So good morning.
Good afternoon,
Good evening.
So I'm going to start off with a poem.
Dennis Warren,
A New Way.
She said the pain hadn't improved.
Hadn't gone away,
Hadn't changed,
But she felt better.
She said she still took the same medications.
Still struggled in the morning.
So tired easily in the afternoon,
But she felt better.
She said she couldn't understand why her problems felt lighter.
Why her life seemed larger.
While she had a sense of hope.
But she felt better.
When she started.
She had only hoped for the pain to go away.
What she discovered was a new way of living her life.
So that's Dennis Warren.
So a new way of living her life.
She wanted the pain to go away.
The pain was still there,
But she felt better.
Lighter.
Sometimes,
Of course,
Pain does go away and we take medication.
But sometimes it doesn't.
But the relationship tool changes.
Or not so focused on the pain We don't obsess about it so much.
Have a sense of something other than the pain which is Kali presence,
Spaciousness.
And so everything feels lighter.
And that's what I mean when I talk about the ABC of happiness,
The ABC of practice.
What we discover is the bigger container.
Brick can't be forced.
It's just a.
.
.
A natural expansion and natural opening.
And that's what changes.
In your reactions to.
.
.
People,
Situations.
Begins to subtly change.
What once made you angry and you reacted back?
Sometimes we're just.
.
.
It doesn't really matter.
And it's not far through.
It's because you're starting to discover the bigger container,
Which is not a thing.
It's a quiet peacefulness,
Spaciousness.
And that happens by.
.
.
In some respects,
Doing nothing.
Just turning away again and again and again from the narrative.
From our obsession with thought.
Okay,
Sue.
I'll do a little bit of guidance.
And I'm going to try the gong this morning,
See if it can work okay so just settle into your posture meditation.
So just slide into the body,
So to speak.
Open to the body.
If there is any pain.
Can you take your attention to the sensations?
Check where the usual labels.
Is notice.
And feel those sensations,
What you normally call pain.
No denial.
Just take the labels away.
You're not in pain,
It's okay.
Don't have to be.
Hopefully you're not.
Take a little discomfort.
Or just feel the breath.
Listen to the traffic.
It doesn't matter.
Just be present with something.
And if you are,
Experiencing some pain.
Start to notice what's around the sensations.
The spaciousness.
Of the parts of the body.
Notice how.
The sound of the traffic or the heating system,
Whatever.
That's not in pain.
Breathing.
The silence.
It's free.
From discomfort.
Maybe you want to rest on the experience of the end of the out-breath.
What's going on?
Just checking that you are relaxed,
Not efforting.
Where's your attention?
Just leaving the thought alone,
Dropping them.
You're just having a thought.
You've had hundreds of thousands.
Where are they now?
Feeling the body.
Okay,
So ring the bell,
This session to an end.
