My name is Larissa.
We're going to practice together for about 30 minutes.
A little longer opportunity just to be still together today.
As always,
Take a couple of moments here just to settle in.
You might already be in your most familiar physical posture.
And at the same time,
It's still so important just to check in.
What are my needs right now?
So that we show up for ourself.
With this invitation to tend rather than force ourselves to stay.
Or get so into our familiar habits that we miss the needs of the moment.
It's such an important moment just to check in.
Do I have the right amount of comfort?
Do I need a blanket?
Do I need to take off my sweater?
Do I need a glass of water near me?
Just the smallest little thing sets you up for that intentionality of care and tenderness and gentleness as you stay.
And then settle in,
Maybe make a little wiggle so that you sink heavier into your cushion.
You might take a couple of deep breaths,
A deeper breath.
Not only physiologically allowing you some softening,
Sometimes even sighing out.
A sigh is a way for us to release some energy,
Relax the body.
But our breath is also something that we can continue to pay attention to as we stay.
It becomes a focal point.
That is consistent and life-giving.
Rather than sometimes we get caught in our mind and our focus goes elsewhere.
We just bring our focus into this body,
This breath.
This present moment.
Let's take a few moments here in silence noticing.
Checking in.
What am I feeling right now?
Just notice where your thoughts might have just been.
It's so natural that our thoughts move.
We have the far ends where our mind gets a little sleepy,
Sometimes it's called dullness.
And then the opposite end where our mind is moving quickly,
Future to past,
Whether in excitement,
Agitation.
But just noticing that those are all just normal regular things that happen.
Sometimes we fall asleep.
Sometimes our mind is moving so quickly it's hard to even notice it.
It's hard to notice the breath in that movement.
But none of this is good or bad,
It's just experience.
And it's that conscious choice to return to an open awareness.
That eventually leads us into pure awareness.
Awareness of a thought helps us see,
What is that thought bringing me?
What does it make me feel like in this moment?
Instead of following the thought,
The story of the thought.
We come back.
Does that thought bring some tension to my body?
Can I soften again?
Maybe that thought brought some joy to my face and I can feel that.
So there is no good or bad,
Whether it's some difficult form of tension that we notice in our mind and or our body.
Or it's an easefulness.
Whatever it is,
The more we can pay our full attention toward it,
The more we can tend to ourselves.
And as we tend,
Rather than try to fix or change,
We give ourselves permission to be as we are.
We give ourselves permission.
To be fully human.
Mistakes and flaws are normal part of being human.
And yet so is ease and joy and rest and excitement.
It's just permission to feel anything that you feel.
Landing with an open heart rather than a judgmental mind.
We bring together the form of the discernment our mind can create,
Which is needed and necessary.
And also the openness of our heart which can receive and hold.
Literally anything that life brings us.
And what helps us find the present moment again and again and again is just to feel what's in our body.
Gravity beneath you,
Holding you.
Maybe you can soften your shoulders just a touch to sink in.
And you can always come back to this rhythmic movement of breath.
This life-giving force moving through you,
Trusting that it will return to you again and again and again.
And all you need to do is receive it.
And then when you exhale,
You just simply give back that life giving.
Just on repeat,
Abundance and generosity right here in the breath.
It's just breath by breath.
It's moment-by-moment,
Present awareness.
Present awareness brings us into open awareness.
Awareness without judgment or with awareness of judgment so we can be a little more open.
And then eventually open awareness lends us into pure awareness.
No judgment exists.
In the yogic tradition that's called samadhi.
And Samadhi or Samadhi is often translated as bliss.
Samadhi,
The root of the word has wholeness in it.
Sam means whole.
It's this idea that we are completely whole.
Nothing is missing or separate from us.
There's nothing within us that we need to hide.
There's nothing from somebody else that we need to be complete.
And it doesn't mean that we don't need each other.
Just the support of this sangha that we get to practice together is needed and necessary for our human hearts to connect.
And yet at the same time.
There's nothing external to you that you need for your own wholeness.
And so we continue to land in present moment awareness.
Oh yeah,
I noticed my mind is wandering.
Good.
And noticing allows me to be present again.
Not that the thoughts are bad or I need to push them away.
