Welcome to the meditation of attention.
How can you cultivate listening with your whole body,
All senses attuned to the moment?
This is what makes life meaningful.
Attention is what happens when you give whatever you are doing,
Whoever you are with,
Including yourself undivided focus.
All of us have the innate capacity to build this habit and therefore to become more focused towards those we love as well as our own creativity and intuition.
If paying attention to anything for more than a moment is difficult for you,
This meditation will help you focus your attention,
Hopefully on what matters most to you.
As we prepare to meditate together,
Here is our centering thought.
I shine the light of my attention on what matters most to me.
I shine the light of my attention on what matters most to me.
Now let's prepare for our meditation.
Make yourself comfortable and begin to become aware of your breath.
Allow yourself to breathe slowly and deeply.
Whenever you're distracted by thoughts,
Noises,
Or physical sensations,
Return your attention to my voice.
Let us begin our meditation.
I shine the light of my attention on what matters most to me.
I shine the light of my attention on what matters most to me.
I shine the light of my attention on what matters most to me.
Let us begin by listening.
Listening to sounds that are far away.
Listening to sounds that are as far as a café and the conversations as people talk over a cup of coffee.
The sounds on the street.
The woman's heels tapping against the sidewalk.
A taxi with its wheels rolling down the wet pavement.
Birds flying from tree to tree in conversation.
The leaves of the trees rustling in the wind.
The sound of rain falling.
The sound of a river passing over rocks.
And then listen closer.
Perhaps to the sounds in a room nearby.
The sounds of a television or a radio playing.
The sounds of a child or a pet playing.
The sounds of someone cooking.
The hum of a refrigerator.
Water running in a sink.
And then listen to the sounds even closer.
The sounds of your clothes or blankets rustling.
The sound of your breath.
Listen to the sound of your inhale and the sound of your exhale.
Listen to the sound of your inhale from the start of the inhale all the way to the end of the inhale.
And listen to the sound of your exhale from the start of the exhale,
All the way to the end of the exhale.
Listen to your inhale from the start of the inhale.
To the end of the inhale.
And listen to your exhale from the start of the exhale.
To the end of your exhale.
Like this.
As you listen to your breath,
Follow the flow of your inhale.
Follow the flow of your breath from your nose down the front of your body to your heart.
And as you exhale,
Follow the flow of the breath along your spine,
The back of your neck to the crown of your head and out towards the universe.
As you inhale,
Follow the flow of the breath in through the nose along the front of your throat to your heart.
And follow the flow of your exhale along the back of your body,
The spine to the neck,
The back of your head to the crown of your head.
Follow the flow like this,
Inhaling through the nose and the front of the body to the heart and exhaling out of the back of the body along the spine,
Back of the neck,
Back of the head to the crown of your head to release.
And then allow your breath to go a little deeper.
As you inhale through the nose,
Let the breath travel along the front of the body,
Front of the throat,
Through the heart all the way down to your navel.
As you exhale,
Feel the flow of the breath from the base of your spine,
Through the back of your neck to the crown of your head and out to the universe.
And like that,
Inhaling deeper through the nose,
Through the front of the body,
Along the throat,
Through the heart,
All the way down to your navel.
And then exhale along the back of the body from the base of the spine to the middle of your spine to the upper spine behind your neck,
Back of your head to the crown of your head and release.
Continue like this,
Inhaling through the nose and the front of the body all the way down to your navel and exhaling through the back of the body,
The base of the spine all the way up to the crown of your head.
And as you continue breathing like this,
You can give a color to your breath.
You can imagine it as a beautiful blue mist,
An indigo blue,
Often associated with the throat chakra,
The most beautiful pure blue you can imagine.
And as you inhale,
Let this mist flow through your body,
Filling you with this gentle pure color.
And as you exhale,
Imagine that mist rising up and leaving through the crown of your head to be diffused out into the universe.
As you inhale,
Follow this pure blue mist as it travels through your body.
And as you exhale,
Follow the mist as you release it up and out into the universe.
As you listen to your breath,
Know that this sound,
This breath is happening in the present tense,
In the now.
You are not breathing for the future.
You are not breathing for the past.
You're breathing in this moment right here,
Right now.
Perhaps in the silence you can even hear your heart beating.
And your heartbeat is in the now.
It's not beating for the future or the past,
But in the now.
When you focus your attention on the now,
It becomes powerful.
It becomes strong.
It lets your creativity and your intuition flow and grow stronger.
Creativity does not happen in the future.
Information does not exist in the past.
These are also of the now.
As you listen to the sound of your breath,
What happens when you try to hold on to the sound longer than it truly exists?
Listen to the sound of my fingers snapping.
How long does that sound last?
Can you hold on to it for the future or is it already gone?
That sound of the fingers snapping,
Can you recreate it in the past?
Sound,
It exists in the now,
In the present.
It exists where your creativity exists and your intuition in the now,
In the present.
Continue to gently breathe,
Inhaling and exhaling slowly as you gently release your practice.
As you continue with your day,
Contemplate our centering thoughts.
I shine the light of my attention on what matters most to me.
I shine the light of my attention on what matters most to me.
Namaste.
