Welcome to session number four of meditations.
This is Daniel and welcome back.
Today we're going to be looking at sound as an anchor or sound as a vehicle for harnessing the attention of the mind.
Now sound of course is happening all around us all the time.
If you just pause for a moment wherever you are,
You may want to close your eyes,
Just notice sound.
There may be some sounds in the room around you.
You're going to hear the sound of course of my voice,
Not only the content of my voice but the sound itself,
The cadence,
The rhythm,
The stops and starts and it's very much like any other natural phenomenon.
If you were listening to birds singing or ocean waves,
You would hear a rhythm and a cadence and a tone,
Almost a texture to sound.
So any of that could be used as a meditation tool immediately.
We're going to use today the sound of Tincture Bells.
These are bells that are used for meditation and for yoga and I have them here with me.
I'm going to hit one of them so you can hear.
There's two different sounds,
One slightly higher than the other.
You can see how that sound has a beginning,
A middle and an end and it dissolves back to the silence.
Just listen one more time for the whole experience.
See if you can notice the place in which the sound seems to dissolve into silence and what remains is your memory of the sound.
So notice how you're actually holding the memory of the sound in your mind and to play the other one,
This one has a slightly different tone or slightly different texture.
And again,
See if you can notice the dissolution into silence.
Now I'm going to play them both together.
Both tinctures will hit one another and you'll hear an oscillation between those two notes.
And again,
Listen for that sound and its dissolution into silence.
So now we're going to allow that sound to lead us into silence and silence will then be the anchor for your attention,
Simply the absence of any particular sound.
Waiting for one minute here.
Can you hear me here?
And as you inhabit this backdrop of silence,
You lean your attention towards it.
Anything else that is appearing as sound,
As sound information,
Even the sound of your own breath,
Just allow those sounds to ebb and flow and come and go as they will.
And simply lean back again into the silence.
See if you can allow the sound of my voice to simply be another one of the sounds you're hearing.
You don't have to try to understand the content.
Just listen to the rhythm,
Listen to the cadence,
Listen to the arising and dissolution of each phrase,
And allow those sounds and their completion to draw you back into this veil of silence.
Looks like the background consciousness of the mind.
Take one minute here.
Okay.
.
And now you can begin to broaden your attention to include not only sound and silence but the texture,
The feeling of whatever you're sitting on,
The weight or the pressure through the body,
Between your body and that structure,
The temperature or the temperature difference between the air on your skin.
So allow all these artifacts of sensation to arise and dissolve as they do within consciousness.
You can also now include a voluntary breath here.
So you step into this spectrum of sensation with the breath and begin to comfortably fill and empty the lungs,
Adding a little bit of force to the inhale,
A little bit of force to the exhale,
Creating a sound with the breath as well as an experience of expansion.
And along with this breath you can add a phrase or a word,
Maybe a condition or a feeling you want to experience today.
Clarity,
Peace,
Serenity,
Focus,
Compassion or anything you want.
Just breathe that in and out.
A few more times.
You can let any effort now in the breath or the body go.
Simply sitting.
And as you're ready you can blink open the eyes.
And that'll conclude our meditation for today.
Thanks again for listening.
