Hi,
I'm Phil Tani and I'm happy to welcome you to this community practice.
I'm a presenter and a teacher in the Three Doors organization.
So as we turn toward this opportunity to meditate,
We come into relation with our body and our breath.
If you're familiar with the five-point posture,
We generally sit in the five-point posture,
But any comfortable position where you're seated and preferably with your spine upright,
Not touching the back of the chair,
It's important to have a connection through our seat with the earth and allow the spine to be upright,
Free,
Flexible,
So you could just sway a bit with your spine.
Feel that freedom of movement.
And bring that freedom of movement into stillness in the posture.
And breathing in,
Just receiving the nourishment of air,
But also allowing your attention to ride the breath in.
So with each breath,
You might touch into stillness a little more,
Perhaps a little more deeply,
Intimately in the body.
And on the out-breath,
Just simply releasing effort.
And we can pause between breaths and rest in that pausing.
And the deeper the breath,
The more oxygen we receive,
And the longer we can pause comfortably without effort.
So let's just take several soft,
Slow,
Deep breaths.
Breathing in,
Fully filling the lungs,
But also bringing your attention,
Your imagination deep into the body,
Into the presence of this stillness of the body.
And breathing out,
Just allowing the breath to just slowly,
Slowly go out,
Long,
Slow exhale,
Followed by a pause.
And from this connection with stillness,
Just bringing attention to the environment of sound,
Sounds that are far away,
Sounds that are near,
Sounds on the recording,
Including also our inner voice that comments,
Judges,
Narrates our experience.
Our tendency to comment.
And from our attention to the sounds and the voices,
Just turning now to the silence within and around and beneath all of these sounds and voices.
There's an ocean of silence,
Silence within us and around us,
From which all sound arises and returns,
Like waves on an ocean.
So we bring our attention,
Our awareness,
Our curiosity,
A sense of kind attention to the silence.
And the practice is to notice as we connect with silence,
And also to notice as we disconnect.
And then remembering,
Allowing,
Returning to the silence,
We rest.
Rest into the silence,
Aware of that connection,
Aware of the space of silence.
So now we'll have a long period of silence where we simply practice listening to,
Connecting with,
And becoming the silence.
And in the three doors,
We recognize any sense of space,
Presence,
Connectivity,
Vitality.
And we invite our hands to our hearts,
And we recite a line of dedication,
Connecting with thought of humanity,
Of life on this planet,
Connecting with that aspiration to be of benefit.
And we offer these words,
In liberating my own being,
May I benefit others.
Thank you.
