Welcome to day three.
We first started by talking about breathing.
And then we spoke about your mind and its thoughts.
Today I'd like to talk more about thoughts and awareness.
Have you ever followed a thought?
Looked for when it starts and when it ends?
How it arises?
If you take a close look,
You'll find that you don't have much control over your thoughts.
They simply happen.
We have some ability to direct our thought process.
But the vast majority of the time,
We are simply responding to thought being generated from beyond our conscious mind.
Thoughts try to help us solve problems.
Like I said yesterday,
There isn't a problem in this moment.
So the use of our thinking mind has vanished.
That leaves something else.
I will refer to it as awareness.
Awareness is the aspect of your mind that you may barely notice if you don't meditate.
It is the viewer or receiver of information.
It is sometimes referred to as the watcher.
Attuning ourselves to awareness brings us away from the thinking mind to what apprehends the thoughts themselves.
Normally,
Awareness and thought are completely enmeshed together.
You experience this as normal.
One of the most dramatic awakenings that happens in a meditation practice is realizing the difference between thought and awareness.
Instead of being completely identified with your thoughts,
Which include your story,
Beliefs,
And view of reality,
You pull back for moments at a time to identify with awareness.
Awareness is able to observe the story and beliefs about how things are in the moment.
Awareness doesn't have an opinion or judgment about your predicament,
The problems you have,
Or whether or not you're in the right relationship.
Awareness is simply there.
It watches.
It pays attention.
Meditation opens you to the awareness within you.
With practice,
Become more skilled about how and where to focus your awareness.
This is a portal to a new relationship with yourself and with the world around you.
As you recede from complete identification with the thoughts in your mind,
You become more free.
Free to disregard a thought or belief.
Free to see things in a new light.
Free to apprehend other people in situations with greater clarity.
And from there,
We open to new possibilities.
Let's start today's meditation on awareness.
Sit comfortably with your back straight,
Either your legs crossed or your feet on the floor,
Taking a couple of deeper belly breaths.
Breathing deeply into the abdomen so that the abdomen expands outward.
Breathing out so the abdomen comes in.
All this allowing your nervous system to relax.
Free to become more in your body.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Noticing the feelings in your body.
Noticing where there's any tension.
Just moving your body wherever there's a little tension in your neck or your shoulders,
Your lower back.
Breathing in and out at your own pace.
And then noticing your thoughts.
Ask yourself a question.
Who is noticing the thoughts?
Taking a breath in and out.
You can bring up an image in your mind of somebody that you care about deeply.
Someone you love.
Just bring them into your mind.
Ask yourself,
Who is apprehending that image,
That thought?
Breathing.
There is the story of you and your world that emerges as thoughts.
And then there is the awareness within that apprehends that story and the world.
Focusing on your breathing.
Breathing out.
Noticing the ability to change focus from your thoughts to your breathing.
Who is doing that?
What aspect of you is able to choose where to focus your attention?
This is awareness.
Breathing in and breathing out.
Taking a rest in awareness.
Simply noticing what's going on in front of awareness as thoughts,
As breathing,
As paying attention.
All of the distractions,
All of the problems,
All of the ideas that come into your mind are simply there to be apprehended by awareness.
Breathing in.
Breathing out.
Noticing that there are thoughts,
Not grabbing onto any of them,
Not judging any of them.
Just noticing and breathing.
Breathing in and breathing out.
When you do this on your own,
You simply allow yourself to rest in that state of watching.
Watching your thoughts,
Watching your breath,
No judgment,
No opinions,
No need to do anything.
Just notice.
Breath in and out.
Congratulate yourself on three days of meditation.
I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
