Alk.
H ind ication ro n I recommend you do this meditation with eyes closed just to take your focus,
Your attention away from the appearance of a world outside of yourself.
Just find a place where you can relax,
Let go.
And as a little bit of a warm up as we drop into this together,
I want to exercise the opposite capacity that we're working with,
Namely,
I want you to imagine the body,
To see the body in your mind's eye.
After all,
As adults,
We've all spent many years forming and adding layers on top of a mental image of the body.
And this mental image becomes so dominant that over time we lose more and more of our capacity to just be in the flow of physical sensation.
When we ask somebody,
When we ask an adult to feel sensation in the body,
Unconsciously they will picture different parts of their body and their mind,
Not realizing that that is a distinct act from being in sensation.
So just notice that you're able to call up an image of the body.
Notice what the body looks like in your mind's eye,
Its boundaries,
Its shape,
Its proportions.
Every aspect of what the body looks like you can feel,
You can see,
And just let it go.
Let it be in the background of awareness.
And to open the meditation up a little bit more,
I want you to use your imagination just a touch and imagine that you are just born,
Just emerging from the mother's womb.
You're one second old and you know absolutely nothing of a body.
The word body,
The image of a body,
Just meaningless abstractions.
What you are in this moment when you're just a nanosecond old is a formless field of awareness.
Things arise from nowhere and go back to nowhere.
What you are aware of,
Just one second old,
Totally immersed in the flow of awesome nature,
Is intensity.
You are aware of the magnitude of sensation.
Just notice in this moment in the formless field of awareness cascading with sensation that some sensation is intense and in this moment other aspects of sensation may be more subtle,
Quiet.
Notice where sensation is salient,
Where it naturally sticks out in awareness.
And of course to call it sensation is just a convenience of using language as a newborn babe,
One second old.
You know nothing of sensation.
There's only a kind of free-floating,
Amorphous,
Tingling vibration that hangs about for a moment,
Makes its appearance,
Exhausts itself,
And disappears from whence it came.
Just allow yourself to rest deeply as this formless field,
Full of tingling vibration rising and falling.
And sometimes tingling vibration arises.
And even at one second old,
You have a basic sense of pleasant or unpleasant,
Pain and pleasure.
Just notice moment to moment as the activity of sensation rising and passing that brings with it a sense of pleasantness,
Unpleasantness.
But take care to let go of any mental labels whatsoever.
As adults we have so many layers of judgments,
Habituated responses to different experiences.
But at one second old,
It's all learning.
It's all alive intelligence streaming through your still wet physicality,
Just born into the world.
All vibratory activity is learning as information,
As intelligence.
The sting of hunger in your belly.
The comfort of being held,
Totally relaxing.
Just notice what sensations rise and feel the part of you,
Namely this formless field of awareness that can just allow them to rise and pass.
And notice when you attach no meaning,
No story to the world.
This tingling vibration rising and passing.
You naturally fall into a place of timelessness.
In between sensations there is no time.
Nothing happens.
And now,
This moment,
Brand new,
You know nothing of a thinking mind.
You know nothing of the concept of a body,
Where you start,
Where you stop.
There's only the effortless coming and going of tingling,
Vibratory flux through the field of awareness.
It leaves no trace when it vanishes.
There's no grab or stick when it rises,
No trace or residue when it passes.
Every experience emerging from timelessness,
Falling back into timelessness.
Like waves falling back into the surface of the ocean.
With these last few moments,
You can take a moment now to bring your adult mind,
Your adult mind online,
To integrate it into this practice by way of just feeling gratitude.
Gratitude for having a human birth,
A human body so utterly sensitive,
So intelligent.
Feel the gift of every moment of sensation,
The feel of temperature on your skin,
The touch of your clothes,
The pressure over your seat where you sit or lie down.
Feel the warmth in your heart,
Your body renewed with life,
With every breath.
Every single one of us came into our personhood,
Our unique self in this very way,
Completely immersed in the flow of nature,
Sensation.
Represented by the blooming,
Buzzing arising of infinite worlds.
