Introduction To The Practice Of Meditation

This 10-minute meditation is an introduction to the practice.

And so what you want to do is lie down as long as you can stay awake and alert,

Or sit comfortably with your hips higher than your knees so that your spine can be lengthened,

Relaxed,

And at ease.

If you're sitting up,

Find a way to balance the middle of your brain over the middle of your pelvis.

So there's a plumb line going down the entire length of your spine into your seat or your cushion.

As you close your eyes,

You'll move away from the outer world of stimulus and sensation and find the darkness behind your closed eyelids as a way of coming into yourself,

Into the rich inner landscape where the practice of self-awareness,

Mindfulness,

And a relationship to presence are occurred.

It takes a level of mastery to be able to turn your attention to something without trying to change it.

And even though this is an introduction to meditation,

Have a level of mastery to how you turn your attention to your breath without desiring to lengthen it,

Deepen it,

Or perfect it.

You simply notice that your intelligent nervous system and body is breathing you,

Being breathed by life itself.

And as best as you can,

Move the breath in and out of the nostrils so that when you inhale,

The breath fills the belly first.

Much like when you blow up a balloon,

The belly fills down and wide.

And when you exhale,

There's a softening of the entire belly back and in,

In towards the spine.

Let there be no control over the depth of breath.

There's this very slight redirection to how the breath lives in the lower navel and how the sensation of breathing creates a fair amount of ease of how easy it is to breathe and be breathed.

The next revolution of in-breath and out-breath that you take,

Do your best to feel it fully,

The way your skin pushes into your clothing,

The way the temperature exchanges at the nostrils.

The way pressure builds on the in-breath and releases on the out-breath.

For when you feel and sense the breath fully,

If even for a moment,

It will interrupt the constancy of thought.

It will pick itself up once more.

Yet each time you notice the mind pulling in distraction or its own tangent,

Have a level of awareness that the mind has pulled you out of the moment.

And like a kind hand,

The breath is right there to guide you back into the moment that's occurring.

If you can follow one full revolution of in-breath and out-breath fully without the mind interrupting,

Then you begin again.

And note,

The practice of meditation does not require the mind not to pull.

When the mind pulls and you notice that you've gone off course of the now,

The breath is right there.

It's right there with temperature and vibration and sensation to bring you back into the body,

Into the aliveness of the moment.

Have your breathing be easy,

Smooth,

Rhythmic and fluid.

When the mind pulls,

If you entertain the thought,

You will surely go where the mind is going.

If you do not get gripped and you are not entertained by the thought you're currently on,

You follow the sensation of the rhythmic breath back.

You'll find yourself in the moment that you're in where what you're doing is what you're experiencing.

There's a coherence there.

For the next number of minutes in silence,

Watch this constant rebound of the mind pulling into the past or the expectation of the future.

And then a growing awareness that's coming online that shows you when the mind has pulled and guides you back through the breath into a choice-filled moment of now.

You may do this over and over again in these short few minutes of letting yourself be pulled,

Noticing when you're distracted,

Choosing to follow the breath back to the now where just for a moment the mind becomes interrupted and quiet.

The breath is there like a very kind ally to bring you back to the now.

Focus.

Stay here in your body.

The level of intrigue without opinion on the thoughts and distractions that are absolutely important.

Keep following the breath back.

Notice no matter how far the mind pulls you away from the moment you're in,

The breath is always right there.

The present moment awareness is always right there to interrupt the mind,

To ease the emotional and mental body,

And to land you back into a place of deeper reality,

Deeper clarity,

The present moment.

Hmm.

It won't take long before you see the quality of the thoughts that are being moved through you,

Thought through you.

And they may seem strong at times,

But notice how just the lightest breath will interrupt even the strongest of thoughts,

The most gripping of beliefs.

Feel the inherent power of the breath and the extraordinary power of presence that the breath leads you to.

And each thought dissolves into the quiet of now.

Perhaps getting two full revolutions of in-breath and out-breath without distraction.

And when distraction surely comes,

There is the awareness and the breath to bring you right back to the body,

To the now.

The breath is right there.

Ensure that you are not creating a hierarchy of breath being better than mind,

The interpretive mind is natural and amazing.

Yet so often it is rehashing the past or creating an expectation of a future that has not arisen.

The breath bringing you back into now by way of the body is always going to land you in a place of reality.

A deeper clarity,

A truer sense of ease when what you are experiencing and what you are doing align.

Take a few deeper breaths into the nose,

Filling your belly like a balloon.

Open your mouth and have soft exhalation leave.

And do this as a way almost of cleansing your entire body-mind,

Feeling like a window opens for a summer breeze to move through.

We do our very best to not judge a set.

Noticing that any effort on the path of presence will bear good fruit.

And stay in your body,

Anchored to presence and you can open your eyes.