Welcome.
Settle however is easiest.
Lying down or seated.
Let the body be supported.
Nothing to achieve.
Just the simple fact of being here.
Sundays often carry an unpleasant feeling in the body and unpleasant thoughts in the mind.
It's easy to be carried by these thoughts and feelings.
Notice how this colors the current moment.
Tomorrow hasn't happened yet and yet we are already suffering in the present moment.
Anxiety tends to arise when the mind tries to hold too much future at once.
It rehearses what could happen,
What must be done,
Who might judge,
How you might fail.
And because thinking is vivid,
It feels real,
Like contact with the future.
But there is no future to hold.
There is only thinking about it.
Let that be recognized.
This is thinking.
Watch a thought appear.
It wasn't here and then it is.
It stays for a moment with a certain energy and then it goes.
You don't have to push it away.
Just notice how it dissolves when it's clearly seen.
Anxiety rides itself into the body.
Tightness in the chest.
A knot in the stomach.
A heat behind the eyes.
Let attention rest where it's strongest,
As if placing a hand there without trying to fix anything.
Allow the sensation to be exactly as it is.
Watch the small shifts.
Edges soften.
Intensity flickers.
Attention widens.
Sensation too is just something arising and passing in this field of experience.
Widen attention to include the whole scene,
The felt weight of the body,
The play of sound,
The movement of thought,
The space in which it all appears.
Not you holding experience together.
Just experience,
Naturally present.
Within this openness,
Anxiety is a weather pattern crossing a wide sky.
The sky doesn't resist the cloud,
But it also isn't defined by it.
Imagine each anxious thought as a small cloud drifting through a vast blue expanse.
Some clouds are thin,
Some are dense.
They appear convincingly solid until they don't.
You are not the cloud.
You are the openness it passes through.
Let a cloud float by now.
Recognize its shape,
Then watch its edges fray,
Its form loosen,
Its presence thin into the space that holds it.
Anxiety is not proof that something is wrong with you.
It's evidence that a human nervous system is encountering uncertainty.
And uncertainty is the only place life actually happens.
You can meet it with clarity,
One moment at a time.
Feel the simple fact of being here,
Supported.
When this ends,
Nothing requires you to hold the week in your hands.
You can let Sunday be Sunday,
And meet Monday when Monday arrives.
