Beditation: A Meditation On Waking In The Morning

When waking in the morning, many of us jump immediately into the mind thinking and often dreading the day ahead. Suryacitta talks about then guides you through Meditation. Meditation is a way of honoring and greeting what is in your experience right after waking up. Instead of avoiding, ignoring, or just getting busy, he guides you in a way of greeting your feelings and emotions with warmth and acceptance.

Transcript

Hello.

A couple of days ago,

Banky hurt himself.

As you know,

Banky is our blind border collie dog.

He's still young,

He still runs around,

As some of you know.

And he hurt himself on a rock and again,

I brought him back and you could see he was hurt.

He couldn't eat very well,

Something,

He banged his mouth and anywhere.

And you could see he wasn't himself.

And the next morning when I woke up,

He was on the bed and I woke up to a feeling of like that nervy,

Scary feeling about what's happening with him.

Is he all right?

That mixed with sadness.

And really,

That's what I want to talk about is what we can do in those moments.

Because often when we wake up,

There's what's present in us is highlighted because the filters are not there.

The usual busyness,

The usual overthinking about other things.

Our sensations and feelings and emotion can be very raw.

And what do we do?

There are probably hundreds of thousands,

If not millions of talks and meditations on sleep,

On going to sleep.

I want to talk about waking up and coming out to sleep in the morning.

We could call it meditation.

So what is meditation?

It's exactly the same as meditation,

But you're in bed.

So what did I do then?

And what can we do?

We wake up.

I woke up and what I did,

I turned and I seem to do this automatically in the morning nowadays.

I turned to the experience I was having.

My hand moved out and felt Panky's little furry head.

And I could see he still wasn't quite right.

But,

You know,

That's another thing at the moment.

And by the way,

He is all right now.

A few days,

Just two days,

Two days.

He's eating as well again and still running around.

So I turned towards these sensations and feelings and just stayed with them.

I just kept them company.

I'm going to guide us through a short meditation on this very theme in a little while.

So I literally just kept the sensations,

That scariness and nervy feeling and the sadness.

I just kept them company.

Just there.

Hello.

It's you guys again.

You appear a lot around our little Panky,

Don't you?

They were around when our Jay was here.

He was the dog that died in the middle of last year.

But that's what we can do.

Whenever there's an uncomfortable feeling,

We wake up in the morning and quite often we can have decided what kind of day it's going to be.

Off we go into thought.

Oh,

Not that,

Not this.

Oh,

Raining again.

Or whatever it is.

I've got to go to that meeting.

Don't go to the meeting before you go to the meeting.

Don't go to work before you go to work.

Or don't suffer from going to the meeting before you go to the meeting.

You never know.

The meeting might not be one of discomfort and difficulty and challenge.

It's something you might have built it up into before we're even there.

A few minutes after we're awoken in the morning,

There it is.

I've decided this is going to be a difficult meeting.

There's something very close to difficult that I think we miss.

This is going off piece a little bit here,

But I'll come back.

You could,

Or rather sitting right next to difficulty is thrilling or it can be thrilling.

It's something that needs you to move towards it,

To engage with it.

Just change your mindset a little.

Just change your,

Even change your language from difficulty to a challenge maybe.

Or can this be thrilling?

If you stay,

So if you stay out of the head,

If you stay in the body with that,

Those primary sensations of whatever's coming your way,

It can be thrilling.

It's when we go into the head that it,

Oh,

Oh,

We go all wobbly.

Yes.

So,

So we wake up and what we can begin to do is what's going on just for five or 10 minutes.

You're just there.

What's going on?

You,

In a sense,

Scan around the body.

Don't want like the word scanner.

Don't know even why I used it.

You search around the body.

You become curious.

Better.

Let's have a look.

It might be obvious.

As I say,

In the morning,

Things can be.

And if there is a something to come that,

You know,

If there is a meeting that's,

Ah,

That's on your mind,

Go into the body,

Meet it in the body,

Meet the body's response to it.

The body has a response.

The body's response to something isn't often the something.

So the body's response to the meeting isn't the meeting.

It's your thought about it.

So we have life living.

Just,

Just life living here.

We're just living our life,

Raw experience of the senses.

But the mind is making something else up and we experience life through the mind.

So the body experiences what's going on in the mind.

If there's fearful thoughts,

The body feels that fear.

So if you can stay out of the mind,

And this is the training,

This is the practice,

Is to stay in the body.

So shall I get back to my pond?

I wake up and just become curious about what's here.

It might be really blatantly obvious.

Just touch it.

Don't get up.

Don't get out of bed.

Stay there.

This is your meditation.

Five or 10 minutes.

To do this,

You may even need to get up 10 minutes,

Wake up 10 minutes earlier.

Put the alarm on,

Put a snooze.

That's your thing.

I don't know.

You have to make it work for yourself.

I tend to get up very early,

5.

30,

5.

45,

Particularly when the lights are,

The mornings are bright and banky is around.

So we turn towards and just keep what's here company.

Just experience it.

Don't try to do anything to it.

Don't try to zap it with loving light or don't try to change it.

