The Joy Of Just This (Recorded Live)

We're going to use the gateway of sound to bring us in.

I just want to invite you to take your seat.

And just allow yourself to be here.

And before we even get into the sitting,

Just noticing how you are right now at the level of body,

Mind,

Awareness.

Where are you right now in relation to this moment?

Are you eager to get on with something?

Are you reacting to person holding this space or something else in your home?

Are you caught up in a series of judgments and things like that?

And we have to actually allow ourselves to notice the energies kind of moving in us.

And it doesn't mean that we're bad if we're caught up in judgments or anything like that.

That's just our training.

In this practice,

We're going to let go of that false sense of judgment,

That righteousness.

To just be with ourselves and each other.

So just awareness through the body,

Bringing your awareness into your feet.

And feeling the feeling of life in your feet.

So this is very different from thinking about your feet.

But just feeling into the life there and allowing ease at each body part,

Each part.

The ankles.

Carves in the shins.

The knees.

The quads and thighs.

Ease in the legs,

Life in the legs.

Yourself sitting on your meditation cushion.

And that natural uplift moving up through the spine.

Allowing your shoulder blades to drop.

Shoulders to drop.

Awareness of your arms.

Life in the arms.

Life in the elbows.

Life in the hands.

Uprightness through the neck.

Ears level with the shoulders.

Awareness of your head.

Awareness of your face.

Your eyes.

Eyes opened or closed depending on what you would like.

The face.

The jaw.

The mouth.

The aliveness of your throat.

Noticing what you feel at the level of the throat.

The chest.

The abdomen.

Allowing your diaphragm to soften.

Noting if you're holding anything emotionally or unconsciously at the diaphragm.

And not trying to change it,

But just allowing a softening in the diaphragm.

Which means you might meet a little vulnerability that will pass momentarily.

As you just come deeper into awareness.

The belly.

And if it's right for you,

And not if it's not.

Groins.

Reproductive and excretory organs.

Because this is an area if there's cutting off from ourselves,

Abandonment of self,

And so on.

Then it can be an area where energies can be very different.

So not trying to force any change and if there is any of that in the body anywhere,

Any closeness.

Then just meeting that with kindness.

Don't try and force anything.

Allowing yourself to be aware of the space around you and the feeling of your whole body at the level of life energy in your body.

So you're aware of your body.

And you're keeping it light,

You're not chasing after any intensity.

There's no meditation in intensity.

Just feeling the feeling of simple life in the body.

And this is a beautiful starting point.

And already.

We are without any effort by feeling in this way from within ourselves,

Not from the head.

We are unhooking from the judge.

We are not in any shapes.

And so from this place of slightly deeper awareness.

You'll be aware of your mind's movement.

And you'll be aware of some of your emotional movement.

And of course you're aware of your body.

And the space of the room around you or the space around you.

So I just want to ask you just to not push to go any deeper.

Don't make any effort.

Rather this is an effort of non effort.

Tuning into the sounds that you can hear.

Obviously you can hear me.

What else can you hear?

Not trying to change anything,

Even if you are having the worst day on earth.

Not trying to force that to be other than it is,

But just allowing yourself to notice all that's going on from this feeling of life in you.

Including what you can hear.

Just tune in a little bit to your hearing.

Perhaps there's road sounds.

Where I am.

There's a river just a few yards away.

There's birds.

But it doesn't really matter.

It's a good sound or other kind of sound.

Just let the sounds be there.

Can you just let them be?

And meet them.

Perhaps just feel them as energy happening out there.

Even if your mind is reacting to them or to something.

Notice that energy.

Not dissociatively.

Just feel it.

So what in you is noticing that?

Are you those feelings?

Are you the reactions?

Are you the stories?

And of course you're not.

I want to invite you to also hear that you can hear the space between and beneath and around everything that you can hear.

Just like with music,

You know that the space between the notes.

And if you listen to that space,

You hear the music much better.

So allowing yourself to hear.

The space between the notes of this symphony of sound.

That you are partaking of right now.

And notice that perhaps some of the pressure drops.

