Before we practice relational presence,
This will do a little bit of meta.
Everyone pick a comfortable position.
But this time,
Slowly start to bring your awareness to the top of your head.
Once your awareness is anchored at the top of the head,
Feel the sensations deeply there.
And then soften your focus.
Feel sensations on the top of your head,
But softly,
Without any mental strain or effort.
And then allow yourself to start generating the feeling of love,
Goodwill.
And see who it is that you feel love and goodwill for.
Who do you genuinely wish well in your life?
Genuinely wish happiness for.
Focus this feeling on them.
And then if others come to mind,
Do the same.
Focus this feeling on them.
Focus this feeling on them.
And then just cultivate that feeling of generally wishing others well.
So that whoever or whatever we shift our focus to,
We carry that feeling with us.
Now how we're going to practice relational presence is that each of us on site is going to come up and stand here.
This is your stage.
You're going to come and talk here for three minutes.
Aaron will set his timer and when the timer goes off,
You know your time is up.
And whatever you're saying,
Finish it quickly.
And then stand here and accept the applause of your audience.
Without flinching or moving away from it.
And then take your seat again.
I'll give a topic for us to talk about.
But the topic isn't one that we want to think about or mull over or create ideas for while we're up here.
We simply want to get up here.
Clean the slate.
And we all know how to do that now.
Just practice a bit of standing meditation.
And then when I say the time has started,
Drop that topic in your mind and see what comes out.
Drop that topic in your clear pool and see what ripples it creates and simply start talking.
And the way we're going to talk is how we described in the morning discourse is that when you're saying something entirely focus on someone you're talking to.
And then when you feel like you're making another point and you've moved on from that and closed that last one off,
Then focus on someone else.
And let the thought and the idea come spontaneously and just fully express yourself.
If you're one of the listeners,
Then you clean the slate and give all of your awareness and attention to the talker.
Using them as an object of meditation.
So that while you're sitting there,
You're just as actively engaged as the person who's up here.
Sit,
Pick a comfortable position,
Meditate,
Feel the sensations in your body and focus on the speaker.
Bring your consciousness to the listening and your consciousness to the speaking.
If you're at home and you don't have an audience or someone to do this with,
Then simply use the webcam of the laptop that you're watching this on.
Record yourself,
Time yourself and then when you're done,
Watch yourself back and use yourself as an object of meditation.
And then simply go back in to meditation afterwards.
Aaron's going to count me in and give me my three minutes and I will give an example of what we're doing up here.
And then we'll start from this side of the room and work around.
The topic today will be the internal world.
I love my internal world.
It's my resting place that I always have with me,
That whatever I'm doing I can always go back to.
When I get a chance to do a retreat like this,
It's like a holiday for me.
Being able to just sink back in to that space that's there.
But then again,
There are many holidays all day anyway because wherever we are we can just stop and sink back in.
And I can hardly believe that there was a time when I used to run away from my internal world,
When it used to be something that had all this weight and heaviness to it and that I was carrying with me without knowing how I could get away from it.
Because now it just seems like such an intuitive thing to go inside and to feel it,
To feel the landscape and to get to know it.
To get to know myself not through ideas but through the fibers of what I'm made of.
The feeling of what it feels like to actually rest inside of myself and give myself the time to be able to become aware of aspects of it.
And as it goes on and on and on,
I actually feel like it's not so much the internal world anymore.
I feel like the internal world,
The internal story is really just a reflection of the story.
And the closer I get to the threads of myself,
The less personal they look.
And the more they look like my versions of other patterns and other stories.
And the question just becomes how much and how clearly have I got to know them to be able to see the story through my story.
Or am I still taking it too personally and I'm too wrapped up in my own version of this particular tale to be able to see what it's clearly about.
And I love that process.
I love that moment when I'm in a thing and I'm in an experience and I realize,
Oh this is one of those moments.
This is that type of movie that I've seen a lot of times before but I never knew that this was the theme of it.
And then experiencing it from the inside out,
All of those other versions of the movie that I've seen before,
The song that I've seen before,
The story I've seen before suddenly start to make sense.
And they become personal experience too.
That's one of my favorite things.
Being able to have that moment where it connects the two together.
The internal world and the external world.
Or I guess you could say other people's versions of their internal world that they've caught and encapsulated.
Thank you.
So those at home,
We're going to switch the camera off now and you can get on with your version of this.
