So now I invite you all to settle into physical stillness.
Taking a comfortable seated position.
Becoming sensitive to your own breathing.
As you inhale and exhale.
And the body,
Regardless of how it feels or is functioning,
It doesn't matter.
It's a great tool for helping us be embodied,
Uncomplicated.
And the more we can stay just embodied,
Being the quiet witness and aware of bodily phenomena and sensations,
Particularly at the beginning of the meditation,
The more this will help you enter into a non-conceptual frame of being.
Because you may have noticed that when you're just lost in thinking,
Caught up running with thoughts,
You disconnect from your body.
And we end up in our heads,
As they say.
You get to understand this very process within yourself and how it works.
These are really valuable insights.
Deepening our understanding.
And also deepening our inner peace and stability.
And as you strengthen that position of just being the quiet witness,
You can notice how thoughts just flow by constantly,
Like an ever-flowing stream.
We're not trying to force this stream to stop.
Because if you do,
You're likely just to strengthen it or repress it for a while and then end up feeling very tense.
We're just noticing the flow,
Waking up to it.
And it just peters out.
One stream,
A new stream,
Never the same.
Simply witnessing and noticing if there's an inner critic at work.
Or a sense of you're not doing it right.
Or it's not happening as it should be.
This is all part of the stream.
So let that go as well.
A useful analogy to bear in mind in practice is that you can become like an old man or an old woman just watching children play.
You know their games.
You know their dramas.
But you just look on kindly,
With wisdom.
Not interfering.
Not condemning.
Our minds are just like little children.
Sometimes they carry on just like little children,
Stomping,
Reacting.
Crying when it doesn't get its own way.
And sometimes joyfully playing and being carefree.
It's all just child's play playing out in the theater of our minds.
So let it go.
And find that wise old sage within you.
