Guided Nondual Meditation with Michael Taft
Introduction
Hello everybody! Welcome to tonight’s guided meditation, guided nondual meditation. Tonight we’re really going to work on the nonduality with me, Michael Taft, coming to you reside from the Bay area of California, unless you’re watching this at another time through which case I’m not live anymore, but welcome everyone. Let’s see, did I cut myself? Yeah, that’s what happens if you shave. All right, we’re going to dive in as usual. Why goof around? As an alternative, we’re going to simply begin meditating and tonight goes to be, I feel, a very powerful one, quite a strong meditation and hopefully, you’re ready.
Meditation
So let’s begin, what I would like you to do is take your seat and as usual, which means you’re sitting together with your back upright. The highest of your head is type of being gently pulled upwards. Your spine feels super straight and excellent, like balanced in that spot where you’re not putting in an excessive amount of effort to maintain it upright. In reality, in case your back is balanced in only the fitting spot it can feel almost prefer it’s just floating up. It really helps to have your knees lower than your hips when you’re sitting down. You might even be standing or laying down. All of those postures work. And you recognize some people prefer to put their chins out like that after they meditate. So we wish to have our chin mildly tucked in order that the back of your neck is good and open, top of the top form of being, almost elevated upwards. And this could feel very nice.
From there what we wish to do is begin with our opening visualization. This can be a way of sitting and tonight we’re going to sit down like a mountain, okay. We’re going to sit down like a mountain. We haven’t done that shortly. What do I mean after I say we’re going to sit down like a mountain? I mean we’re going to tune into our sense of groundedness, our sense of stability and in actual fact a stability so complete, that it’s, we call it immovability. The thought is that this mountain is so vast and so ancient, it’s immovable. It cannot move in any way. So I would like you to tune in to sitting like a mountain. Imagine in front of you straight away a universal mountain, a mountain that’s unbelievably high we are able to’t even say how high, and that slopes down so wide that it’s just incredibly vast.
This mountain is cosmic in scale and this mountain has been here since before the start of time and it’s grounded. As I say it cannot, it doesn’t feel knocked around by the winds of fate. It doesn’t feel prefer it’s some form of paper bag blown around by the breeze. It’s the other sensation. It feels rooted and stable and it has the sense like I say of cosmic vastness, but additionally of immovability. So I really need you to see that mountain now and you would possibly see it almost like a form of an excellent Mount Fuji, right? Where there’s a type of, this beautiful slope to this, volcanic sides of the mountain. The cone has a beautiful slope to it, a gradual slope, and the perimeters are type of shimmering blue and the highest is that this good white shining within the high atmosphere. So beautiful, beautiful mountain granting you this sense of stability, of immovability granting you boons, granting you a way of your individual cosmic immovability, your individual groundedness, your individual rootedness, your individual stability.
Picture that very clearly. And now on an in-breath, I would like you to simply take that mountain inside or to place it one other way, you dissolve and turn into the cosmic mountain of perfect immobility or immovability and that feels good to sit down that way. It feels perfectly balanced as I say it feels rooted and stable. Your roots go right down to the core of the universe. Your top goes as much as the highest of the universe and your sides regularly swoop out to the far boundless, non-edges of the universe. So that is sitting like a mountain and so now from here what I would like you to do is begin to do slow, deep respiration if that’s comfortable for you. If it’s not that’s okay, breathe nonetheless you wish.
But when you would like to you’ll be able to do slow deep respiration and with the slow deep respiration, you’re doing long exhales. The exhales are longer than the inhales. So we breathe in nice and deep. I’m respiration in. I’m respiration in. My belly’s expanding. After which on the exhale, respiration out, respiration out a really long exhale till it appears like it desires to breathe in again. After which nice big in-breath after which exhale, exhale, exhale really long slow out-breath, out-breath. Perhaps, you recognize, twice so long as the in-breath. Something like that. Again make this be just right for you. Don’t make it uncomfortable. Make it an incredibly good feeling, comfortable, feeling in-breaths and out-breaths.
If you would like to, on that out-breath you’ll be able to do ujjayi breath. So that you tighten that thing in your throat, the thing that makes your voice go from this sort of voice, to this sort of voice. That thing right there and also you tighten that on the out-breath, so it makes you sound like Darth Vader, however it enables you to regulate that out-breath to permit it to be even slower and go even longer. Again make sure that it’s comfortable, don’t get to the spot where you’re yawning and needing more air, have it be just right for you. Okay so, and while we’re doing this on the in-breath you’re saying respiration in, respiration in and also you’re feeling that air expanding the body, after which on the out-breath you’re saying respiration out, respiration out, respiration out, respiration out and feeling the air leaving the body within the body as a substitute of expanding it’s contracting. Okay so, in that contraction of the out-breath and just really really feel that and I would like you to pay special attention to the tip of the out-breath. Just notice it. Okay so let’s do this together for some time.
