Sensational! (Long Version)

Here is the script for Episode 5 on our podcast, Awareness at Play. It is a guided meditation practice.

Hello, this practice is a longer version of the last episode called Sensational! It will be similar to the last one, but there’s more content, and it is a longer practice.

 I’ll give you a short intro and then we’ll dive into the practice. You can get relaxed and start now if you want. 

We’ll have a physical focus for this practice, and it’s totally normal for your mind to wander. 

So each time your mind wanders, and you return your attention to awareness, see this turn of attention as a natural part of your innate ability to regulate your system. Trust that your system knows how to easily return to stasis, free of distraction. Every time we return our attention to awareness, we are giving and being given a gentle reminder that we have this ability. 

Our system wants to turn from thought to presence, and that natural leaning can be cultivated.  

My friend Harold uses the analogy of lifting weights. If you’re doing bicep curls, every time you lift your arm, it’s an exercise to get the bicep stronger. With meditation, every time you return your attention to presence, you are strengthening your ability to drop your mental agenda and be present. 

Instead of seeing thoughts as an intrusion or a distraction, they are a welcome way to gain more adeptness at returning awareness to the source of presence. 

Weight-lifting can become something we like because of its results, and thought-shifting (we could call it) can come with the same appreciation. Instead of going to the mat saying, “Oh no, I’m so distracted in thought today,” we could see it as time for a good work out. 

Don’t worry if that analogy doesn’t resonate. It resonates for some people. 

Alright, let’s go into the practice. You might want to get into an upright posture. It keeps you alert and opens your breath to be its fullest. But if you have health issues or are using this to get to sleep, just get comfortable. 

If you do want to sit upright, press the back of your hands onto your thighs to lengthen your spine. It will pull your shoulder blades down, tuck your tailbone. Upright is good, but you’re not trying to be ramrod straight. Get into the posture and then relax into it. 

Breath a little deeper and slower. Breath into your lower lungs for a more relaxed breath. 

Notice the felt sense of the body. Breathe evenly as we are aware of the sensations in your feet, your legs, your hips, your lower torso, your upper torso, your hands, your arms and shoulders, your throat, and your whole head. 

Notice the overall sensations in of the whole body.

Sensations are energetic movements, arising from the Sacred Source. 

Immerse your awareness in this quivering, pulsating, vibrating sensation. You are a mass of vibration, flowing and resting inside the field of awareness.

With each exhale, relax more into sensation.

When you catch yourself in thought, breath into it tenderly, like you’re greeting a friend or catching a cute little child making mischief, and ever so gently exhale it back to sensation, leading the thought or feeling back into the peace of awareness. 

You could even make a tiny smile when you recognize a thought, welcoming it to relax into your home that rests as awareness and sensation. 

As you exhale, pay closest attention to that last little bit at the end as it dissolves from moving breath into stillness, just before the next inhale. Feel the exhale (and everything you’re carrying with it) completely enter the field of awareness. 

You might feel a little bit of pleasure as you completely relax there, perhaps with a little rest for a second at the end of the exhale. 

If a thought or feeling persists, if it still continues after dissolving it with the exhale, approach it like you’re taking trips to well with a bucket. One bucket-full at a time, you’re carrying it to the peaceful ground of being. 

You may not have many thoughts arise, so when they are not, you are resting ever deeper and more consciously into the overall vibration of sensation as it mingles in the field of awareness. We can accept and merge with these sensations. 

Feel it all as playing and reveling in the heart of the sacred source. 

This a simple surrender, a continuous reaffirming, breath by breath, of melting into stillness. 

Open more fully and trustingly into this unnamable peacefulness from which all feelings and thoughts arise and subside. 

This quiet stillness may seem empty or it may seem full of dynamic vibrancy, It is your higher power, your inner brilliance, or more accurately, the higher power, the all-pervading brilliance. 

Whether you feel good or bad, whether you feel like a saint or a stinker, this empty fullness never stops, never slows, can’t be changed or affected in any way. It’s your being and it’s that from which your being arises. 

You can surrender until the only thing left is your awareness. There becomes no difference between the contents of awareness, meaning that which comes and goes, and the context of your awareness, that which holds and observes it all. It is all of it. Your mind can never get this, but your body can relax into it.

This is radiant being. It allows all that arises and loves being all that arises. 

Rest as radiant being.