You you you you you We'll practice a listening meditation meditation to begin choose a posture sitting standing and lying down all work equally well and wherever your body finds itself see if you can find a balance of resting ease and a wakeful alertness and where in other practices one might focus on breathing or body sensations this practice focuses or anchors rests in the experience of hearing sounds of listening so in your space there may be a lot of different sounds or very few there may be crickets chirping or traffic outside there may be other people doing things and talking or kids running around upstairs there may be the hum of a refrigerator a squeak of your chair the sound of your own breath and of course the sound of my voice and listening meditation is both very simple and very profound it can be challenging at first because most of the time when we hear a sound the brain jumps to interpret the sound there's a whoosh and then brain goes oh car and imagines a car and locates it in space and it's wonderful that our brains can do this but in this practice we're going to let all those interpretations rest to the side we don't have to force them to not happen but we keep returning back to the experience of listening itself as sounds arise and fade away so you can start with my voice beyond the words themselves notice sound starting and fading rising and passing and the space in between you The sound and the space.
The sound and the space.
The sound and the space.
Are there other sounds in your environment?
If there are a lot,
Just notice whichever one is most prevalent as it arises and fades away.
Or it might stay for a while,
But it changes.
Keep coming back to listening.
I find it helpful to actually focus on my ears.
The sound and the space.
The sound and the space.
The sound and the space.
When thoughts and sensations and emotions do come about and take us away from simply listening,
This is totally normal,
Natural,
Not a problem.
And we can train ourselves with kindness and energy to gently invite attention back into listening itself,
Cultivating a receptive,
Spacious awareness that is also rooted.
The sound and the space.
Sound.
Arising.
Passing.
And the space in between.
The sound and the space.
The sound.
The sound and the space.
Relaxing into sound and space.
Close.
I'll offer some sounds of the bell and see if it's possible to just listen to the sound.
And as much as possible,
Release the images,
The interpretations that then get hooked onto the sound itself.
The sound.
The sound.
