Welcome to right here and right now.
With your eyes open,
Recognize the source of information that comes to you right now.
What preoccupies your awareness the most in this very moment?
Where does your awareness rest if you let it?
Feel free to look around in a careful way with curiosity and see from the perspective of your awareness what will be the objects that your awareness will land on.
And stay there for a moment,
Simply allowing the awareness to examine it.
And then notice that very fluidly your mind will jump on board trying to describe and produce words.
And you may experience this as the inner chatter,
As the inner dialogue that your mind is designed to produce as a description of reality.
But ask yourself this,
What is more real?
The image that you see or the object that you perceive or the description of it?
Is it more experiential to taste an orange or talk about the taste of an orange?
And very often we choose the latter.
Instead of the reality in front of our eyes,
We settle for the description because of how our brain is designed.
So now,
I'll ask you to close your eyes and notice where this time your awareness goes.
In the absence of a visual stimuli,
It is very likely that momentarily your awareness goes towards the inner sensations.
In science,
They call it switching from extraception,
In focus of the external stimuli,
To intraception.
All the sensations that come from within your body.
An interesting fact is that we do not have an ability to sense our organs or sense anything that happens on the inside.
If I ask you now to sense your kidneys,
Sense your lungs or sense your stomach,
You will notice that you do not have ability to directly perceive them or feel them.
The perception as we understand is that related with the sense of touch.
And if you want to put that to the test,
Simply start being aware of your hands resting in your lap or your feet resting on the floor.
And what you will become aware of is actually not your hands or not your feet,
But the surface through which your body connects with the floor or your hands touch each other.
And the perception only is that of the surface of your skin.
And then once again,
It is very likely that you may fluidly switch from feeling the sensations to quote unquote speaking to yourself about those sensations.
Since your brain has the speech center that is designed to produce words as the description of reality,
This is the way of your communication.
So now ask yourself,
Are you the dialogue that you perceive?
Are you the sensations that you directly experience?
Who's perceiving either of those?
Where is that perceiver located?
Can you become aware of the experiencer?
In order to continue this exploration,
The inquiry into the nature of reality,
I want to ask you to follow your awareness,
To follow the perceiver wherever it takes you.
If your awareness shifts towards your thoughts,
Let it be there.
If it shifts towards inner sensations,
Let it be there too.
If the music appears attractive to your awareness,
Let it go there,
Opening your awareness to all the reality without judgment,
Not because judgment is bad,
But judgment is not the characteristic of the witness that is awareness.
The judgment comes on the mental level from your mind.
So if the judgment happens,
Become aware of the judgment knowing that this is not you,
It's not part of the awareness,
But it's part of the brain structure.
It's a mind construct.
Now I will allow you to explore on your own as I hold the space by your side so I can bring you back when the time comes.
And now,
Intentionally shift your awareness to your physical senses.
Knowing that you have the ability to make that choice,
But only when you rest in the awareness itself.
So,
Begin with your hearing.
See how awareness shifts towards the sound of music,
Towards the sound of my words,
Then engage with your awareness,
Your vision.
You may find that suddenly you are aware of your eyeballs because your brain associates vision with your eyes,
But is the image,
The dark and brighter spots that you perceive right now,
Are they part of your eye,
Are they part of the optic nerve that delivers the electrical impulses towards your visual cortex that is part of your brain?
Where does the vision happen really?
Is the experiencer aware of all the processes that are happening in order to produce vision as we know it,
As we experience it?
Now the sense of taste.
You may find that you are not actually aware of your taste,
But you become aware of your tongue.
Nevertheless,
Allow awareness to explore that sense in whichever way awareness chooses.
Now shift to the sense of smell and notice how immediately you become aware of your nostrils.
Is your smell equal to your nostrils?
And now move to the sense of touch.
Where does your awareness go this time?
Perhaps the bottom of your feet,
Perhaps your hands.
You may also feel your sit bones on the surface upon which you sit,
Maybe your upper back.
Become aware of your entire body connecting with the space around you.
The sense that you are separate from the rest of the room.
And finally,
Consider the sixth sense,
That is your thinking.
And now allow your awareness to describe how you feel.
And to conclude this period of exploration,
Simply take one deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth.
And when you choose,
Allow your eyes to open and welcome back.
