Many of us move through our days with a background sense of tension—bracing against uncertainty, aging, illness, or what might be coming next. This guided meditation offers a chance to pause that effort. You’re invited to settle into stillness, sense the quiet beneath mental activity, and recognize moments of peace and contentment that are already present. As the mind softens, identity can gently loosen—from being caught in worries and stories to resting as spaciousness, stillness, and simple being.
I offer these every week, along with a short teaching. Just click the subscribe link below
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join me live, which I'd really welcome, go down into the description section below and follow
the link along to be able to sign up for free. So help yourself settle in, beginning with a
posture that is comfortable and alert, typically with an uprightness, not stiff. In Zen there's a
saying, soft in the front, firm in the back. Gathering yourself, it can help to orient yourself
to the space you're in, to kind of claim your seat, claim your place. You know, allow in to
that inherent, you know, the little fearful monkey inside us all, that you're actually
safe enough in the present where you are. Letting the feeling of this follow the knowing of this
is very supportive of meditation and in life in general. Registering when it's true
that you're basically all right, right now. So you can afford to be less guarded
and open and soft when you're basically okay in the present. You can afford to
release tension in your body. You can allow in, in easing places that are tense.
You can check in with yourself. And in checking in, you can feel a settling in.
For example, aware of the feeling of breathing down in your belly, perhaps with a couple big
breaths. You can be aware of sensations of breathing in your diaphragm, below your ribcage.
You can deliberately breathe into your diaphragm, deliberately. Even put your hand on it,
just below your ribcage. Feel your diaphragm pushing your hand out as you breathe.
And as you accentuate your breathing a couple of times into the diaphragm,
see if you can be aware of any residual anxiety around the edges of your mind.
And keep helping that to let go. You might even think soft thoughts such as,
I'm actually okay in the present and observing that this is true.
Can you let go of any needless anxiety in the present? Taking the present as your refuge,
letting go of needless guarding, needless apprehensiveness, needless uneasiness,
allowing experiences to flow without being anxious about them.
Exploring the possibilities of this for yourself in the present.
And as our anxieties and other forms, including subtle ones, release in the present,
there can be an opening into a growing sense of peacefulness in the present.
Letting go of the past, letting go of the future, exploring a peaceful resting in the present.
If your mind wanders, that's normal. Just come on back to the present.
Staying aware of breathing, if that's comfortable for you.
And allow yourself to keep knowing and feeling that you're all right in the present.
And in the present, you can feel peaceful. Experiences that are not so peaceful may
pass through awareness. And under that, you can let go of feeling threatened in the present
and feel what it's like to be peaceful in the present.
As the sense of peacefulness in the present gently deepens, you might find it increasingly
has qualities of spaciousness, even vastness, becoming more aware of spaciousness and vastness
as innate aspects of consciousness. You can be aware of qualities of stillness,
quiet, undisturbedness. Vastness and spaciousness have their own stillness because they are
ongoing aspects of consciousness and reality altogether. Awareness itself contains stillness
in that it is undisturbed itself. And letting go of the words here
into whatever for you is an underlying refuge of stillness, undisturbed present, presence
in the present, sinking into qualities of undisturbed stillness, peaceful, quiet,
feeling content in the present. Identity may be shifting into being, vastness,
stillness, openheartedness in the present.
