44. Meditation 22

Connect with all sensations and practice choiceless awareness.

Just take a seat. And close your eyes. And feel your body resting in space. See if you can immediately connect. With the cloud of sensation. That is appearing as your body. Pressure, tingling. Temperature. Pain. Itching. Whatever is there. Let everything arrives in its own place. Your mind does not have to move. From thing to thing. But resolve now to feel everything clearly. And if a sensation is vague, well, then that, too, can be felt clearly. There’s a brightness to consciousness that is intrinsic to it. Even when what you’re being aware of is sleepiness or heaviness. And as you pay attention. To the breath. To sounds. See if you feel that. Retention is. Emanating from a source. Where is the the seat of attention? See if there’s something to find there. What is paying attention? To the next sound. Organization. And the moment you notice that, you’re thinking. Look into the thorn itself. And notice what happens. And what does that look in? Feel like. What is the source? Of attention in that case. What is noticing? The next thought. If there comes a point where your awareness does not feel like it’s capturing anything, clearly. You might follow the next few breaths. And train your awareness. More narrowly. Try to capture every sensation. In the next inhalation. And exhalation. And then you can let your awareness grow wide again. And B, choiceless. In the last minute of the session. Just begin again. Pay attention as though you have never done this before. You’ve never been here before. Everything is new. This is the first breath. Well, as you get up and go about your day, take a moment to reflect on what these periods of meditation actually mean. This really is a deliberate training of your mind. And doing this changes you more and more, we understand this changes you physically, that is, it changes your brain, but more importantly, it changes your capacity for experience. It changes the perspective. He will have on great swings in your state of consciousness, great happiness and great suffering, and it’s useful to remind yourself why it is you do this. It’s actually to be better in all those moments. To be less trivial, to be more engaged, to be able to connect to people and situations more closely, to be of more use to people, both of those you love and care about and to those you have yet to meet. All of this is a preparation for every moment that is to come. And it’s also I hope you’re discovering an intrinsically pleasant thing to do. Even when it hurts. You can discover in the midst of discomfort. A kind of pleasure. And it kind of fulfillment. And if you haven’t found that yet, I promise it is there to be found. Just keep coming back to the practice. Keep letting go of your expectations, keep forgetting all the previous moments that brought you here. And simply connect with whatever is appearing on its own in this one.