The Sixth Sense Of Mindfulness

This simple and effective process of mindfulness of the body and of sounds will effortlessly and naturally open up your awareness to the wholeness and emptiness of the ‘other’. It is an experience that goes beyond your five senses. Truly, a sixth sense that we can realize by being mindful and present in the moment. (With background waves.)

Transcript

The first part of this meditation will be mindfulness of the body.

Quite often mindfulness of the body exercise such as a body scan will involve going through different parts of the body,

Maybe starting from the feet and working up.

And that can be very useful.

I prefer to do mindfulness exercises of the body that apply to the whole body,

Rather than different parts.

So for example,

To begin with I will just get a sense of how my whole body is feeling.

A general sense of the energy of the body as a whole.

If you want to spend a few moments just tuning into your body,

Being aware of your whole body and noticing how it feels.

And with all the aspects of this meditation,

See if you can keep a nice open and light awareness.

So don't feel like you have to concentrate or focus on anything.

But keeping your awareness open,

Not excluding or blocking out anything at the present moment.

Feeling free to notice thoughts and sounds and breath and sensations.

Always open to all aspects of the present moment.

With each part of the meditation,

You're just making a choice to show a bit more interest in one aspect of the present moment.

In this case I'm interested in exploring how the body feels.

I'm still aware of the room around me and all the other things happening in this moment.

Choosing to explore the sensations,

The energy,

The feeling of the whole body.

The whole body awareness we can have is the feeling of the weight of the body.

Noticing the subtle difference between sensing the general energy of the body,

How the body is feeling and now sensing the heaviness or the lightness,

The weight of the body and how you experience the weight of your body,

The whole body.

And then we can move to the surface of the body.

So we've felt the energy within the body,

We've felt the force of gravity pulling on the body.

Now let's bring our attention to the surface of the body,

So across the whole of the skin.

Being aware of all the sensations of contact and connection,

Whether it's floor,

Chair,

Clothes or the air on the skin,

It'll just take a while to sense the whole surface area of the body and what sensations are there.

So feel free to move between these three examples of body awareness,

Weight,

Energy or feeling and surface area connection.

Maybe see if you can hold two or even all three of them within your awareness at the same time.

So what these all have in common is that we're being present with the body.

We're allowing our awareness to join the body where the body is,

Which is always right here and right now in this present moment.

So allow yourself to be intimately with the body in this present moment,

Just with the body as the body is.

Another aspect of body awareness before we move on to cells is to get a sense of the presence of the body,

The living physical presence of this living organism.

So get a sense of your physical presence,

Where you are,

Where you're seated and the aliveness in the body,

The alive presence of your physical body.

And the last step for the mindfulness of the body is to get a sense of the space around the body.

So we've felt the connection,

The energy,

The weight of the body.

We felt the presence,

The living energy of the body.

So now just get a sense of the location of the body within the space that you find yourself in.

So a sense of the space within the room surrounding the body.

So this brings us on to the mindfulness of sound as we move beyond the body into the environment around the body.

So as we sense the space around the body,

We can now also begin to actively listen out to all the sounds we can hear in the environment around us.

So as before,

Try not to focus or concentrate on any particular sound.

See if you can get a sense of the whole soundscape around you,

Listening to all the sounds,

The combination,

The blend of sounds,

The unique blend of sounds in each one,

Allowing your awareness to be open,

Broad and wide,

Allowing all sounds to be within your awareness in each one.

And again,

Not blocking out or excluding anything from your awareness of this present moment.

So there are still thoughts,

There's still awareness of the body,

There's still sensations and feelings.

So I welcome all of those and just choosing to pay particular interest for a few moments to that experience of sound.

Noticing the variety of all the different sounds,

Near and distant sounds,

Quiet and loudest sounds,

Continuous and occasional sounds,

Welcoming all this variety into my body.

And then similar to what we did with the body,

Where we began with the energy inside the body and then the surface area of the body and then the space around the body.

Now that we've been aware of sounds for a while,

See if you can get a sense of listening beyond sounds to the space within which sounds occur.

So a sense of the wider space around you now that encloses,

There's the background of all the sounds you can hear,

Even the most distant sounds still happening within this space around you,

This space of your own awareness.

If you listen really carefully and closely with the tension and with an open awareness,

You may begin to get a sense of the silence and quietness and that this space,

This environment around you where the sounds come and go is a quiet and silent space.

You can begin to listen out for that silence between,

Behind,

Beyond the sounds.

So this is the beginning of this idea of the sixth sense of sensing things beyond the usual five senses.

So if you get any inclination or indication of the sense of silence by listening,

Then that's an example of using your awareness that is behind all your senses to be open to being aware of experience beyond the usual five senses.

The silence,

The quietness that we can sense and experience is just beyond the sound.

My experience is that this silent space isn't just the space within which sounds come and go,

But it's the space within which all our experience comes and goes.

Everything we feel,

Smell,

Taste,

See,

Think and feel,

All our experiences are rising out of this empty silent space.

Because it's so quiet and so still,

It's so easy to miss and to not notice.

If we do allow our awareness to be light and open,

And if we do accept and be aware of everything that's happening within our awareness,

Then we're in a position where we can also begin to get a sense of what's just behind,

Beyond all those different experiences.

The background,

The backdrop,

The foundation,

The space,

The silence.

Many different words,

But all relating to one experience.

And in time we can begin to bring that background sense of this empty space more into the foreground of our own awareness and allow all the things that are happening within that space,

All the sounds,

The thoughts,

The feelings,

Just to be a little more in the background.

So we can slowly become more interested and more absorbed in the stillness,

The silence,

The space,

The emptiness.

By approaching meditation this way,

Through the senses,

Sensing the body,

Sensing the sounds,

Then hopefully we can get an experience where we're sensing and directly experiencing this other space of emptiness.

So it's not a concept or an imagination or a thought,

But we're sensing it in the same way as we sense any experience.

That is,

We are aware of its presence,

Of its impact upon us and we feel its reality.

So I'll leave a few moments now of silence without commentary.

And just allow yourself to be fully aware of everything that's happening in the present moment with the body and with sounds in the environment around you.

And see if you can get a sense of the wholeness of the present moment.

And just noticing that that whole present moment is happening within the space of your awareness.

And see if you can sense and experience that space within which everything is happening.

Just one final thought,

Don't try to experience the space,

Let it reveal itself to you.

All we need to do is be open to all the things that are happening within that space.

And then just wait patiently and with openness.

Just a few moments more,

Just enjoying being in the present moment with an open awareness.

All right.

For watching.

.

.

.

.

.