The thoughts might have been deeply important.
Maybe I'm planning something that's really important to me.
But in this present moment.
I don't need to follow that thought.
I can trust.
At just noticing my breath.
Is equally as important.
Present moment awareness leads us into open awareness,
Awareness without judgment or with less judgment.
Open awareness eventually leads us to pure awareness.
That space where we recognize,
I am whole and complete.
And that thought doesn't even need to be there because that thought can bring so much connotation with it.
We are just simply in that pure awareness,
Just pure experience.
And you don't have to try hard to get there or remember all of these concepts.
It's just noticing your breath.
Noticing the ease of the exhale and inviting it in.
Letting the openness of your heart open the eye of your heart.
So you can utilize both the wisdom of your body and the knowledge of your mind.
Breath by breath.
Present moment awareness leads to open awareness,
Leads to pure awareness.
Notice again your breath.
Can you let your body be held?
Just a little heavier,
A little bit of softening your jaw.
Your shoulders.
As you let your body soften,
Relieving any small tensile points in the body,
Your mind can also rest again.
Invitation.
Into this Pure Awareness.
Recognizing when judgment comes,
And not making it wrong,
Not adding more judgment to judgment.
Just noticing,
Oh yeah,
There goes my mind again.
Let me notice my breath.
Let me notice my body being held.
And as we've been working with opening the eye of the heart and blending it with the knowledge of the mind.
And not to bring a concept in.
What is the eye of my heart?
Trying to figure out how to get into the heart.
It's something we all already have.
And the action is recognizing when I'm in judgment.
I'm not fully seeing through the clarity of the eye of my heart.
And we're only seeing through the knowledge of the mind,
The constructs of the mind.
We miss the clarity of compassion.
And so we witness ourselves when we're in judgment.
And to the best of our ability,
We bring back that intentionality of our meditation to begin with,
To be tender with ourselves.
And it's not to say that we don't need discernment in our life.
You couldn't drive a car if you couldn't judge well.
You need to figure out how far do I push the brake pedal?
What's the distance between these cars?
There's a million things we do throughout the day,
Literally perhaps millions.
That require our discernment.
It's to witness when we start to get into judgment that's comparative,
Judgment that is separative.
And that judgment of separation is also happening all the time.
So when we bring awareness to it,
We can start to infuse our compassion with it as well.
It's already happening.
It's part of human nature.
It's your mind trying to keep you safe.
But when you can witness your mind starting to judge,
Well,
At least I don't have it as badass.
Or we can get stuck in the suffering of the world and we're just churning with why is this happening,
Trying to figure it out.
When we witness ourselves think,
I'm better than or I'm worse than someone else.
Or we judge someone else as better than or worse than ourselves or someone else.
That's the type of judgment that separates us from our naturally radiant heart.
And gets us stuck up in our mind separate from the wisdom of the body.
Perhaps the most important part here is that we're not adding judgment to judgment.
Oh no,
I can't believe I thought that.
What a negative person I am,
Da da da.
Or we go the opposite.
They're so negative.
Why is this happening?
If they would stop,
Then maybe.
Anytime we add judgment,
If this happened,
Then I'd be happy.
If I was more like this,
Then I.
If the world was more like this,
Then.
That's the separative judgment that we can witness.
And start to hold with a little more tenderness rather than trying to fix or change it.
When you notice you're in judgment,
Just placing a hand on your heart.
Speaking to yourself softly.
Can be so helpful.
You don't have to push the thought away or judge it.
Just witness that it's there.
Hold it tenderly.
A lot of these thoughts are ancient.
They're not our own.
We have all these little tiny children inside of us,
Little young versions of ourselves,
Hurting versions of ourselves.
And what they don't need is more judgment.
What they need is tenderness.
It's like a little kid.
They go to reach a hot stove and you yell out,
Don't touch that.
And then they start crying because they're scared of that fierceness.
But all it is,
Is you trying to hold them with tenderness.
And then that's usually what you would do,
You would scoop up a crying child.
Hold them,
Soothe them.
I wasn't upset,
I was just trying to keep you safe.
And we can do that with ourselves when we notice our mind gets reactive and judgmental.
The very first part of all of this is to be aware.
So I am aware of what my mind is doing.
