Settle into a sense of being already full and whole, resting in the spaciousness of awareness so you can meet whatever comes with greater steadiness, openness, and love.
This session guides participants through a practice of open awareness meditation. It begins with physical grounding and breathwork to quiet the mind, eventually transitioning into a state of \"choiceless awareness.\" The goal is to remain unattached to passing thoughts, cultivating a sense of quiet strength, an open heart, and a fundamental sense of presence.
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We'll start with a few minutes of establishing steadiness of mind, a stability of presence,
and then increasingly we will relax deliberate effort.
So to help yourself feel comfortable with being really open and receptive,
take some moments to establish your place, your secure base, literally physically.
Shift in your chair, shift your clothes, loosen your belt, unbutton a button,
notice your body, move a little bit, get that interoceptive, proprioceptive feedback from your
body that can gradually quiet inner chatter, internal signals from your body as you move a
little. You are gradually letting go of everything or anything that isn't simple presence.
So see if you can be aware of 10 breaths in a row, counting up to 10 or counting down from 10,
whatever you like. If you get to 10, you can start over. And then with your eyes open or closed,
get a sense of the space around you, perhaps lifting your gaze to the horizon,
line, or simply imagining the larger volume of the room you're in.
And be aware of the mind's tendency to coalesce around a particular thought stream.
And suddenly, we're not aware of the whole because we're focused on a part.
And whenever you notice that your attention has gotten absorbed in some part of consciousness,
see if you can release that and go back to an open, wide field of awareness
that allows anything to flow through it. We're staying open and allowing,
not resisting anything arising, and not following after it either.
We are practicing what's called open awareness meditation, sometimes called choiceless awareness.
The choice we're making is to stay open and unattached regarding whatever
flows through awareness. Ajahn Chah called this being aware while letting go,
aware and letting go continuously. We're just sitting, just being,
not moving toward anything, not moving away from anything. There might be mainly a sense
of your own body, perhaps with background sounds, sensations and sound, an ongoing sense of being
open, unattached. In very gentle ways, you might invite qualities of quiet
to be increasingly present in you, the gentle invitation to quiet the mind.
In the openness and quiet, you could also invite, gently invite a sense of heart,
if that's helpful for you, which might come with related qualities of confidence and calm,
settling into the background, being present in you in underlying ways as you remain open and aware.
There could be a growing sense of fullness of presence, open, quiet, heartfelt, calm yourself.
And in the last couple of minutes here, you might be able to find some sense of,
this is me, this presence, this openness, quiet strength, open heart, is me,
most fundamentally. It's a good me, a me to rest in and be lived by.
