Hello and welcome.
This practice is built around a few lines of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke.
He writes,
My life is not this steeply sloping hour in which you see me hurrying.
No,
I am the rest between the notes.
My life is not this steeply sloping hour in which you see me hurrying.
No,
I am the rest between the notes.
But we're going to practice finding that space,
The space between the notes,
The space between our thoughts,
The space between our breath.
And through this we're going to cultivate a sense of spaciousness.
And in this space we'll just lean back,
Relax and release more deeply into the moment and essence.
So let's begin with a sense of presence and restfulness.
I'm going to ask that to start with you pay a little kind attention to the body.
Notice where you're sitting,
How your feet feel on the ground,
Your body in the chair or in the pillow.
We'll take just a moment here to scan the body.
And as you do that,
See if you can find a place that's tight or in pain or constricted.
Take a moment to do that.
Just one spot.
And when you've found that spot,
I'm going to ask that you invite it to relax,
To rest.
Well,
Imagine breathing in some warmth and light to that place.
And on each exhale,
See if you can just breathe out a little bit more.
On each exhale,
See if you can just breathe out a little of that tightness.
So we're relaxing on the inhale and we're releasing on the exhale,
Letting go.
And now let's practice finding the space between our thoughts.
So begin here by not thinking of anything in particular,
But don't resist your thoughts.
When they arise,
Notice,
Label them.
Thinking,
Judging,
Worrying.
We're observing our thoughts,
Noticing and labeling them.
And becoming aware of the stream of thoughts,
See now if you can permit a space between them.
Look for the empty space between the thoughts as you invite your thoughts just to pass through.
If it helps,
You can use the words we just used,
Relax on the inhale,
Release on the exhale,
But this time directing that to your thoughts,
Not to your body.
So the words are the notes and the pause we're finding is the space between the notes,
The space between the thoughts.
Rest in that space.
Finding the space between our thoughts and resting there.
Giving more attention to the space between the thoughts than the thoughts themselves.
And now I'm going to begin to ring a bell intermittently.
See if you can follow its sound all the way until its end.
Just give your attention to the sound.
And then just as we did with the thoughts,
Rest in the space between the tones.
Rest in the space between the notes.
And now I'm going to begin to ring a bell.
We don't always have a bell with us,
So let's find something more portable.
We're going to find practicing the space between our breaths.
It helps if first you slow down your breathing and deepen it.
So let's pause here,
Focus on the breath,
Breathing a little more slowly and deeply than normally.
Let's do this first.
Now give your attention to the space between inhale and exhale,
Or between exhale and inhale.
As you practice finding the space between the breaths,
You may notice an inner voice is popping in from time to time.
And you might even find yourself judging yourself because of distractions or a need to populate the blank canvas inside with thought,
Image or emotion.
Just let go of that judgment.
We want to relax and release as we did before.
Name it thought or name it restlessness,
And then relax and release,
Returning to that space between the breaths.
And finally,
We're going to take the backward step.
We're going to step out of body,
Mind and emotion.
Who's the one who's been noticing the aches and pains in the body?
Who's the one who's watched the spaces between the breath or the sounds?
Who's the one who's noticed their own thoughts?
We've created a little distance here so we can step back and identify more with being the observer than the thoughts,
The emotions themselves.
We can relax,
We can release,
We can lean back out of the pole of personality and step back into essence,
The observer,
The one who's always aware but needs no words.
So see yourself taking this backward step now to the place of observing your seated body and mind.
Here,
As observer and essence self,
We'll find a longer pause between the notes.
And in this longer pause,
As often as you're aware of a thought,
Emotion or physical feeling,
Just relax and release and lean back into essence,
The observer.
Enjoy the spaciousness.
And with the sound of the bell,
Return again to awareness of your body,
Where it's seated,
Where your feet are on the ground.
Returning back where we started and offering a little gratitude to the body and the mind that walk us through our days.
But also if you're willing,
Take a pause here to set an intention to identify more and more with essence with the observer to continue finding the space between the notes,
Identifying with what's left after we take the distractions away,
And knowing that it is all.
It is complete,
And it is oh so good.
