In this meditation, I guide you into staying present while life continues to change around and within you. Using the breath, spacious awareness, and a sense of openheartedness as supports, we explore how to rest more deeply in steadiness, vastness, and warmth amidst the flow of experience.
Maybe take a few fuller breaths than usual, and find a posture that helps you to be both
comfortable and alert.
You can establish the intention to remain present as things change.
It is often very helpful to find an anchor of attention, such as the ongoing sensations
of breathing, to help you remain present as things change.
Alternately, you could use a word or saying to help you remain present, or a feeling such
as warm-heartedness or thankfulness.
Remaining present while things change means not resisting whatever is arising in awareness.
In fact, there can be an attitude of welcoming that's worth exploring.
So not resisting, and also not following after these beguiling trains of thought that want
to carry us away.
Intending to remain present while things change can have two aspects, one being a sort of
top-down deliberate instruction to yourself, gently, gently, while the other aspect can
feel more like bottom-up giving yourself over to the felt memory, the felt knowing of what
it feels like in your body to be present while things change, two aspects of intention.
You can remain present while being aware of the changing sensations of breathing, air
flowing in and flowing out again, the internal sensations of the chest rising and falling,
belly expanding and settling back down again.
Remaining present while things change can be aided by a sense of things as a whole,
such as a sense of your body as a whole as you breathe, or a sense of consciousness as
open and spacious, perhaps a growing sense of abiding in vastness.
As we remain present while things change, there can be a sense of abiding in a kind
of sense of vastness in our own consciousness, opening outward without edges, spaciously,
and abiding in a related, objective kind of vastness, a sense as you sit or stand or lie
of doing this in a vast world, our own planet, which is part of a much vaster, vaster universe.
A sense of abiding in both kinds of vastness can support the sense of remaining present
while things change.
As you abide, you might be aware of qualities of the heart, a sense of your own good-heartedness
radiating outward, resting in the heart, registering the sense of open-hearted presence in your
body, sinking into this, what it feels like, even if there are other things present, open-hearted
presence while things change.
