Open Focus Meditation For Dissolving Discomfort

Make yourself comfortable coming into a seated or laying position.

Let your eyelids get heavy and notice the sensation of your breath.

Maybe take a full but gentle belly,

Chest,

Neck breath in.

And exhale gently through the mouth and release.

We are entering into an open focus,

Dissolving discomfort meditation and practice.

I will ask a series of questions meant to shift your brainwaves into a state of healing.

Can you imagine letting your mind and body naturally and effortlessly respond to the following prompts and questions?

Can you imagine not giving any particular effort to listening to the question or achieving any of the associated images or experiences?

Can you imagine that the ideal response is whatever spontaneously happens to your multi-sensory imagery or experience when a particular question or prompt is provided?

The nature of your experience will change and deepen with continued practice.

Can you imagine that your opening and expanding awareness of your emerging experience is a continuing process?

Can you imagine and notice the feeling of space?

We can use this sense of open focus to distribute discomfort.

When in open focus,

Discomfort becomes a much smaller part of your total awareness.

Once again,

Notice the quietness and can you accept any potential distractions?

If you have a sensation or discomfort,

Anxiety,

Muscular tension,

A feeling in or around the body,

Can you allow yourself to become aware of its location in your body?

As you locate it,

Can you breathe into the discomfort as openly and directly as you can without resisting it?

Can you notice the sensation of your breath?

Can you hold equal awareness of the breath and any sensation of discomfort?

Can you trust that the breath is still with you?

With each breath out,

Can you imagine softening,

Becoming a little more relaxed?

Is it possible to do a mental inventory of the perceptions of all your senses,

First attending to your sense of hearing?

Can you be aware of sounds while equally and simultaneously attending to the silence between the sounds out of which the sounds arise?

Notice the direction that sounds travel toward you through three-dimensional space.

Let this awareness deepen for a few seconds.

Now add vision,

Noticing the space and objects that you're seeing or visualizing.

Even if your eyes are closed,

Be aware of any tastes,

Including the taste of space.

Let this experience deepen for a few seconds.

Add an awareness of the sense of smell and even the smell of space.

Sit with this experience for 15 seconds or so.

Is it possible to remember your sense of hearing,

Your inner vision,

The tastes,

The smells,

And also add in an awareness of your thoughts and the mental silence from which they emerge,

The silence in which your thoughts exist,

And the silence into which they dissolve?

Now add an awareness,

The sense of presence,

Of nowness,

The feeling that you are right here,

Right now,

Experiencing all of your senses existing in present space,

Silence,

And timelessness.

In the center of this diffuse attention is the sense of feeling,

Which includes the felt presence of your body,

The feeling of absence we call space around the body,

And the space that occupies your body.

The more we increase the sense of simultaneous presence of all of our senses at once,

Centered in feeling,

The more we deepen diffuse attention and open focus.

Can you imagine that your attention is everywhere and almost kind of fuzzy all at once?

Can you imagine staying in this expanded awareness and also bringing awareness to discomfort?

Can you imagine feeling the space around the discomfort and feeling the space the discomfort occupies while also remaining in a diffuse peripheral awareness of all of the senses and the space in which they exist?

Now allow your awareness to diffuse through your thoughts or the discomfort or the physical sensation,

Almost letting them be even more present.

Alternatively,

Let the discomfort,

The thoughts,

Or sensation diffuse through your awareness like particles moving back and forth.

Bathe in the dance of these particles.

Let the particles of your discomfort,

Of your thoughts diffuse by bringing more awareness to them,

Not less.

Let discomfort spread through surrounding areas of the body and into space.

Don't try to make the discomfort or the thoughts spread.

They will naturally diffuse as your acceptance of feeling are more pervasive.

Can you notice the sensation of your breath?

The space within you?

The space outside of you?

Is it possible to notice you've increased the breadth of your awareness and allowed the discomfort to become a small part of the totality of your expanded awareness?

The discomfort or the thoughts or sensations no longer encompass all of your awareness.

They're just a small part and it's no big deal.

Expanding your focus allows you to be more comfortable with moving into and being with discomfort,

To feel it,

To notice that it won't take over the system.

Understandably,

Most people try to avoid their discomfort.

Yet,

What actually makes the discomfort overwhelming is our narrow focus on it,

Which allows it to dominate our awareness.

When we open up our awareness,

Our discomforts become a small part of the totality of our experience and feel less threatening.

It's no longer scary to be with and to let discomfort diffuse into surrounding body and space.

As you practice this exercise more,

You open your awareness,

Moving into and through the center of discomfort and letting the awareness of it float in an open and inclusive awareness where it can actually dissolve.

With continued practice,

You will become more comfortable and notice the space you take up,

The space that can hold all of this.

And in that space,

There is release and dissolve.

Can you imagine the sensation of your breath as it enters the nostrils,

As you gently exhale,

Noticing the breath has been breathing you this whole time?

Can you use your consciousness and awareness to expand and deepen that breath,

Letting it start to wiggle your fingers and your toes?

As you continue to breathe a little more deeply,

Waking back into current time,

Begin to open the ears to the sounds around you.

Notice the acute smells and let the eyes slowly open to take in the outer landscape,

Still aware of the inner landscape,

Returning to this healing practice to move towards,

To release and dissolve.