My mind is running that old story.
My mind is telling me how tired I am.
In this moment I am awake enough.
To witness the thought.
And that's enough.
It's always coming back to the present moment.
What are my needs right here?
How do I tend to myself in this moment?
And can I witness how my breath is already tending to me?
This little line from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow keeps coming to me this week.
It's this line that says,
And now recommends the reign of rest.
And affection.
And stillness.
And I love that line that.
.
.
It's a re-beginning.
It's a remembering of rest and affection and stillness.
And something that's within us.
And in our meditation,
We take time to let our bodies rest.
Let our minds find a moment of stillness.
And with as much affection,
Tenderness,
Gentleness as possible.
This is where we can start to alchemize and transform judgment into compassion.
The antidote to judgment is compassion.
But when we're stuck in judgment,
It is so hard to get to compassion.
You feel separate.
But it lives within us.
Sometimes it's slowing down to remember.
Sometimes it's.
Resourcing yourself first before you can give compassion back to the world.
Compassion exists within.
It is the open eye of the heart.
And when we combine our brilliant minds and our open hearts.
We can start to offer more and more loving compassion to the world,
Loving awareness.
Open awareness.
Pure awareness.
Breath by breath,
Moment by moment.
No matter how many times your mind moves.
Is returning to yourself.
And this is one of those moments for me,
This pure awareness where As I'm speaking about loving awareness,
One of my cats come in and I can hear him purring.
And he does this thing where he's asking to be picked up.
And ease.
My cat that's.
.
.
Not the snuggly cat.
That moment of him coming in,
Purring,
Asking to be picked up.
It requires my full attention.
And those are the moments where it feels easeful.
And if you're not a cat lover,
I think you still get the idea.
It's easeful when there's built-in tenderness.
When the sun is shining on your face and you're gazing at a flower.
When you're with a loved one.
Who's offering you their tenderness.
Those are the moments that help support us when judgment grips our heart and it feels like it's closing.
Can you be purely aware in the most easeful moments so you can receive all of the joy that you need to hold you in the difficult times.
That makes it easier and easier that when the difficult times come you can still be in that open-hearted,
Pure awareness.
That when judgment starts to grip your heart,
You can soften that grip for just a moment by holding yourself in tenderness.
To be aware of a breath that moves through you.
To appreciate how it opens your chest.
As you inhale.
How it can soften your entire being as you exhale.
This is the foundation of seeing through the eye of the heart,
To just simply receive the present moment.
Notice this breath here.
Let it move you.
And I'll share here,
And this is a quote from Alex L.
,
The author and speaker.
And she says,
We don't have to pretend to be fine when we are not.
We don't need to push through and be strong.
Gratitude is a soft landing place that requires us to be honest,
Open,
And willing to look at everything we're facing.
And not turn away.
And I love that line because it does speak to the eye of the heart.
It's not about pretending you're fine.
That's the opposite of an open heart.
It's holding yourself when things are not fine,
Staying with yourself with tenderness to the best of your ability.
And she uses the word gratitude.
Gratitude is a soft landing place.
Affection is a soft landing place.
Tenderness is a soft landing place.
Your exhale.
Is a soft landing place.
I'll read that one more time.
I'm going to use the word breath instead of gratitude.
We don't have to pretend to be fine when we are not.
We don't need to push through and be strong.
Your breath is a soft landing place that requires you to be honest,
Open,
And willing to look at everything you're facing and not turn away.
Just notice again the softening of your exhale.
Invite in that softening.
Witness the spaciousness your body creates as you inhale.
Allow yourself to find the balance between the two,
Resting between breaths.
Allowing expansion,
Allowing action.
And also receiving softness and rest.
I invite you to bring your hands into any of your closing habits or practices.
Ending with a few loving kindness phrases,
Repeating them back as they make sense for you.
May I remember the innate goodness of my breath.
May I continue to open my heart.
And soften my mind.
When action is needed.
May I choose to move with ease and peace.
And may the merits of our practice ripple out to benefit all beings.
As always,
Go slow if you can.
Take a moment to thank yourself.
Find movement if that feels good.
Thank you for being here.
Thanks for supporting each other in our sangha,
Our community.
