Where Intention Meets Surrender

Okay,

Let's take a deep breath.

In through the nose and out through the mouth like you're blowing out through a straw.

Such a good way to calm the central nervous system and get us into a good place to just surrender.

In through the nose and out through the mouth.

One more deep breath in together.

And out.

Letting the breath just return to its natural rhythm.

And sensing into the sensations in the body.

This is usually easiest to do in the points where the body is touching something.

So where the feet are touching the ground.

Or maybe where the back and legs are touching the mattress or whatever you may be lying or sitting on.

Or the hands if they're touching each other or some other part of the body.

Just let your attention go to those sensations.

Let your breath come back to its natural rhythm.

What do you feel in those parts of your body that are in contact with something else?

What's the raw experience?

Is it heat?

Tingling?

Numbness?

Is it pleasant?

Unpleasant?

Or simply neutral?

See if you can just be there with what you're experiencing right now in this moment.

And notice if as you're sensing into experience the mind starts to wander and thoughts come.

Just notice that thoughts are there.

And bring your attention back to the sensations.

Let's bring our attention to the sensation of hearing.

What do you hear around you?

What is the experience of hearing like?

Does it feel like the sound is coming to you?

Or are you simply receiving sound?

What sounds do you hear?

See if you can let your attention focus solely on the sounds around you.

And again if thoughts start to creep in or you become lost in thought,

That's okay.

Just return your attention to the sounds around you.

And let's move our attention to what we see.

This is fine whether your eyes are closed or open.

The visual field still remains even when the eyes are shut.

Bring your attention to what you see.

What's the experience of seeing?

Is it like hearing where it feels like sounds are coming to you?

Does it feel like what you see is coming to you?

Or maybe more like what you see is in a beam of attention that you are directing?

See if you can get curious about the experience of seeing.

Whether you're simply seeing the colors in the darkness behind your closed eyelids or your eyes are open and seeing all the colors,

Shapes,

And forms of the world around you.

See if you can surrender to the experience of sight.

And now let's move to the sense of smell.

Take a deep breath in through the nose and see what you notice.

Sometimes the places we know the best don't seem to have much of any sense to us because we become so used to it.

Can you let your attention move into a gentle curiosity about the sense around you?

From that space can you notice more subtle things about those senses?

And if you don't,

That's perfectly okay.

We're just simply taking a moment to surrender to the senses with a sense of curiosity involved.

Simply being with what is in our actual experience of this moment.

Letting thoughts just happen in the background if they happen at all.

And being fine with just staying in this space of pure experience that doesn't need thought or understanding or any story about what it is.

And now let your attention move to the tongue and the mouth.

What do you taste?

If you simply take in all the sensations of taste that are available right now,

What are they?

Again,

You may not notice much of anything because the baseline of our taste when our mouth doesn't have any eating happening is sometimes something we can kind of just tune out.

But see if you can be there for a little bit of the subtlety of it.

If you can just surrender to it with a sense of curiosity.

Just that one sensation in this moment.

And now let's consider that our thoughts are a sixth sense.

Something that is happening that we can put our attention on.

But that is nothing more than another sense like hearing or seeing,

Touching,

Tasting or smelling.

What if we simply put our attention on thoughts?

Where are they coming from?

If we simply surrender,

What happens to them?

How does our experience of those thoughts change?

And by surrendering to thoughts,

I don't mean latching on or repeating.

I mean simply allowing that they are there.

They arise and pass away.

And arise and pass away.

If we allow ourselves to feel in to thoughts arising and passing away without any attachment to the contents of the thoughts themselves,

What does that feel like?

For me sometimes it's sort of like if there's a TV on in another room.

I know that it's happening,

But I'm not watching it or involved in the story that's being told.

Now simply allow your attention to drift down to the chest,

The area in the center of the chest.

From this heart space,

See if you can sense in to the sensations.

The sensations of the heart space.

Of a part of you where what arises feels more like an intuition than a thought.

More like inspiration than ideas.

And it may be nothing at all that arises.

Or it may feel like thoughts that are arising.

That's all okay.

But from this place of inner knowing,

Of arising without thinking,

Just notice what the experience is.

And you can spend as long as you like here in this space.

And you can surrender to this space.

This space of intuition.

Wisdom.

And if at any point you get lost in thought,

You can always come back to the sensation of being in this heart center,

Or of breathing into this heart center,

Which may often be an easier step.

Just imagining the breath coming in and into the heart center.

And leaving again.

Focusing on the sensations as the breath enters the body.

Flows into the heart center.

And leaves again.

If in this space you find inspiration,

You find a dream,

Allow yourself to surrender to that.

And see what that experience is like.

When we surrender to our intuition,

We allow life to move freely through us.

With no resistance.

No sense of clinging or pushing away.

Simply allowing.

Simply surrendering with intention.

Thank you for your practice.