The Four Pillars

So this meditation is called the Four Pillars.

And the Four Pillars refer to what Richard Davidson,

I think I mentioned it before,

A very eminent neuroscientist called the Four Pillars of Well-Being.

And this isn't a theory,

It's circuits in the brain relating to our outlook.

So if you imagine a pillar,

And the pillar is going to be either in the outlook,

In extreme terms,

It might be like everything is rose-tinted,

Or extreme pessimism.

And we tend to inhabit in our brain one of these circuits to a certain extent.

And the other pillar is attention.

So some of us have attention which is a bit flighty,

As always jumping from object to object,

And others we can concentrate,

But perhaps we're too concentrated on something,

We haven't even noticed what's happening around us.

So those are the two extremes of the attention pillar.

And the third is resilience,

And this is about overcoming setbacks.

So some of us,

If something happens,

It knocks us out for the rest of the day or the week.

It could be a thought or something that's happened.

And for others it's like water off a duck's back,

But for those people sometimes they don't learn anything because we're not robots,

The world affects us,

And that's how we grow.

And the fourth and final pillar is generosity,

Which is about how much we care about the world,

And how little we care about the world in general,

And others.

So this is meditation,

We're going to kind of tone each of those pillars.

And so there'll be four sections of the meditation.

And in this first section,

All I'd like you to do is on ten fingers to count ten things you're grateful for.

The first five is usually quite easy.

Everybody there yet?

It's not a countdown,

You can be in any order.

Ten things that you're grateful for.

Just put your hand up when you've got to ten.

Okay,

Now I'm going to give you an eleventh,

And I invite you to close your eyes.

The eleventh thing is your breath.

So feeling gratitude for this breath.

And this breath as well,

The next breath,

And each breath as you're breathing it.

Okay.

You might even in your mind say thank you with the breath.

Okay.

Okay.

And if you find your mind wandering,

What you can do is just use your hand as if it were a petal of a flower,

Holding it palm up,

Opening and closing your fingers like the petals of a flower.

Opening as you breathe in,

Closing as you breathe out.

To help anchor your attention.

So letting that feeling of gratitude bleed into this practice,

This attention practice.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

You can rest your hand if it's served its purpose and just focus again on the breath.

Okay.

Seeing if you can follow the breath all the way in and all the way out.

Letting the attention pillar come to its center.

And expanding the focus,

Taking the whole body and the breathing,

Sitting here.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And if your mind is still wandering,

Then at least let it wander between the ten things of which you are grateful.

So that when it comes back to the breath and to this body,

It's suffused,

Your attention is suffused with this outlook of gratitude.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

And now we move to the resilience pillar.

And for this we take the three precious pills like medicine.

And the first pill is a white pill and it's the pill of stillness.

And we take this pill and become aware of stillness in the body.

Perhaps in the midst of restlessness or all kinds of feelings,

The vortex in the body or not.

And underneath it all we can become aware and connect with the stillness.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Still stillness in the body.

Okay.

Okay.

Second pill is a red pill and it's the pill of silence.

And here we become aware of the silence beneath the chattering mind,

Beneath the noises.

There's silence.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

The red pill,

The pill of silence.

Becoming aware of silence.

Okay.

Okay.

Now we take the blue pill.

We take the blue pill,

Pill of spaciousness.

We can often feel like our mind is caving in on itself or is being squashed somehow and pushed into a corner when indeed it is as vast as the universe.

So becoming aware of the spaciousness of the mind,

Like a blue sky or a deep space.

Blue pill and we take it.

Okay.

And having taken these three pills,

We can just sit without any visualization,

Without a week,

Just sitting,

Accepting and letting things be just as they are.

Like a glass of muddy water.

If we don't stir it,

The mud settles.

And the mud generally settles at the bottom,

But sometimes some mud settles on the top.

And I invite you now to bring your attention to that mud that tends to surface.

It could be a feeling in the body.

It could be a certain complex in the mind,

Or a thought or a concern,

Whatever it is.

It's that last piece of detritus in our minds that doesn't want to dissipate or it floats to the top.

And I invite you to bathe this in your attention.

So even befriend it.

Okay.

And you can repeat to yourself whatever it is,

It's okay to feel this.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

As the mind settles like a glass of muddy water,

There are certain bits that might hang around for longer.

And those are calling on our attention,

So we're inviting you to give attention to those.

Okay.

There could be simply be sensations in the body or in the mind.

Some kind of hurt.

Some nature of suffering.

And as humans,

We have this tendency to make this suffering personal.

It's my personal suffering,

My personal situation.

My own specific nature of suffering.

But this suffering,

Whatever it is,

Is not unique,

Shared by all humanity.

Of course the circumstances might be different,

But the effect is the same.

So by getting in touch with what it is that feels like personal suffering for you,

I invite you to catch the thread of all suffering.

All the hurt and pain that this particular suffering might cause as it appears around the world.

And whenever we feel a pain in the body,

It's the body calling our attention to it.

It needs attention,

It needs healing,

And so it is with all suffering.

So whatever the nature of this suffering,

As we breathe in,

As we're aware of it,

We're also aware of the desire to heal or comfort,

Ease the suffering.

Both the one that's personal and the impersonal.

Now that suffering appears in the whole world.

So I invite you on the in-breath to hold that suffering with the awareness,

With the desire to bring it ease and comfort.

And breathing out,

Ease,

Comfort and peace towards it.

As it appears in all life.

All right.

All right.

Or if you're aware of a certain hurt that you're experiencing,

A certain nature of suffering,

You breathe in the awareness of that suffering and the awareness of the desire to be free of it.

And then as you breathe out,

You indeed bestow that desire to be free of it.

It's because you are aware of that pain,

That particular kind of suffering makes you an expert.

The healing of it is the gift you have to give to the world and to yourself.

It's because you are aware of that pain and the desire to be free of it.

I'm taking a few deeper breaths in and out as we come to the end of this practice.

And when you're ready,

You're opening your eyes.