This is a guided meditation on mindfulness,
The third of the five powers.
So we check our body.
If we're sitting on a chair,
The two feet are touching the ground.
We're sitting steady,
Relaxed,
And yet upright.
If we're on a cushion on the floor,
We feel the connection to the ground.
Our body is at ease,
But yet a posture which is energetic and feeling aliveness and freedom in the body,
The breath coming and going easily.
So let's collect ourselves to remember,
To be present,
To be here,
To arrive and meet our lived experience right now.
Collect our mind,
Collect our body,
And feel the sense of being,
Beingness,
Being alive right now.
It's a quality of surrendering or dropping into what is happening right now,
Instead of expectations or the sense there is something to be done or changed or something to get.
As we pay attention to our lived body-mind,
We can feel that our attention is kind of like a light.
It lights up our experience.
It can light up dark places that we don't usually know.
Can we feel our back fully,
All the parts of our back,
Parts that we don't usually notice?
Can we feel our head,
The back of the head,
The front,
The top of the head?
Usually we only notice we have a head when we have a headache.
Now let's notice all the parts of our head,
Our skull.
What about our eyes?
Can we feel the small muscles around the eyes that are working so hard and maybe under stress?
Going through the body,
Can we feel our tummy rising and falling gently,
Softly,
But yet each time,
With each breath,
The experience is different,
Original,
New?
What about our hands?
Can we sense that our hands are full of subtle experiences?
Again,
Awareness lighting up places that we don't usually notice.
Usually we notice we have a hand when it's doing something.
Right now,
Get closer.
What's the experience of touch,
Of our fingers touching each other or touching something?
How is each finger different from all the other fingers?
How is the experience of touch now different from what it was a moment ago?
What is the experience of touch?
Pressure.
It cannot be defined,
It cannot be described.
What about our mind?
Can we light up our mind?
Can we be a witness to the thoughts passing by as if we're watching a movie or a play?
Can we step out of the stream of thought?
Can we see this thought right now,
Arising and passing,
Disappearing and making room for the next thought?
As we watch thoughts passing by,
Pictures,
Comments,
Fantasies,
To-do lists for the future,
Memories from the past.
But can we be the watcher?
Can we feel what it's like to be a witness?
In some way that's awareness itself looking at the content of the mind.
Just as if we are sitting on the banks of a river,
Watching the stream flowing past.
Quiet,
Aware,
Awake.
And just watching,
Just knowing.
Coming back to the breath,
Which is one of the main places that is helpful as an address for our attention.
The main places where we develop mindfulness.
Being aware of this breath right now,
That's never happened before like this.
Just arriving,
Moving through the body,
The stomach rising,
Leaving the body,
The stomach contracting.
How is this breath?
What's its texture?
Are we doing anything with it or is it doing us?
Can we let go?
Be close and intimate.
Sense that the breath is breathing us.
We are being carried and rocked by waves of the breath.
Let go into the breath,
This breath,
Let it take us.
And be aware how that feels.
Mindfulness penetrates under the surface.
Mindfulness opens the doors,
Closed doors.
We can see it with just one breath.
How we discover the breath is a whole universe,
A whole journey.
The air coming from the trees and the world,
Entering our body,
Energizing us,
Flowing,
Feeling us,
Giving us life,
Leaving.
So let's do a small guided visualization connected to our daily life.
Just go back and remember,
For example,
The last time we went to the supermarket or a shop.
Maybe we got out of our car,
We walked,
We were thinking about what we wanted to buy,
We entered,
We walked around looking,
Choosing.
Just go back over that experience.
And now let's rewrite that script,
Applying the power of mindfulness.
Imagine that we knew exactly what each step felt like,
How our feet were touching the ground as we walked,
How we felt the air on our cheeks,
How we saw the sky and the shapes of the clouds,
What we felt as we entered the shop,
All the colors of the products,
All the richness,
Arriving at the doorways of our senses as we entered the shop or the supermarket.
Still not forgetting our body as we walked and moved our feet,
Our hands,
The touch of our clothes,
Noticing other people,
Those serving,
Working,
Shopping.
So just imagine how that one event can be so different with mindfulness and where it might take us in our daily life in all the circumstances and changing situations that we meet.
Moving us from automatic living to aware,
Present fullness and bigness of mind and heart.
And coming back to our body right now,
Present,
Aware.
Being aware also of pleasant and unpleasant sensations in the field of our body or pleasant and unpleasant thoughts in the field of mind.
Allowing them,
Knowing them,
Knowing them as pleasant or unpleasant,
But a sense that our awareness is big enough to hold them both.
We are bigger than pleasant and unpleasant.
Our awareness is freer,
Open,
Vast and able to receive and know the changes and the qualities of each moment.
So let's finish this meditation with a moment of appreciation of the power of mind that is in us,
That is our nature.
To be connected,
Present and able to hold and know the phenomena that arise and pass in our life.
And how living with this awareness instead of being an automatic pilot could utterly change everything in our life.
So I'm going to ring the bell now as the end of this meditation.
And be aware of the sound of the bell in our mind,
In our body,
In our being.
Just let it touch us and move through us.
