Working with overwhelm,
I want you to open up awareness to the scope of your entire life as it is in this moment,
As you experience it,
Breathing deeply in and out,
Grounded in a posture that supports your practice.
Let your awareness free float through the space of your life,
Past,
Present,
And future,
All gathered in the now.
Be honest with yourself.
Where is there significant suffering?
Where are the conditions that are most difficult to work with?
Take your time here.
Sense into it deeply with the body,
Through the knowing of the heart.
When you pick up on a signal,
You can use the mind to hone it,
To refine it,
But don't lean too heavily on the mind as you do this.
There's a risk of just thinking about our lives rather than feeling and sensing deeply into our lives as well.
Follow the thread.
Trust your sensing.
Feel how big your life is,
All of the conditions,
All of the factors that contribute to this very complex state in this moment of you being you and feeling like you.
Some conditions are favorable and they feel good.
Maybe you have good health.
Maybe you enjoy a good reputation in your community,
At your company,
In your family,
Wherever,
And you love it and it's nice.
And what about the challenges?
What about the conditions that really challenge your practice,
Your capacity to be open-hearted and mindful moment to moment?
Places where you're most likely to complain and wish it weren't this way,
Go there,
Go right there and reflect.
Excellent.
Now,
I want you to adjust.
Note the way in body,
Mind,
Heart,
Awareness that you've been responding to this condition that's particularly challenging,
Resenting it,
Lamenting it,
Regretting it,
Struggling with it in any way.
What if you were to adjust just a little bit?
Relate to it in a new way,
Find a new approach,
What would that be?
Trust yourself here,
Let wisdom arise,
There are infinite ways to be and there's always a way to suffer less.
Beautiful.
Stay with it.
As you really pick up on a signal,
You get clear like this is where my suffering is,
This is the condition that challenges me.
Once you're really hot on that trail,
Then at that point,
The mind is a friend to us.
We can really think through and analyze the situation,
Even map out how it's going to be different.
We can start to imagine ourselves moving forward,
Being a different way than we've been in the past.
Notice here,
I'm pointing out the way we skillfully use the intelligence centers,
The body,
The heart,
The mind.
It's good to start with some open sensing and as we refine our intuition of what's causing trouble,
We can start to use the mind to sharpen the practice,
To clearly imagine how we're going to be different moving forward.
Take another moment here,
What a beautiful thing that we can do this as human beings.
Don't just imagine the future,
Be the future right now.
Be the new self who responds to suffering in a new way,
Conditions exactly the same.
Who you are and how you respond to the conditions,
New,
Different.
Feel the newness,
Suffering already decreasing,
Decreasing,
Freedom expanding,
Expanding.
