Sensational!

This is Episode 4 on our Awareness at Play podcast.

This is a guided meditation. I’ll give you a short intro and then we’ll dive into the practice.

This practice will have a physical focus, 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. 

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 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.

This viewpoint can change our frustration 

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.

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 exhale, approach it like you’re taking trips. One bucket 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. 

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