Your Daily Meditation | Day 26: Tree Meditation

This track is a recording of a live session, so please keep in mind the sometimes spontaneous nature of the session.
This session begins with a short talk about the true aim of meditation, followed by a Tree Meditation enabling us to sense into our stillness and presence.
Expect a short, grounding talk followed by a spacious guided meditation with plenty of silence to let you rest in your own direct experience.

Transcript

Hello all. So one of the. . . The aim of meditation, Or what should be the aim of meditation, Is for us to see a thought as a thought, Not as a fact. It's really quite simple. To see a thought as a thought and not as a fact, Not as a truth. They're useful. Where all the stories that rumble, That stampede through the mind, They're not true. They're just stories. So the aim is to see a thought as a thought. Otherwise. . . We suffer psychologically. It's just what happens. And we all know what that's like. It's awful. It feels so real. And we have to see this not just for two weeks, Just keep on and on and it starts to dawn on us intuitively and in our bones and our cells. That these are not true. They are unreal. And as we see this, We see the thought as unreal. We return back to presence, We return back home. To the breath. To our direct experience. And it leads me to come back to our direct experience and not some imagined experience. Which is what the stories are. That also cuts through this. We call it Papanchur in Buddhism, This conceptualization. This almost constant re-live. Movie after movie, Or a short after a short. You know, YouTube has those shorts. Some of them are on repeat. You can't force this. It's seeing through. Awareness sees it. It's not something we can force. Forced use metaphor. Trying to do this. Trying to. Stop the thinking or whatever we try to do to get somewhere, It just makes us tense. It's our natural wisdom. That begins to emerge. Our natural presence, Our natural intuition, Whatever you want to call it, They're just words. Is the clouds of conceptualization part. There's just the sky of intuitive awareness. It's always there. I'm just being busy with the mind. So let's start off slightly differently. A sense of presence, Sometimes an image can help to begin with. So an image of a tree. If it helps. If it doesn't, Don't use it. A big beautiful tree. A tree's rooted. It's here. The tree is still. And yet it swears in the wind. Right now, We are still. But we swear as we breathe. We're not rigid. Trees unconcerned, With who? A bird lands on it. Flash by storms. Back in sunshine. It just sits, Being a tree. No entreatment. And just sitting like a. . . A tree, Rooted, Present. It's swaying in the wind. So we have this sense of presence, Of being here. Feel the body. Thoughts will tumble through. Omepritamo. We have more thoughts about those thoughts. I don't like them. Wish I could stop thinking. Just thoughts. We can now drop the image of the tree. If you're using it. What's going on? Where is the attention? Listen to the silence. Don't stray. What's happening? Either in the senses, Are you in fantasy? Let go a little, Have a little peace. Let go, Lord, You have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, It's complete peace. What would it be like right now to let go? Stop holding? Is Jerky relaxed? Not tensing. OK. In this session to a close. Of a stretch, A little bit of movement. Thank you, Have a good day.