If you want to do anything,

Say hello.

Move your attention towards it and just experience where in the body,

Maybe you can ask or sense,

What does it feel like?

I'm not trying to get rid of it.

That's conflict.

This is the end of conflict.

Don't want any more conflict.

Okay.

So I touched that fiery,

Nervy,

Sad experience.

I just stayed there with it for about 10 minutes.

Then the time just came to move,

To get up,

Have a cup of tea and take Banky for a walk.

Nothing complicated.

Doing this isn't complicated because it doesn't involve the mind.

It doesn't involve any thinking or very little thinking.

It might include the odd thought like,

What does this feel like?

Or hello,

What does this feel like?

It's just that just,

Those type of thoughts just orient the attention to something.

Just here.

There it is in the chest and belly.

You find yourself in the mind back here,

Come back to the body.

So I think I'll guide us through a short meditation in relation to this.

So right now,

Whatever you're doing,

Wherever you are,

You're likely to be sitting down already.

Close your eyes if you wish or rest your gaze on a blank space,

Maybe a white wall.

That's it.

Then just sensing into the body,

A couple of deeper breaths just to help you arrive,

To steady the attention.

Just sensing your mood.

There may be something much more obvious.

Maybe something is actually present,

Obviously present right now.

Just take your attention there.

This is what I'd like you to do every morning when you wake up.

That's it.

Just take your attention and just experience what's here.

Hello,

Sad feeling.

Just keep it company,

Wherever it is.

Even if you're not sure,

Keep that company.

You can put your hand there if you wish,

On the heart or the belly.

Don't try to attain anything here.

It's not about attainment at all.

It's about attending.

Just experiencing what's here.

Create a welcoming attitude,

Best you can.

A warm space.

If there's nothing obvious,

That's okay.

Just sit in the body.

Just experience the body.

That's it.

If there's nothing else you need to do,

This is it.

Just keep experiencing.

If you go into thought,

That's okay.

Just unhook and fall back into the body and experiencing what's here.

There's always something here.

Sometimes we like it,

Sometimes we don't.

Sometimes we don't even notice it.

Don't complicate it.

This is it.

Just feel what you find and that helps to heal our life.

The term we use,

What we feel we heal,

Not in your time,

In its time.

The body is in charge.

We just give the attention to it and be patient.

Okay,

So you can open your eyes if you wish and sit comfortably as you like.

So that's something you can do each morning,

Five or 10 minutes to make it work for you with alarms or whatever.

Or maybe you need to go to the bathroom and come back just to wash your face.

But you want to do it when,

As soon after you wake up as possible,

Because something is very here.

Now we're getting lost in a haze of activities the day goes on.

Even if it's dread,

Some people wake up with dread.

Just do your best.

Oh,

Hello.

Because that's there.

That could be there a lot and we just turn away from it.

This is the end of turning away,

Of running away from ourself and also being in conflict with ourself.

It ends here.

This is the beginning of befriending ourself.

Thank you.

Bye bye.

Reviews

So useful—really helpful! Thank you so much for this!

Lovely perspective. Very grateful for the opportunity to reflect on the meaning of emotions. 🙏🏼

Lovely explanation and gentle guidance, thank you 🙏

Dear happy Buddha,
Thank you so much for this wonderful meditation, it helped me to accept my emotions and just let them be.. your voice helped me to calm down. Now I'll start my day, not with happiness as I thought I should but with awareness and curiousity to what is.. 🙏🏾💜

Important practice to befriend all of you upon waking. Thank you 🙏🏼

I have beditated for YEARS.
You are right, it is an important morning practice!
My ritual is to wake, pee, drink 12oz of water & rtn to bed to meditate. Starting each day calm, centered & positive is a BLESSING!

Love this gentle and friendly approach! I benefit from this simplicity. Without fear, dare to look and be with whatever arises.
Thank you so much🙏

Wonderful. Very helpful guidance this morning. I’ll definitely listen to this again and again.

This was so calming and a beautiful way to wake up. Beditation will be my new friend. Thank you

Fun way to look at our thoughts and beditation😍🩷 bedaste or namaste 😁. Made me smile at my thoughts today, as I woke with not so lovely thoughts.

Hello new day, hello me, hello you. Many thanks for your wise words and helpful guidance. Beditation made me smile. Blessings to you and your dear collie dog. 🙏

Blessings and healings to Bunky!🩵 Grateful for this morning meditation, I needed this today. Bookmarked! 🙏

A friend sent this to me. Your gentle beditation was exactly what my body, mind and soul needed. Thank you so much 🙏❤️🙏

I love starting my day this way. It reminds me of the welcoming practice, or even rumi’s the guest house. and I loved your suggestion of switching the word difficult with the word, challenging. Brilliant. 🙏🌹🤍✨👍🕊️🦋🌈🌙🌞

Thank you. This is very interesting and I will experiment with it tomorrow upon awakening. 💕

Beautiful. I so needed this reminder. Thank you.🙏🏾

Very timely talk and meditation! So grateful for the serendipity ✌🏼💕