Good, so proceed respiration and meditating on respiration. During this section, we are trying to loosen up. This long slow out-breath really helps to down-regulate in order that we are able to feel quite a bit more leisure. But additionally where, besides relaxing we are trying to remain collected, stay focused repeatedly on the sensation of the breath within the body. And one thing that actually helps us to do this is to make sure that we notice the tip of the out-breath because sometimes that out-breath will hang there for a minute. Such as you get to the tip of the out-breath and before the start of the in-breath, there’s a while there where the breath just hangs there. And that’s a very easy spot to lose your concentration, to lose your collectedness, to lose your stability. But remember we’re meditating just like the cosmic mountain so we’re very stable. In order a part of that stability, we just notice particularly the tip of the out-breath. So let’s keep going with this.
Good, let’s add a mantra in here, a classic mantra for this sort of work. So on the in-breath, you say to yourself “om” like “om” on the in-breath. After which at that spot where the out-breath ends, or sorry where the in-breath ends, you say “ah” like “ah what a relief, ah.” After which for the out-breath “hum.” After which we just pause between, there’s no mantra between the tip of the out-breath and the start of the in-breath. We’re just noticing that spot particularly. So in-breath, om, end of the in-breath, ah, out-breath, hum. Now you’re not singing this out loud like I’m doing, you’re just doing it mentally. In order that’s a mantra with three seed syllables, three syllables om ah hum.
Okay, om ah hum, what an attractive mantra. That ah is just totally good, totally letting go, total leisure. Okay good, now continuing, what I would like you to do is to start the technique called dropping the ball. If you happen to know the right way to do it just go ahead, otherwise I’ll explain the right way to do it. So we’re imagining that the mind is sort of a hand and so each time your mind grabs on to something it’s just like the hand grabbing onto something. On this case, the image is a ball like a rubber ball. And so when your mind grabs onto a thought or your mind grabs on to a sense, or your mind grabs on to something that’s happening in your environment, you’re like grabbing onto it together with your hand. And what I would like you to do is when you notice that taking place you simply loosen up the hand and let the ball fall okay? In order that’s called dropping the ball.
Now you’re not grabbing on purpose, you retain the hand relaxed when you can. But when the hand grabs on to something, it gets involved in an argument in your mind together with your partner whatever. Oh geez, they said this, and I said that and in order that’s just like the hand grabbing and grabbing onto that ball. And so when you notice that taking place, you simply loosen up the hand and let the ball drop time and again and over okay? So we’re going to do that for some time here. I’ll just keep going back and providing you with further instructions, but that’s the entire instruction in a nutshell. If you happen to notice you’re caught up in a thought, just loosen up and let the thought go okay. If you happen to notice you’re caught up in anything, just loosen up and let it go and are available back to easily resting, simply being. After I say rest I don’t mean sleeping. Just simply being. Now it’s really vital that you just don’t struggle with this loosen up and let go okay that’s it. Let’s go.
There’s a pair things I should probably add here. One is which you could do that with eyes open. In reality, it’s quite a bit higher to do that together with your eyes open. If that’s really uncomfortable for you then go ahead and do it together with your eyes closed, however it’s higher with eyes open. It’s higher to simply sit together with your eyes relaxed, open but relaxed, not specializing in anything, particularly, your eyes are soft, your gaze is soft, but your eyes are open and also you’re not fixating. You’re not sticking them on some extent, you’re allowing them to maneuver and you’ll be able to blink. And all that. Don’t do anything weird together with your eyes. Just like every other time when you’ve got your eyes open. So we’re not doing anything strange with them. It’s more like if you stare upon the horizon or the form of thing where you’re just form of some trees in the space in a really general way, very relaxed way, and so they’re very far-off. Your eyes are only gentle and open. in order that’s primary.
The opposite thing is, we’re not doing any special respiration anymore. If you happen to’re continuing to do this ujjayi breath and all that, you’ll be able to just let all that go now. And every time you notice the mind is caught in anything, that hand has gripped a ball, then we just loosen up the mind, we loosen up the hand and permit the ball to drop of its own accord. We’re not struggling in any respect, we’re just relaxing and letting things go on their merry way. We’re not stopping them or controlling them, we’re just now not involved. Let’s proceed.
