Welcome,
Friends.
Today let's center ourselves in conscious awareness and experience the sounds of mind that arise in the silence of presence.
First find your comfortable position,
Upright but not tense,
Erect and tall.
Take a couple of comfortable breaths and allow your body to relax.
Now,
Intentionally,
Take a deep,
Slow breath in and hold,
And as you release,
Allow your sense of awareness to pool beneath the crown of the head and rest.
Another deep,
Slow breath in and hold.
And as you release,
Allow that sense of awareness to pool down the center of the brain and brain stem to the top of the back of the neck and rest.
Another deep,
Slow breath in and hold.
And as you release,
Allow your awareness to pool down the spine to the area behind the heart and rest.
Another deep,
Slow breath in and hold.
And as you release,
Allow your awareness to move down the spine to pool in the tailbone and rest.
Take another four breaths on your own,
Holding at the top,
And as you release,
Allowing your awareness to center beneath the crown of the head and down the spine incrementally to pool in the tailbone.
Take about a minute.
Welcome back.
Now,
From this centered position,
Let's explore the quality of mind that arises in silence,
Sounds that give rise to words and thus thought.
When we consider the thinking mind,
We think of it as existing as language.
The thinking mind thinks in words and images.
A word leads to the next,
And soon we have a sentence,
And then another sentence,
And then ultimately a narrative,
Often in the form of an argument.
Our minds love to make sense of the world,
To bring order.
But when we step back from thought,
Center our sense of self in conscious awareness,
We inhabit space,
Stillness,
And silence.
These are the qualities of being.
Space exists prior to the rise of objects,
Stillness exists prior to the arrival of movement,
And silence exists prior to the arrival of sounds.
One of the insidious qualities of the mind is its stickiness.
From a position of conscious awareness,
Our sense of I can so easily stick to a thought,
And then we become one with that thought,
And we are no longer fully conscious.
Here's what I've noticed.
Thoughts do not arise fully formed in the space of consciousness.
First a sound arises in the silence,
A sound that suggests a fully formed word.
At that moment,
If I remain centered in silence,
The sound will pass without forming into a word.
If I do not,
If my sense of self touches the sound,
The sound then forms a word which becomes a thought,
Spurring the arrival of the next word.
And then I'm off,
Identified with the thinking mind again.
With practice,
We can strengthen our ability to remain in presence and allow the arising and falling away of the sounds that could become the thinking mind.
Being awake means awakening from the identification with the thinking mind.
The insight that sounds arise not fully formed and only become words and thoughts when our attention sticks to them can be liberating.
Let's take a few moments in intentional breathing,
Deeply and slowly,
And rest in conscious awareness.
As we do,
Allow the sounds of the thinking mind to arise and simply observe them as partially formed,
Waiting our attention to form into words.
Allow the sounds to pass.
Thanks for joining me today.
I hope you have a beautiful day.
