Hello and welcome to the session,
I invite you to take a seat or lay down and get yourself comfortable.
You can close down the eyes if you wish and take a deep,
Slow breath in through the nose and out through the mouth.
So in today's session we're going to be looking at a meditation practice called the Flame and the Void,
Found within the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.
This meditation practice is a precursor to some of the characters attainment of the in-world magic system,
But as you'll soon see,
The actual practice is a variation of single-pointed mindfulness and is actually quite useful and accessible to meditators of any experience and any age.
I myself use this technique and I've taught it to my six-year-old son because it works.
It's introduced very early in the series but is referenced throughout.
The practice is quite simple,
What you do is you close down your eyes and you picture in your mind the image of a flame,
Perhaps standing alone or on a candle or a fire pit,
But just a flame and you concentrate all your energies,
All your attention onto that flame and begin to feed your passions into it,
Your fear,
Your hate,
Your anger,
But also all your other emotions as well,
The joy,
The positivity,
The happiness,
The confusion,
The jealousy,
Everything.
You hold that flame in your mind and just feed all of the contents of consciousness that arise into that flame and then you sit in the emptiness that is left over.
Something arises,
You feed it into the fire and then you sit in the void.
Let's give this a try now,
Take a slow deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth and picture a flame in your mind,
Let it be the single point of focus,
The single point of attention that your mind is holding onto and then feed every mental phenomena,
Emotion,
Memory,
Thought,
Everything into that flame and simply sit and if your mind wanders when you notice it,
Reignite that flame and feed everything back into it.
Let's give it a try now,
So this technique,
The flame in the void,
Is a variation of mindfulness.
Traditionally mindfulness is practiced by choosing a meditation object,
Usually the sensation of the breath entering and leaving the nose to focus on,
Your mind wanders and you bring it back,
Your mind wanders,
You bring it back,
The idea being is that as sensations or mental phenomena arise,
You're just observing them,
They appear,
But you don't get lost in them.
An analogy would be like you're looking at cars travelling down a freeway,
You're seeing them,
You're observing them,
You're like oh that one's yellow,
That one's red,
That's a truck,
That's a motorcycle,
But you're just letting them drive on by,
You're not going onto the freeway,
You're not stopping a car,
You're not getting in,
You're just observing the contents of consciousness,
And if your mind wanders,
You bring it back to the breath,
That's the act of mindfulness,
That's what you're trying to do,
Your mind wanders,
You bring it back,
The act of bringing it back is the meditation.
Now the flame in the void frames this approach a bit differently,
But I still think it relates to mindfulness meditation,
You picture the flame in your mind,
You hold it there,
And then you feed all emotions,
All everything,
All mental phenomena into that flame,
And that flame becomes the single pointed focus,
But of course,
In practice,
Your mind's going to wander,
When it does,
You bring it back and begin again,
And the act of beginning again,
The act of noticing that your mind has wandered,
Is the meditation,
That is what will give you a profound sense of growth,
And focus,
And joy,
And connection outside of our practices,
The act of noticing,
So if you do find your mind wandering,
Don't berate yourself,
It's okay,
That's the point,
The point is to notice your mind wandering,
To bring it back to the flame,
And to repeat the process again,
And if you find yourself sitting in that void,
Sitting in the emptiness,
You may feel a profound sense of something that is close to peace,
Contentment,
Presence,
Acceptance,
Words can't quite place what it is because it's in a place that is devoid of words,
Words are the finger pointing to the moon here,
But let's play with this flame and void technique one more time,
Take a seat,
Close down the eyes,
Take a deep slow breath in through the nose,
And out through the mouth,
And picture a flame in your mind,
And then begin to feed any mental phenomena that arises into that flame,
And if your mind wanders,
Gently bring it back and restart the process,
Let's begin,
So,
How did you go,
I invite you to share your experiences of the flame in the void meditation in the classroom,
Be sure to begin your comment with flame in the void so we all know which session you're referring to,
I would love to know how you found it,
And if you have any questions please do ask,
I'll be in the classroom every day answering those questions,
And perhaps by answering and asking and checking out each other's comments,
We'll develop a form of synergy that will enable us all to develop a deeper more thorough and more broader practice,
One that will lift us all up and help us all to grow,
And I look forward to seeing you there,
This track was taken from the course Finding Enlightenment Through Fiction,
It's out now via my profile on Insightama,
And I invite you to check it out.
