Day 71 Morning Meditation - What's Behind Your Mask

PLEASE NOTE: These are unedited recordings from live sessions held each weekday morning online. Please keep in mind the context when listening.

During this session, a 3- to 4-minute teaching is followed by a spacious guided meditation. The meditations are spacious intentionally so that you can feel into your own experience rather than me talking through the whole 20 minutes.

Transcript

Good morning. Good afternoon, Good evening. I'm going to do a slightly different meditation. We've done once before, I think. And then we're going to do a regular just sitting. The call practice. So this is called peeling off the labels or taking off the masks. So we all wear masks. Not bad, Not good or bad, We just. . . Wear them. Take them off and see what's behind the masks. So just sitting quietly. So if you just joined us, We are going to do a short meditation, Taking off the masks. So don't think about this, Just. . . Our instinct to do it. I'd like you to take off the mask or peel off the label of your name. You're not your name, It doesn't define you. Take it off. Peel off the label of your edge. Doesn't define you. Of squiggly lines on a piece of paper. Peel off the label of your profession. Your career, Your job. If you're retired or. . . Unemployed at the moment, Tick off that label too. Take off the mask. So taking off the. . . Label of our name and age, Our profession. Take off the mask of your political beliefs. Burrow to one side. They don't define you. You didn't choose them. Off the level of your religious beliefs. Or whether you're an atheist, Agnostic, Tick off the label. Peel it off and put it to one side. Take off the mask of being a victim. Are not a victim. Just take it off. And notice how attached we can be to some of these masks. To take off the mask or peel off the label of being an anxious person or a sad person Jever Resnitz. Take it off. Doesn't define you. Successful person, Take that off. Now tick off the label of being a person. Person. The word actually means persona mask. From the Greeks. Take it off. What's behind being a person? What's behind being a mask? Now I want you to take one ear. Core Beliefs Maybe something like, People don't like me, I'm not good enough. Life's hard. Unfair whatever. Take one of them. And put it to one side. It's just a belief. Now I'd like you to take all your beliefs, Just gather them up. And put them in a box to one side. So what's behind all these beliefs, All these masks, Labels? Isn't there still an aliveness? A Presence. Even there can become masks, But. . . Just tune into it. No age, No name. Professionless. No religious beliefs. Nothing to hold on to. I am XYZ. There's nothing left. Yet here we are. And let's just sit in this open space of being free from identity. The seeing and the hearing and the feeling what's going on right now. Any narrative at all, Just drop it. Let's come back to the silence. The body. The breath. Where are you right now? Where is the attention? Just feel what's here. Or it's a sadness. A depression. A joy. Heaviness. Can you just feel it without the story? Or just listen to the traffic, It doesn't matter. Lost in your latest fantasy or obsession. If you are, Just drop the thoughts on hooks. Come back to what's really happening. You might be aware of a contraction in the body Just feel it. Okay, That brings us to the end of a little stretch that makes your coffee time. Thank you guys.

Reviews

I found this to be an enormously helpful practice, thank you. It made me realise that one label/mask I struggle to remove is that of suffering from a chronic illness but once I'd removed the other labels, age, unemployment etc it was somewhat easier to remove the label/belief of "ill"/not good enough- I'm feeling very grateful, thank you, I'll return to this practice often 🙏

Thank you 🙏

you said something like, rest and pure presence and what’s interesting is there is rest in presence ☺️💛☺️