Sitting in Awareness Meditation

As the first class, after taking a break for a while, we’re starting with something simpler. It's a meditation called variously Sitting in Awareness, Resting in Awareness or Silent Illumination.

This may sound a little complex, but it is simply paying attention or noticing in a particular way – being consciously aware. It is the practice of noticing the entire spectrum of our senses. Being aware in all the ways we can be aware: noticing our sense of smell, touch, taste, sound, sight, and even our thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, reactions. As well as our mental chatter - or what I like to think of as our “mindstream”.

Why do we do this? Why this practice?

First of all, we practice it as a form of mind training. We learn to develop an inner listening. This skill creates an openness of heart-mind which expands beyond the self absorbed “Me, Myself and I”.

How? When we are self-absorbed, our perception or insight is restricted. In that restricted mindstate we usually don’t notice how our self-talk, thoughts, emotions, memories, have a definite bearing on our day and people around us.

Without training in inner listening, without practicing awareness / mindfulness, we can create stressful situations without knowing exactly how we ended up there. I’m sure many of us know someone who appears chaotic. Endless rounds of putting out fires and solving problems. Like a hamster wheel. Much of this has to do with a restricted and unruly mindstate instead of working in a calm way.

Our practice of awareness helps create a broader perspective, an openness of mind and heart and a more calm, stable mind. This helps us to respond to life around us in a more beneficial, balanced, considered and constructive way.

But our practice is never only for ourselves: We also practice to benefit others. We can’t easily engage in the practice of compassion if our habit is to suppress awareness. It’s only through understanding our own experiences of life (love, joy, happiness, fear, hope, anxiety, grief) that we can open our hearts to others.

So, without further introduction, let’s get comfortable for a meditation.

Whether you are reading this now or whether you were in the class this morning, I like to think that anyone who is engaging in this practice now is connected. Unless you’re an astrophysicist, you probably think of time and space in a conventional way: We “are with” people who are in the same place as us at the same time. But if we really start to think about time and space, we will notice how flexible these concepts really are! Imagine both of us looking at the stars at the same time. Those stars we see, that light we see, for the most part is already at least 10 000 light years old. That means the light we see today, in reality left those stars thousands and thousands of light years ago. Without getting too complicated about it – scientist believe that our idea of time-space is an illusion and we project our ideas of time, space, past, present and future onto our preception of how it flows. So take a moment to imagine yourself as connected in many ways to the entire world around you.

And allow yourself to relax fully into this practice. Without feeling like you have to do anything, achieve anything, or attain any specific state of mind. There’s nothing to strive for, nothing special you have to be or become. We just sit and over the next little while we allow our attention to become refined and spacious at the same time. This happens pretty much automatically, whether you try or not.

Moving into our posture, let’s bring our attention and awareness to this action too. Awareness of how we move into our sitting posture. Are we on autopilot? Can we bring our attention to the way we straighten our back, dropping the shoulders away from the ears, loosening neck and shoulders? Dropping all tension, balancing our head gently, chin parrallell to the ground. Create a soft belly, and if you are sitting on the floor, meditation cushion, bench or chair, find the centre of gravity so that your weight is shifted slightly forward, which makes it easier to sit upright without creating tension in your back muscles. Rest your hands in your lap or on your thighs in the mudra of your choice. If you’re not sure what a mudra is, don’t worry. It’s a gesture we make with our hands, bit you can rest your hands loosely in your lap in whichever way feels comfortable.

With that thought in mind, let’s get started by moving our awareness to the breath. The incredible thing about our breath is that it is always with us and we can use it at any time of the day or night to practice bringing ourself back into present awareness.

Connect to your breath. Become aware of breath. Often, when we start to focus on the breath, we try to change it – to make it different. Deeper, or we try to smooth it out. Try not to do that. Just let your breath breathe itself. Sitting quietly for a moment or two, notice any movements in the body while you breathe, sensation of air in the nose, lungs, belly. Become minutely aware of your breath.

Sit for a few minutes and rest your attention on the breath.

Moving onto the sensation of smell you may become aware of a fragrance. Something strong or something subtle. Smell is a good example of how often, on our scale of awareness, one sense might intrude more blatantly than others.

Moving to the back of the mouth, the tongue and our sense of taste. Perhaps you become aware of a sense of taste in the mouth. Something you ate, or the taste of saliva.

Then we move to the body as a whole. Noticing sensations on the skin. Where fabric touches it, where it is exposed to air. Noticing temperature. You might start to notice an itch and be tempted to scratch it. Or you might feel a slight inclination to move the body - perhaps because you can feel weight on one of your sitbones or your ankle.

But remember part of this practice is we are trying only to notice, without reacting. So try not to move. Just observe. You’ll notice the practice of “just observing” gets easier as we go along. (That’s why its called a practice.)

Taking attention outwards, become slowly aware of sounds. Allow your attention to roll out. Absorb all sounds. Let’s call it a soundscape. Perhaps that creates an image in your mind. Its always there, sound. Even in quiet places. Perhaps it’s only the sound of the wind. We don’t always register sounds. Although some of us are sound sensitive, and prefer not to concentrate on sounds. Whichever the case is, at this moment, allow yourself now to take it all in. In a relaxed way. Hear the sounds, the spaces in between sounds. Just resting in hearing the sounds, without attaching any meaning to it. No irritation, no wishing it away. Just resting in the awareness of sound.

While we are doing this, you might have thoughts interrupting. You can allow this to become part of your awareness. So instead of getting annoyed by the interruption or feeling like youre doing something wrong, you can allow your awareness to include the noticing – noticing that you are thinking. And then gently drop the thinking and choose to take your attention back to hearing, to the sounds. With an easy kind of attention. So no straining. NO trying hard just to listen, just resting in hearing.

So now we are resting in a larger spectrum of awareness: we move to encompass all of our awareness together, moving between them: awareness of breath, of body, of sensations inside and outside the body, temp, air, clothing, muscles, --- of sounds. Perhaps of thinking or streaming thoughts. That’s quite a lot of awareness.

Allow yourself to sit in this awareness: sitting, breathing, feeling, hearing, thinking,

If at any one time sound intrudes, we simply think of it as becoming the thing you are most aware of. If it is air on your skin or your breath, or something uncomfortable in our posture, then we think of that as being the thing you are most aware of. We don’t try to push it away. We only follow it with our attention.

In the last part of this practice: let’s try to expand our awareness to include everything, including our thoughts or ‘mind-heart’ as I like to think of it. If you notice anything that is uppermost in your mindheart, simply notice it, make it part of your awareness. We don’t need to cling onto it. We also don’t have to ignore it or push it away because we dislike it. We don’t need to tune it out because we feel our mind should be empty of these kinds of distractions during meditation.

We simply see what comes up. We only notice it, without like or dislike, without adding extra. There’s nothing missing, so we don’t need to add anything extra. Whether it’s irritation or happiness, pain or discomfort, boredom or joy or sadness. It doesn’t matter what it is for this practice. We don’t need to think of one kind of feeling or thought as better than another.

If you feel like you’re getting lost during this meditation, don’t let it bother you. It can happen quite easily. You might find yourself contracting your attention to one sense of awareness and get carried away by your thoughts. Perhaps you feel like you’ve lost your spacious awareness. But you can easily start again and expand your awareness to include whatever you choose – because everything you can possibly be aware of is always with you. So you can easily start again with the breath and move into more spacious awareness again from there. Just relax into sitting and noticing again.

For the end of the meditation: I invite you to bring your attention gently back to your breath. Holding it on your breath for the last few minutes of the meditation. Noticing the easy flow of breath. How your body has been breathing itself all his time.

Namaste