You're Enough

I'm going to read a poem and then we'll go into rest.

So the poem,

There's no agenda here literally in any kind of way.

So whatever comes to you while you're hearing the poem,

That's what comes.

So words,

Pictures,

Sensations,

Right,

Is what our existence is comprised of.

So as you hear the words,

Just noticing your experience and then we'll move into our rest.

Okay,

And this poem is called Enough.

It's by David White.

Enough.

These few words are enough.

If not these words,

This breath.

If not this breath,

This sitting here.

This opening to life.

We have refused again and again until now.

Until now.

So that's the poem.

And we're going to move right into some resting.

So go ahead and get comfortable in your spot.

You can stay on camera,

You can go off camera.

Let's be comfortable in a space that's comfortable for the next 15-ish minutes.

And we'll just start by noticing the positioning of your bodies.

All have unique positionings,

Even if it's similar,

It's going to be unique based on our specific context.

So just noticing the ways that your bones are bent or straight or curved.

Noticing your joints.

It's a matter of factly connecting to the positioning of your arms and your legs and your fingers,

Your toes.

Just going to pause a little bit longer with just the structure of your body.

So even though we're connecting to this factual,

So to speak,

Contextual positioning of the body,

The mind will come in to judge right,

Wrong,

Good or bad.

But beneath that,

There is just this factual existence of knees bent or knees straight.

Elbows bent or elbows straight again based on your context.

Just pausing and hanging out a little bit longer here.

Just noticing your sitting.

Looks like most of us are sitting,

But maybe laying down a breathing body.

And again,

Just matter of factly,

High knees,

High toes,

High armpits,

High back of the head,

High eyelids.

Take a moment to say hi to your existence,

Your actual factual existence that's here now in direct experience,

Just based on the context of your environment.

If you go to thought that's really understandable,

Just gently come back to something that's here and now.

Whether it's a toe or shoulders,

Whatever.

Just getting to know ourselves here,

Our unique selves in this kind of factual way.

Noticing the textures of your environment,

The way that your body is in context with your environment,

Noticing the hardness,

The softnesses.

Maybe there aren't really any hard surfaces that you're in contact with.

Maybe just noticing the different flavors of the softnesses even.

Noticing what the back of your body likes or the sit bone area likes or even the legs.

Like what is your body liking right now as it makes contact?

Does it like the pillow behind the small of the back,

For example?

Does it like the feet on the floor or in anything in between?

Just seeing what your body is liking as it's making contact here.

As you connect to what it likes,

You'll notice the flavors of these resonances,

Soft or warm or the other words or maybe even a hard time finding words.

It's okay.

You don't have to find words.

We're going to add breath here.

So we're going to add breath into noticing.

You may have already been noticing breath.

And if so,

That's great.

If not,

That's great too.

It's perfect either way.

But now we're going to be consciously including breath just to notice how the breath interfaces with what you've already been connecting with.

So for example,

If your attention was on the small of the back,

It's like,

Oh,

What is it like to connect to that area while I notice my breath?

If it was in your feet on the floor and you were feeling that the same,

You can just play with the same experiment.

Like,

Well,

What is it like for my feet to be on the floor and including breath?

So I'm just kind of playing and experimenting here.

Finding breathing body or laying breathing body interfacing with itself.

Notice how the body will be collecting weight somewhere.

If you're sitting upright,

You'll feel a lot of the weight collecting in the thighs or the sit bones.

You know,

If you're leaned back,

You'll feel that weight collecting in the back or if you're flying flat,

It'll be kind of evenly distributed.

It's going to take me a moment to feel that weight of the body and the breath that's still happening.

So I'm noticing the weight of the body,

Of my body on the lower part of my,

Kind of the lower part of my sit bones and that kind of stays pretty planted in there while the upper part of my body rises and falls.

This is my experience,

So I want you to connect to what yours is as your body is connecting to what it's connecting to and as the weight is connecting to what it's connecting with,

Just notice the movement of the breath.

There's literally nothing to figure out here,

But the mind will probably try.

So just acknowledge that and then just gently bring your attention back to the next inhalation or sensation that is simple to connect with.

We're really just kind of being curious of our experience that's already happening.

Finding our bodies in the field of gravity that are making contact and the breath that is flowing in and out of our bodies.

So there's both weight and maybe some stillness and then there's also movement.

