This meditation is called Coming Home to Natural Presence.
The gateway to natural presence is relaxing and opening our senses to what is here.
There's no doing that can reveal the truth of what we are.
Doing only reconfirms a sense of a doing self.
It's by letting go of controlling,
By simply letting be wakefully,
That we open out of the small self stories and realize the mystery of awareness,
The mystery of our true nature.
Connect for a few moments with your breath,
Taking a few full deep breaths and letting the sensations of breathing bring you fully into the body in the present moment.
Now feel the natural rhythm of your breath,
Relaxing as the breath comes in and relaxing with the outflow of the breath.
Take a few moments to allow the awareness to sweep through the body,
Letting go of any areas of obvious tension.
You might relax and soften a bit through the shoulders.
Just let there be a dissolving.
You might sense a melting of ice to water,
Water to gas,
Softening the hands.
As you soften and relax the hands,
Just feel the life that's there,
Loosening and relaxing through the belly.
Let this next breath be received in a softening belly.
This one and this one.
Feeling places of contact where you're sitting,
Chair or cushion,
The floor,
Places of warmth or pressure.
And then widening the attention to sense the whole body sitting and this aliveness,
This field of sensations.
Again,
Noticing if there's any areas of tightness or holding,
Which is the body's way of resisting the life that's here.
If you notice areas of particular tension,
Just to allow,
To wakefully allow what's here,
Widening the attention to include sound,
Listening,
A kind of global listening that takes everything in evenly,
Listening not just with your ears,
But with the whole body's awareness,
Listening to and feeling the space in the room or if you're outside,
The space around you,
Listening to sounds,
Listening to silence.
With this open,
Receptive listening,
Listening to and feeling the sensations in the body,
Listening to and feeling the whole moment,
Senses wide awake,
Wide open,
Fully here.
Continue in this receptive way,
Simply noticing and allowing life just as it is.
Let go of the sense of a meditator,
A self trying to make something happen,
A self that's trying to still the mind,
Or follow the breath,
Or attain a certain state.
Natural presence arises when we let go of the one trying to make an effort.
Let awareness go where it wants.
Be like a passenger in the car and let awareness be the driver.
Awareness becomes aware of sounds,
Sensations,
A thought,
A feeling,
Just notice and allow whatever life arises.
Sense what happens when there's no controlling,
When we allow everything to be as it is.
Take a moment to check in.
Ask yourself,
Am I allowing everything to be as it is?
Check in with your whole being,
Your whole body.
Am I really,
Deeply allowing?
You might notice as you check in in this way,
Certain places of tension in the body.
This is your body's way of telling you that you're not allowing everything to be as it is.
Tension is the body's way of resisting the moment.
Again,
Just notice the place of tension and allow that to be as it is.
You might notice a restlessness arising.
Let your intention be to simply open to this experience,
Allowing it to be as it is.
Or maybe anxiety.
Noticing and allowing the moment-to-moment life that arises.
This allowing presence doesn't mean a laziness,
Becoming trance-like.
Rather,
It's an engaged presence.
If you find you've been lost in thoughts,
Simply pause.
Realize this is just a thought and relinquish control in deeper and deeper ways,
Wakefully arriving in the aliveness that's right here.
Listening to and feeling the entire moment.
Noticing what it feels like to be outside of thought.
Discover what happens when you allow everything to be as it is.
Checking in with your own experience,
With the felt sense.
You might notice that when you let go of control,
A spaciousness comes into awareness.
That with the absence of a controller,
There's significant space of openness,
Wakeful presence.
Just open to that presence and inhabit that felt sense of being.
In awareness,
There is a deep sense of stillness,
An ocean of quiet.
A stillness and quiet that is not in resistance to any part of experience.
Abide in this stillness,
This quiet.
Recognize it as the essence of what you are.
Just as you feel you've relinquished all control,
You'll find an opportunity to let go even more into silence,
Into stillness.
There's almost no end to this letting go.
The presence that reveals itself is uncontrived,
Natural.
Let yourself rest in this naturalness.
Inhabiting the silence that is listening,
This vast,
Luminous awareness that is your very essence.
