
This spaciousness that holds all the forms,
All the matter,
The spaciousness that's part of the matter,
Part of the form,
Resting in the sense of spaciousness.
And just as there's spaciousness in the body,
There's also spaciousness in the mind.
And I invite you now to begin to bring awareness to the mind and to thought,
Noticing how thought arises and passes away.
And between the thoughts,
There's a gap,
There's a space.
So just as we can notice the themes of thought changing,
Always changing,
We can also begin to notice the spaces between these various thoughts.
This arising,
Passing away,
The next thought arises.
And there's space between the thoughts.
So and as you continue to rest in the spaciousness of the breath and the body and the mind,
I invite you now to move your awareness beyond the skin to include the space around your body,
Envisioning the space around your body,
The environment,
And sensing into this space that is also within the forms that are part of your environment.
And just expanding this awareness of the spaciousness as far and wide as possible.
And envisioning the sky itself,
This vast spaciousness that holds the entire earth.
And that holds each one of us.
And it's this spaciousness within our bodies,
Then our environment that can hold all that arises within us.
This spaciousness can hold thought and it can hold emotions.
Perhaps there's some particular emotion or emotions present right now.
And if you notice something present,
Just see if that emotion can rest here in this spaciousness.
Noticing the emotion itself and also the spaciousness around it.
And this is true for pain as well.
If there's pain,
You can feel the space around you.
And this is true for pain as well.
If there's pain present,
Whether that's emotional or physical,
This too can be held in spacious awareness.
We can acknowledge the pain,
We can turn toward it,
And we can also become aware of the space around it,
The spaciousness that holds it.
And if we are experiencing pain,
We can also become aware of the space around it,
And if we are experiencing something difficult,
An emotional or physical pain,
It can be quite skillful to rest awareness on the pain,
And then to move out to the spaciousness around it,
And to note the spaciousness within it.
And we can move between these two points of awareness.
Whatever is being felt or experienced in any moment can be held in this spacious awareness.
This is always here,
Waiting for us to tap into it,
To touch into it,
To bring awareness to it.
Vast like the sky,
Holding all the clouds as they come and go,
And the same spaciousness can hold whatever arises within us,
Offering support.
And if you're continuing to rest in this spacious awareness,
As we come to an end of this meditation,
I just invite you to bring the awareness back to just the breath now,
Coming back to this form,
This breath moving in and out.
And remembering that at any time during the day,
We can move this awareness to the spaciousness,
Holding whatever is happening in any given moment,
Holding this life that's happening right now,
Right here.
So