At the very same time,

Those conflicting occurrences are happening and just noticing that,

I think the do about it.

There's stillness and movement in a very practical way.

And this theme from the poem keeps coming into my attention,

This theme of enough,

This theme of enough.

And I notice this is something of the mind,

But we can connect to it from the place of the being.

Are the ways that the sit bones are connecting to the couch enough or whatever you're sitting on or laying on is that contact of the weight of the body onto object.

Is there enoughness there?

Does that even make sense?

So there's no right or wrong response.

Just noticing like a sense of simple,

Non-conceptual,

Non-value driven,

Really base sense of enoughness.

And this breath,

This breath that's already in process that maybe you hadn't been noticing.

Maybe it was enough before you noticed it and now is it enough now?

And again,

We're just asking this very curiously,

Very wide open curiosity,

Not from right,

Wrong,

Good or bad or from value driven response per se.

Just this genuine question as the breath comes in and out,

Is it enough?

And there's no right answer to this.

The answer might be no.

Might be I don't know.

Might be yes.

Continuing to be curious of this breath.

It's enoughness or not enoughness and the sitting here or laying here and it's enoughness or not.

And just noticing that the body's felt sense versus the mind's overlay of the body.

If that's happening for you,

Again,

Not trying to change anything.

We're just being curious and noticing thoughts,

Images,

Sensations,

Our ideas,

Our beliefs.

Maybe it's simple.

Maybe it's complex and not trying to change any bit of that.

There may be experiences in your moments right now that you are comfortable with.

And then there may be others that you're not.

There may be felt expressions that feel like openness.

And there may be experiences that don't or that feel like closeness.

So in this one,

We're just noticing,

Noticing that we have multitude of expressions and experiences and we may have some felt senses of openings and okay-nesses and maybe somewhere else we have the opposite.

Sometimes the mind thinks or wants to have just one experience and that's pretty much impossible for a human being,

But we still go after these concepts that we idolize.

When we drop below that,

We come to just the variations of humanity,

Of our humanity,

Of the hot and cold,

Of the disease and ease,

Of the enough and the not enough perhaps,

Of the opening and the closing of allowance and maybe refusal or turning away.

So we may notice turning towards certain experiences that we're having right now and then we may notice the turning away from and just again,

Allowing that to be just what it is.

You may notice a turning toward sound.

It's pretty easy to hear the sound of my voice on some level,

Maybe just something that is already receiving that or open to the sounds of words,

The sounds of the background.

And then we have other senses like taste and scent.

Maybe there's a receiving of those senses in certain ways,

Subtle maybe or overt.

And maybe there's a turning away from them and that can happen with sound too.

Sometimes there's sounds and we don't like them and we turn away and that's really normal.

To have responses like that.

With the eyes closed,

We're not seeing much unless we're in our mind's eye,

Which we might call imagination.

And then we might notice a opening to visuals or a turning away from visuals.

So that could happen even with the eyes closed with regard to sight.

And then we're back to the sense of touch and we've got lots of that happening here.

We've been connecting with.

And again,

Just noticing the senses of touch from head to toes that seem to be easy to be perceived or received or that there's curiosity about.

Then maybe other areas where there just isn't.

And again,

Not trying to understand that right now,

Just acknowledging that and letting that be as it is.

Going to read the poem again and as I read it,

Just notice what you notice.

Something very simple,

Enough.

These few words are enough.

If not these words,

This breath.

If not this breath,

The sitting here.

This opening to life we have refused again and again until now,

Until now.

In our last few moments,

Just noticing what is already being open to in life right now in this very moment.

Something abstract just right here,

Noticing what is being opened toward right now in the simplest of ways.

And just being very curious about that.

Just noticing the simplest opening to life that is happening in this moment.

And I'm just going to be quiet for a little bit just so your attention can be curious and explore and include what hasn't been journeyed to yet.

Quite a few minutes.

Noticing thoughts you might be having,

As well as sensations that you're having,

And slowly coming back to a little bit more attention on the breath and the sitting body,

Saying high again to the arms and the legs and the hands and the feet.

And as you stay connected to the air moving through your sitting body,

Let the eyes gently open.

Now you'll be seeing indirect experience,

Colors and shapes.

Notice how the tension is outward,

But I would invite you to also keep attention inward.

So staying with the breath,

Staying with the sitting body whilst including this data in the visual realm.