As I said I don’t want you to struggle with this in any respect. It’s not as if we’re like prying the fingers off the ball, okay. There’s no fight in any respect, zero fight happening. It’s just each time you notice you’re caught up, you simply loosen up and rest. You only open the hand and the ball falls out naturally. There’s no struggle. It is perhaps the case that, let’s say, you’re really caught up in a thought, the nice hand grabs right back on, okay, just loosen up again. If you’ve got to loosen up 100 times in a row, you’re just relaxing. That’s great. There’s no struggle. There’s no sense of it being hard, okay. Just every time the mind contracts we just loosen up. Don’t fight.
Something that’s form of interesting about this meditation, is there’s no focus object. We’re not specializing in anything. There’s nothing to think about. That’s why this may often be called shamatha or meditation without an object. There’s no focus object. Anytime we get caught up in something, we’re just relaxing and allowing that something to drift away, so to talk, to hold by itself business. But we will not be engaging with it anymore. And after we let go we’re not coming back to our breath or coming back to another object that we’re specializing in, we’re just coming back to sitting there relaxed, sitting there with the mind unclenched, with the mind relaxed. So don’t think that there’s something you’re imagined to concentrate on, slightly when you end up specializing in anything, loosen up and just open.
Every time the mind grabs onto something or gets caught up in something or contracts around something, we simply loosen up and are available back to resting. After I say resting, remember I don’t mean we come back to being asleep. I mean we come back to doing nothing but we’re wide, wide awake. But when the mind is just not contracted around something and it’s relaxed, that’s often just called awareness or being aware but not aware of any particular thing. Primary we’re not in search of something to pay attention to and number two when it’s not any special awareness, it’s not an altered state, it’s the identical form of awareness where you’re just not likely involved with anything, you’re just very awake, alert and relaxed. Your mind is open and relaxed. It has that vast quality so don’t make awareness something special.
It’s just at any time when you’re not caught up in anything, at any time when you drop the ball, that’s what’s then left. Without you doing anything special, that’s what’s left. You’re just aware now. You might be after all aware if you’re caught up within the ball as well, but you’ll be able to miss the vastness then, so after we drop the ball we just come back to the attention that’s all the time present, without doing anything in any respect and it’s very very spacious, very free, very open.
Okay good, now identical to I don’t want you to struggle to let go, I also don’t want you to hold on to the means of letting go such as you’re in search of something to let go of or attempting to make sure that that you just’re dropping the ball. I would like you to drop that ball too. So hanging on to the concept that you’re meditating, just drop the ball. Hanging on to the concept that you’re imagined to do it in a certain way and attempting to stay right with it, just drop the ball. Or attempting to stay focused on whether you’re caught up in something or not, just loosen up, just drop all that and easily return to the already existing awareness. It’s all the time there and just rest, don’t struggle, don’t fight, don’t even meditate. Just drop the ball after which rest.
Nothing to do, nothing to vary, every little thing already complete, every little thing perfect, just the best way it’s. Anytime the mind contracts around an object, just loosen up, let it expand back to its natural openness with none effort in any respect.
Excellent. Now what I’d such as you to do is come back to this visualization of, or mood of being a mountain, sitting like a mountain, an immovable mountain. And I would like this mountain now to radiate to all of the corners of creation, to all of the corners of the universe, to radiate profound peace and stillness and profound kindness and openness and a profound sense of wisdom and caring. It’s radiating this out in all directions, effortlessly, easily. Tremendous sense of joy, an amazing sense of caring, a sense of openness, a sense of stillness and groundedness and peace. And let’s just keep beaming this in all directions powerfully and beautifully and with great kindness and caring.
The mountain of awareness can repeatedly radiate love and joy and stillness and kindness and wisdom and peace to your entire universe without ever making any effort. Just absolutely natura, open and free. Absolutely without boundaries, absolutely without barriers, absolutely complete in itself, absolutely spontaneous and joyous.
Let’s let go of that now as we end the meditation.
I would like you to be at liberty to maneuver and stretch. Have a drink of water. Allow your body to feel good and just come back to the room. Come back to the youtube room. Allow yourself to simply feel good in your body and see how that meditation has modified your experience. So there’s a lot to say about this and I’m gonna just assume you’ve watched and practiced together with lots of these videos so I don’t need to attempt to say all of it because that will be unattainable to jam it in here during our little dharma talk.
Dharma Talk
But I’ll say a couple of things and one is that you recognize I teach this sort of nondual meditation all day long, right? That’s what I do all day and I do it daily and I’ve been doing it for an extended very long time, in addition to practicing it. And something that I notice fairly often is that after I describe what we’re doing, if I say you recognize, I would like you to simply notice, come back to the attention that’s already there or something like that. Just be awareness. Or if I say, god forbid, if I say you recognize, notice the vast spacious awareness that’s all the time present, it results in some interesting confusions. And a part of them is just, a part of it’s just linguistic. We’re just speaking English and I’m attempting to speak in a really normal way in order that it doesn’t sound all jargony or that I’m using bizarre language.