So we are unhooking.

And through that we get something of our own energy back.

Something of ourselves back.

But notice this for yourself.

Don't take my word for it.

Don't believe,

But know for yourself.

Experientially,

Not just thinking about it.

Just inviting you.

To notice where this awareness.

That we might call hearing.

Is received into you.

Let your awareness.

Follow it.

Not just the sound,

But the silence too.

Or the space too.

Notice where it lands in you.

Is it landing in your mind?

In your emotions?

Or are your mind and emotions.

Reactive to the receiving.

If that is the case.

Then surely it is meeting you somewhere deeper.

So allow yourself to settle back into that place of receiving.

Through sound and silence.

You can do this with every sense.

Allowing this inner sense of your innocence.

Of your clarity.

Of your deeper awareness.

To bloom.

Notice where you are holding on and not allowing.

Don't try and make it.

That is a mental movement.

That is not the same as awareness.

That is an idea rather than reality.

If there is any closeness in you,

Allow it to be touched by the clear light of this deep place in you.

In some ways it is like sunlight moving through space.

We always think of light as being the object that the light touches.

But actually as light moves through space you can't see it.

It is only when it meets the earth.

And meets our eye.

That there is this thing we call light.

Through perception.

So awareness is moving through you.

Allow it to meet everything in you.

Without judgement.

Allow it to meet the beautiful parts,

The closed parts.

The conscious and the unconscious,

The reactive,

The numb.

The opinions,

The thoughts of who you think you are.

Your body,

Your feeling,

Your mind.

Allow awareness to illuminate everything.

And not that it has to report to the mind and come up with some clever thing that we can cash in.

Just this.

And if the mind or the ego mind kind of reacts,

If there is all conditioned emotion and it flips.

Then just following back sounds that you can hear.

Space between the sounds.

Easing of the diaphragm.

Feeling of life in the body.

And letting go of any idea of what meditation is or getting back to where you were.

Just meet this.

That's the meditation.

Just this is the meditation.

Hard day.

There's the doorway to practice.

Lovely day.

That's your doorway to practice.

So you have this self illumination within you.

Awareness is the illumination.

But our judgment rather than proper discrimination.

I.

E.

Knowing what's skillful and unskillful.

But our judgment and our duality that comes from these judgments.

Is what closes down in us.

It's not that you know that any person does not have this consciousness and this awareness.

It's that we.

Are screaming so loud.

So much of the time.

We have forgotten who we are.

And so let awareness.

Be yourself remembering.

Not the idea in your head of who you think you are and who you think you should be.

What does this awareness show you of yourself?

This is the still pond that you can see your own face in.

This is the light that is shining without source.

It's not dependent on a match or a wick.

Or fuel or gas.

It is.

Who you are.

Just this.

Allow yourself yourself.

So withdrawal pratyah.

Is not a rejection of anything.

When we try to reject.

Or change something.

It's duality keeping us tumbling.

But when we.

Open again.

In even the smallest way to.

The light that we are.

A light of awareness.

Then we see things for what they are.

And anything difficult we can bring some love to.

And perhaps even make some actual steps in the world.

Have some possibilities when there wasn't any before through our ideas.

And perhaps we stop trying the same old same old and come up with something more human.

More innocent than true.

Let's just take another two minutes.

We'll just drop into silence for two minutes with this.

Thank you.

You you you sense of your own innocence and clarity awareness not trying to maintain but knowing and like that poem that I'm always talking about by Bukowski,

The Laughing Heart.

There is a light and the more often we learn to do it the more light there is.

Aware of the room around you and aware of your wonderful body,

Aware of your face and yourself sitting on your cushion,

Your hands and your feet and rather than coming out of a practice like this,

Which normally means we put our practice away,

Let's let our practice just resonate and continue and we will just meet the ordinariness of our days with this ordinariness that is who we are,

Which is awareness,

Which is who we are,

A personality,

All of ourselves.

Let's close with a little dedication.

May this practice be for our own highest benefit and by being so may it be of benefit to all beings.