Focus and choice meditation.
So we're going to show your mind that it has choices today.
Choices of focus.
Choices about what you give your attention to.
So let us begin by training your mind away from thought and into your body.
Notice where your body is supported.
Supported through this meditation.
So you can begin to allow your muscles to relax.
Loosen and lengthen.
I wonder if you can notice tensions draining away.
Draining down through your body as the muscles ease from the strain of supporting you.
Because you are supported now as you allow tensions to melt away.
Allow relaxation to begin.
I wonder where in your body you notice the relaxation starting.
As you move deeper into meditation focusing on my words.
Or perhaps somewhere in your body which needs to relax a bit more.
I find when I focus on my shoulders they loosen.
Sometimes they even drop down ever so slightly.
I wonder if that happens to you too.
Or maybe somewhere else in your body is relaxing more and more as I talk to you.
Leaving all thought,
All active mind to subside whilst you focus in into your body.
Not sensing anything else but the awareness of your body.
Not thinking.
Just sensing the awareness of your body.
One of the choices you face.
Following racing chasing thoughts or moving into sensing your body.
Sensing your hands or or maybe your feet.
Taking your attention there.
Or the breaths as they come and go.
Come and go.
Like the faithful rhythm of the sea lapping the shore.
Now that takes me into those choices we face every day.
We sometimes don't even realize we're making choices.
Choices about our focus.
Our attention.
When you stand upon a beach you can choose to let your eyes take in the whole scene around you.
Or you can adjust your eyes like looking through a pair of binoculars.
Do you want to look at the surf as the tide rolls in and out.
In and out.
Lapping the shore.
The waves unfurling and withdrawing.
If that absorbs your attention you'll not be noticing the seagull that twists and twirls above your head.
When you look out at the horizon that hard blue line where sky and sea meet.
Will that absorb your focus?
Your attention?
Or perhaps a boat cutting through the water.
Foam spray flying up at its bowels and seagulls clustered whirling low over the deck in case of a chance to steal from the catch.
You can choose to focus on any of these things.
Or maybe the sand beneath you.
Or are there pebbles there?
Textures against your fingertips.
The choices are yours.
What you choose to give your attention.
When you're at a concert,
Music around you surrounded by sound.
You can hear the whole sound.
Or focus in on one instrument.
Focusing in on one voice.
Or let the whole sound wash over you.
More choices that come your way.
And if you're standing at this concert you may not be aware of how long you've been standing because you're so absorbed by the sound.
Are you aware of moving to the sound?
All choices.
We have a choice about what we focus on.
I wonder if you've had the experience of having a pain somewhere and the phone rings or you have a really interesting conversation with someone somewhere.
And for a while,
For a while the awareness of that pain goes away.
It's only after you put the phone down or end that conversation and you probe around and you search for the awareness of the pain.
You search for it and you notice it again because what we give our attention to grows and becomes dominant.
Whether it's a thought.
Whether it's a feeling.
A sensation.
You can feed the pain.
You can fan the flames of it by giving it all of your attention.
Or you can starve it of your attention.
Like starving a fire of oxygen and the flame goes out.
Whether it's a thought,
A feeling,
An awareness,
A sensation.
You can choose.
There's that Native American Indian story you may have heard.
It's one of those apocryphal stories.
A grandfather is teaching his grandson about life and he tells him there's a fight going on between two wolves inside him.
One of those wolves is unhappy,
Is troubled.
And the other wolf is contented and peaceful.
And when he's asked which wolf will win the fight,
The grandfather says it will be the wolf that he feeds.
So choose carefully what you feed in your mind.
The ideas you feed with your attention,
Your focus,
Your awareness.
It's entirely up to you.
No one else but you.
Now we've spent some time looking at our choices in this meditation.
Using stories to illuminate our choices.
And as you get nearer to the end of this meditation,
Bringing you back to today with a sense of choice and control.
An awareness of each small choice you make each day.
Making choices that enhance your day.
Making choices that enhance your life.
And as you take your time now to awaken,
Awakening at your own pace.
Bringing with you a new awareness and understanding.
Because you've taken time to meditate on your choices.
The choices you focus on.
That's right.
Taking your time to become fully aware now.
And bringing with you an awareness of a new sense of empowered choice.