But after we use language like that like you recognize, come back to awareness or notice the attention that’s already there. It’s a very funny way of talking, truthfully although it feels like normal English. It’s a funny way of talking within the sense that it’s not exactly accurate, right? It’s not exactly accurate because if I say come back to awareness the query arises well who’s it that was away from awareness? What was it that was gone from awareness and what’s it that in some way returns, right? That doesn’t even make sense because if it was gone from awareness there would just be a blank, there’d be nothing.
So because that’s what’s there when there’s no awareness. There’s just no experience. So it might be such as you were knocked out unconscious until you “got here back to awareness” and it might be like waking up. But that’s not likely what’s happening and that’s because we’re never actually in some way gone from awareness. It’s just that we’re constricting down onto an object. We’re constricting our attention right down to an object or I should say, again language issue, I should say a seeming object, something that looks as if an object, like a thought or a sense or something on the earth around us or whatever. Awareness gets really constricted and that’s what involves the fore of our experience.
But really after all it’s aware the entire time and moreover, the vast part is there also the entire time. It’s just form of bringing the tight part, the constricted part to the fore. Why is that this vital? Because what I don’t want you to do is say, I hear this quite a bit, like I dropped the ball, after which I searched for awareness. Well, my friend who’s looking, or what’s looking? That’s awareness, right? Awareness is what’s looking. So it’s not likely the case that you just’re dropping the ball after which in search of awareness. If you happen to’re aware of a thought i.e a ball, when you’re aware of a ball, you’re aware, due to awareness. So the attention is all the time there. All that’s happening is after we drop the constriction it’s returning to its already existing, naturally vast, open state without you doing anything right. It’s already aware. So it’s not like we’ve got to, you recognize, make awareness big or come back and in some way attempt to see awareness. All of that could be a confused way of considering and it just makes it much harder than it’s.
My friend Ken McLeod, writing in his book, A trackless path, talks about his Tibetan teacher Kalu Rinpoche, whose whole instruction for this meditation was recognize and rest, or return and rest. And you’ll be able to hear it’s the identical instruction. Just notice that you just’re caught up and just rest, right, let go. Now, nowhere in that instruction does it say make some big awareness occur, or hunt around for some awareness, with something else that’s not awareness that’s attempting to find awareness. I mean all of that just confuses the difficulty. It makes you sound crazy if you say it.
Or as an instruction it might, you recognize, it’s like no, there’s no person, there’s never anybody somewhere outside of awareness awareness. That’s impossible. It’s awareness noticing itself. It’s not even itself because that will imply it was standing outside of itself looking back. That may’t occur. It’s already aware of itself. We’re just letting go of, form of like, these congealed balls, of constricted attention. Okay, that’s it. You’re just relaxing the tightness of the mind, just letting it open and the attention is already there. It’s all the time been there. It never went away and there’s no person in some way outside of awareness who has to search for this special object called awareness. It’s not a special object. It’s what’s happening all day long, it’s happening. It’s how you recognize there’s anything, it’s how you recognize you’re feeling a certain way, it’s how you recognize you’re having a thought, it’s how you recognize you think that you’re even you. All that’s just stuff happening in awareness.
Awareness is prior to you, it’s prior to thoughts, it’s prior to feelings, it’s prior even to the world. It’s just there and it’s not a special thing, it’s not a special object, after all. It’s empty so it’s not even an object in any respect. Nevertheless it’s not special, okay, so that you don’t need to generate it. It’s all the time there. It’s all the time there. It’s all the time there. So after we’re not all caught up in something it just makes it easier to rest in that. That’s it.
Now one other thing I would like to say, I’m attempting to not mention every little thing, but one other thing I would like to say, is that, notice no a part of this meditation says you’ve got to have any particular form of thoughts. Or that you just like good thoughts, joyful thoughts, peaceful thoughts. We don’t care what form of thoughts you’re having, except on the very end after we send out love and joy and so forth. But within the meditation, it doesn’t matter what the content of your considering is, since you’re not engaging with the content of your thought. So irrespective of what arises we’re just letting go and relaxing and that stuff can keep happening, but you’re not likely engaging with it in any way. So don’t think you’re imagined to have a certain form of thought in the course of the dropping the ball part.
And number two and this can be a big one, people think the considering has to stop. No, the considering can do whatever it wants. It may well be considering away so long as you’re not engaged in it, you’re not considering on purpose, you’re not in there following a train of thought. It’s just following itself but you’re not likely being attentive to it right. You’re just coming back to resting and being open and letting go. So that you don’t need to have special categories of thought you recognize and neither does thought need to stop.
