Take a moment to set up a posture,
Whatever posture that is standing,
Lying,
Walking,
Sitting.
Just notice the body's arrangement in space.
Find a sweet spot where you're soft and relaxed,
But also present and alert.
You can touch into a sense of stillness.
As the body becomes still,
You can taste stillness in the body,
But at a level deeper than the body knows,
Perhaps you can sense into a more profound stillness.
In any event,
You can just hold an intention for a moment to be still,
To be stillness.
Connect to a sense of pleasure.
Maybe at the level of personality you like how you feel in the moment,
You like the conditions that are present,
But deeper than the personality,
You can direct your awareness to what we might call the simple feeling of being,
Just beingness.
And as you bring awareness more fully to this simple feeling of being,
You can ease up,
Letting go of effort,
Just trusting that the body knows how to let go,
How to settle.
In fact,
If you try to settle down,
If you try to slow the mind,
It will just frustrate you.
Whatever the body's doing,
Whatever the mind's doing,
Just let go for a moment,
Totally relax.
Let your awareness become spacious.
Attune to the rhythms of the body,
The earth,
The tides,
To nature.
And just appreciate how functional and coherent all of creation is in this moment,
Even when you're not worrying about it and trying to manage it all.
You can just let go.
If we stay here too long,
The mind will start to get loose,
Like a guitar string that doesn't make a proper sound,
Needs to be tightened.
And so we can start to tighten up just a little bit here,
Apply just a little bit of effort and tension.
And you've done a thousand meditations where we bring awareness to the breath.
So just to shake it up,
Add a new flavor to our diet.
I'm going to direct your attention to the heart.
Just allow your attention,
Your awareness to rest on the inside of the physical heart.
And don't worry if it doesn't feel exact,
You don't know exactly where the center of the physical heart is.
Just intend to drop awareness into the physical heart.
And I say drop because habitually most of us,
Most of the time,
Have our awareness seated,
Situated,
Perched in the head,
Attending to what the eyes see,
Thoughts going through the mind.
Practice relaxing,
Letting awareness just drop into the heart,
Seeing through the eye of the heart.
And immediately notice what sensations fill the foreground of awareness when you do this.
What's happening in the heart right now?
What sensations are you aware of?
What energies,
What currents?
Stay curious,
Stay attentive.
It's time to focus,
Time to effort.
By keeping your attention trained on this object of meditation.
Notice what qualities of sensation are present in the heart,
What kinds of feeling.
How intense on a scale of one to ten the sensations in the heart right now,
Or on a scale of one to a thousand.
What spatial dimensions are the sensations,
Experiences in the heart taking up in the physical body within the heart,
Beyond the heart,
Perhaps even beyond the boundaries of the physical body itself.
Just notice,
Get curious.
Are things moving,
Are they changing?
As sensations flow,
Do they become more intense,
Less intense,
Spatially concentrated or more distributed,
Extended throughout space?
If you notice anything else in awareness right now other than the experience of physical heart,
You can just notice these sensations,
These sounds,
These thoughts,
Whatever the distractions may be,
And let them be in the background.
Ignore them,
But ignore them gently.
It's not whack-a-mole,
We don't have to do anything forceful to distraction,
We can just notice that different experiences come up in the periphery of awareness,
But central to awareness is our intention to really be established in the heart.
Sometimes it feels just amazing to rest in the heart.
Just feeling this warm,
Velvety tide of love and care and compassion lapping over your entire being.
And other times it's painful,
It's the most painful place in the whole world we can occupy,
And I just encourage you that whatever the case in this moment,
Maybe especially if you feel pain in your heart,
To really encounter it.
Your awareness itself can initiate movement in this pain,
Can help resolve it,
Can help it move,
Break up,
Shift form,
Express itself,
Complete itself.
So whatever kind of experience you're having in the heart,
Just trust that you can be fully,
Radically present.
Notice what you know about the self,
About the world,
When you take this posture up.
When we look at the world through our eyes,
Through our thinking minds,
We see something,
Experience something very differently than what we do in the heart.
Just notice what you know,
Notice how you know,
When you know the present moment,
The now,
Through the heart.
You don't have to put it into words,
You can just let the intelligence of the heart follow its own logic,
Its own poetry,
Its own rhythms.
But just appreciate how vital,
How significant this unique intelligence is,
And how this unique intelligence resonates with everything around it.
Which leads us back to an easing up.
I'm just going to invite you into an experience here,
Don't worry if you don't feel like you're following,
Just follow your experience and trust yourself.
But as you stay focused on the heart,
Focused within the heart,
Feel the way that absolutely everything seems to resonate through this heart,
Not just the physical heart,
But including the physical heart.
You start to become aware of a kind of field of present,
Of power,
Of wisdom,
Of love,
That embraces absolutely everything.
It's like you've become a hologram within which all of the cosmos,
All of creation is expressed,
Is singing,
Is dancing,
Is expressing.
Like Blake's universe in the grain of sand,
The universe is in your heart,
All of it,
Now.
And you don't have to focus or try to be this,
It's just what you are.
You can ease up again,
You can let go of all effort,
Just be what you've always been,
This immeasurable expanse,
Limitless love,
That extends through all things,
All time and space and beyond.
It's no longer a meditator trying to meditate,
Trying to concentrate,
Trying to find love,
But rather you as love itself embrace everything,
Permeate everything,
Animate and bless everything that ever was,
That is,
That ever will be.
Any effort to feel this will only obscure the truth of it.
It's like struggling to attain your feet.
They're your feet,
It's already yours.
In other words,
The more you relax,
The more you let go,
The more true it becomes,
The more you're everything and everywhere and nowhere and here.
Beyond any words.
Thank you.