Now what’s interesting is when you do that a bunch, you’ll notice that after some time, you recognize we sat for hour, you could have noticed that you just’re considering did decelerate noticeably. And why is that? It’s because considering is sort of a flywheel, a very heavy flywheel. It keeps going for some time but when you’re not engaging with it, it’s such as you’re not giving energy to the flywheel, you’re not ramping it back up, winding it back up, pushing it so it keeps going. It’s going to begin to wind down. For considering to maintain going on a regular basis you’re continually putting energy into it, putting energy and putting energy into it. And after we drop the ball we’re not putting any more energy into it. We don’t care about it.
So it’s really vital to grasp that I don’t want you to assume that you just’re imagined to stop considering. And I don’t want you to assume that your thoughts need to be special. Relatively, I don’t want you to interact together with your thoughts in any respect. Meaning, I don’t care what they’re, I don’t care what number of there are. Because to care about that’s to interact with them. You’re just letting go, you’re just letting go. If you happen to grab on again, just let go again.
Okay one very last thing, I’ll quit haranguing you, like I said I could probably talk repeatedly for twenty-four hours about this but and never repeat myself, but one other thing is that, gosh there’s so many things I would like to say here. You’re not gonna reach some special state. If you happen to’re reaching a special state, that’s not like an issue or a problem, but that’s not the goal. That’s just an accident. It’ll come and identical to every other special state, it’ll eventually go. So you would possibly end up really experiencing plenty of energy like your body starts really having plenty of energy and that may feel really good, super blissful, but that’s high quality. But it can also eventually stop and that’s high quality too because that’s not what we’re attempting to make occur.
You would possibly end up feeling all of your thoughts will stop and your brain will just feel prefer it’s stopped. Identical to that. It just stops. And just sits there not considering anything. And that’s okay. Great, that’s wonderful but that’s not the goal, okay? That’s not what we’re attempting to make occur. We’re not attempting to stop that from happening either, but that’s just one other experience. That’s a special state. There’s other ones you’ll be able to get into all types of weird altered states but none of that matters.
All that matters is that you just drop the ball. Even when that happens, when you get all into this energy, just keep coming back to awareness. Awareness is resting and energy’s happening. Great. Otherwise you get into like some super, trippy altered perception zone. The whole lot’s the world looks prefer it’s fabricated from waves or something. This happens on a regular basis, you recognize, so what? That’s not the goal. You only come back. You drop the ball. Don’t really give that have any energy. But you’re not attempting to get away from it either, but you’re just, okay that’s happening. Come back to simply resting as the attention you already are and all the time have been, right? No, we don’t engage with special states. After we do that dropping the ball meditation, it’s the other of a special state.
What’s a special state? It’s special. Meaning there’s other states that aren’t special and so states come and go. They arrive and go, they arrive and go, but awareness although it’s empty, doesn’t come and go. It’s the other of special. It’s essentially the most general thing you may ever experience. It’s experience, so obviously, because the background, it’s essentially the most general possible thing, so it’s the other of special. So that you’re sitting here dropping the ball and you are feeling totally depressed and despondent and filled with despair, okay well, drop the ball. Rest. Awareness is high quality. You’re feeling super joy and magic and dancing bunnies are you recognize hopping around rainbows in your mind. Cool, drop the ball, just rest as awareness. Here, as I say, you’re involved in some form of big fight in your mind together with your relationship partner or together with your work colleagues or whatever, okay well, just drop the ball, come back to being awareness.
It’s the identical move irrespective of what. And I say being awareness, but I don’t mean it’s an object right. It’s not an object. I just mean resting as awareness, okay. It’s the best thing on the earth. As an alternative of involvement and thought and feeling where you think that you might be thought and feeling, we just loosen up out of that involvement, we loosen up out of that constriction, we loosen up out of the tightness, we let go, we open, we feel relaxed and relaxed with whatever’s happening okay.
That is the true equanimity. The true equanimity is, I’m just relaxed and aware irrespective of what way of thinking or state of emotion or state of body or whatever, okay. Doesn’t mean we don’t know what they’re. It doesn’t mean you’ll be able to’t eventually get in there and work with them and alter them, however it’s vital for us to appreciate that awareness is high quality straight away just the best way it’s. We’re never going to vary awareness. We would change our considering. We would change our feeling. We would change all types of stuff but we’re not going to vary awareness. It already is complete. It already is ideal. It already is what it’s. Notice that now. Drop in now. Drop the ball now.
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