Live Nondual Guided Meditation with Michael Taft
Streamed live to tell the tale Mar 17, 2022
Introduction
Hey you guys, welcome to tonight’s guided meditation and in fact, we’ll even have a Dharma talk and just a little little bit of Q&A. So all of that awaits you this evening. Notice I’m wearing my most colourful, fun, crazy shirt, which I actually like; I hope you prefer it too. It really matters to me whether you want my shirt. I’m going to take into consideration this so much tonight, based in your comments, about my shirt. Anyway, the rationale I even have the shirt is we’re going to work with some more of what we were working inside a previous week, which is equanimity with confusion or equanimity with chaos. So despite the fact that to me it is a sort of harmony, for others they may see that is chaos. So I believed well, what’s my most chaotic shirt? So that is the chaos shirt. We’re gonna work with equanimity with chaos and confusion but otherwise than usual.
Meditation
So let’s begin our meditation this evening by settling into our sitting posture. So what I need you to do is take your seat and, as usual, it’s best when you’re–let’s see, myself in position here–in case your knees are below your hips; it gets you sitting up nice and straight. Be at liberty to also lay down or get up, whatever you would like. But when you’re sitting down I need you to take a seat in such a way that your lower back is doing that nice thing that makes your spine sit up. And since you’re doing it sort of mechanically by having your knees below your hips, it doesn’t take a whole lot of muscle power to maintain your back upright. So we’ve our spine nice and upright in a really comfortable way. And just sort of sway forwards and backwards like a tree, like a sapling in a rainy breeze, right? Saplings really like rainy, soft, rainy breezes, so it’s just sort of doing this: it goes forward and back and side to side, and eventually, the young sapling of our spine finds that spot that’s just perfectly balanced, that feels good. The Goldilocks spot of your spine where it’s just floating upwards with almost no effort. It’s almost prefer it wants to simply, on this one spot, it just desires to flow upwards towards the sky, effortlessly.
Once we’re in that spot then we let our, for instance, neck and shoulders and arms and hands chill out. After which we’re just gonna stay on this posture, we’re not gonna move in any respect, okay? You may see, in case your eyes are open, you would possibly see me move every from time to time but that’s simply because I’m guiding a video and so I would like to manage the pc or I would like to take a drink because I’m talking. But when I used to be meditating only, I’d sit completely still for all the meditation and that’s what I hope you may do is sit completely still. Not scratching your nose, not, you recognize, shifting your posture or attempting to, you recognize, adjust your neck. But just reasonably sitting nice and still and feeling that stillness, okay?
So once we’re sitting in that way then let’s set our intention, why are we meditating? What are we here for? So I’ll just allow you to try this for a moment. It really helps to tune into our purpose. Sometimes we forget our purpose once we come to take a seat down. We just know, ‘it’s time, oh it’s time to meditate’. We sit down, we start meditating and we are able to’t even remember what we’re doing here, you recognize? And that never results in a great meditation. So what I’d such as you to do if you sit down is at all times be like, ‘okay, here’s why I’m meditating’, or ‘here’s, you recognize… ’, is the purpose, right? ‘I’m doing a thing, so I’m fully here’.
Good. After which what we’re going to do tonight is, to start with, we’re going to do one among my favorite standbys, one among my favorite metaphors for meditating; we’re going to meditate just like the sky. So just develop into the sky. Vast, open, perfectly clear, brilliant sky, okay?
So what’s interesting concerning the sky and why we meditate just like the sky is that there’s no, nothing bothers the sky. There may be planes flying through it, there’s every kind of birds flying through it, there’s noises in it, there’s clouds, there’s weather, there’s rain; but none of that bothers the sky. The sky is at all times unruffled, undisturbed, completely peaceful and vast and spacious; there’s room for the whole lot within the sky. So I need you to sort of imagine or tackle those properties of spaciousness and room and of unruffledness. And this unruffledness doesn’t mean nothing’s happening, every kind of things may be happening: every kind of mind weather, every kind of emotions, every kind of, you recognize, feelings about this or arguments in your mind about that, or whatever. But none of that disturbs the sky. So it’s not that the sky has to don’t have anything occurring. It’s that the sky is so vast and so clear and so open that regardless of what’s occurring, that’s okay. So let’s sit for just a little while just like the sky. And identical to the wind comes and goes within the sky, as you’re being the sky here for a couple of minutes I need you to simply concentrate on the breath coming and going.
So that you’re being the sky, you’re being vast and spacious and, unlike the sky probably–you recognize I’m unsure if the sky is a being or not–but we’re going to say we’re definitely sure that we’re beings. And so we’re going to not only be vast and spacious but we’re wide awake, we’re aware. And in that vast, spacious awareness we’re simply allowing the breath to come back and go. Allowing the wave of the breath which is sort of a wind rising and falling, right? In lots of languages, the word for breath and the word for wind is precisely the identical word. So just let that breath come and go within the sky of awareness. Let’s try this now.
Just continuing to rest because the vast, open sky of awareness with the wind of the breath rising and falling, rising and falling effortlessly in awareness. Now if you ought to and only do that if you ought to, you may change your breath just just a little bit. You may let the breath have longer exhales if that feels comfortable. You will have a daily inhale after which just just a little bit longer of an exhale. And I need you to note the tip of that exhale. Don’t force it in fact, just wait ‘till it happens but when it happens just notice that it ends. And you could notice, depending in your breath–it’s different for various people at different times of day–but sometimes they’ll even be sort of a pause there. Like, the long exhale will come to an end after which there’ll just be a moment where it’s just sitting there before the inhale begins. It won’t, it is perhaps very fast, very seamless: end of exhale then – [straight] into the inhale. But sometimes you do a protracted out-breath after which it just rests there after which the inhale will start. So I don’t want you to govern that. I do want you to, if you ought to–you may do long out-breaths–but just wait for the tip, wait for the tip, wait for the tip. After which notice when it arises, and spot if there’s a pause or not and if there’s, the length of the pause before the in-breath begins again. Now we’re just noticing, but I need you to be especially aware of that. The sky, the mind is being attentive to how the wind of the breath is moving.
Do not forget that the sky is vast, the sky is open, the sky just isn’t bothered by anything in any respect. All of the things can come and go and the breath, the wind of the breath, comes and goes within the sky. And we’re just allowing that naturally, already existing awareness of the sky to note the breath. The wind of the breath because it rises and falls within the vast, open sky.
Okay, good. Now continuing to easily be the sky, be the vast, spacious, open awareness of the sky. Let’s switch our focus from meditating on the wind of the breath moving through the sky, and as a substitute, we wish to focus now on the moving through the sky of the mind. So thoughts are simply moving through awareness and we’re aware of them. We’re not staying completely uninvolved in the way in which that we might if we were doing . We are literally meditating on them as an object but we’re staying uninvolved when it comes to the content. So that you’re not getting caught up in considering, but awareness is aware of the considering. The sky of awareness feels, notices, hears the wind of thought moving, the wind of thought whistling within the sky. And so we’re actually meditating on our considering. And to do that we treat verbal considering as just a few sound, ‘blah, blah, blah, blah’, or visual considering, if that’s arising, is just a few lights changing. So we’re being attentive to it but we’re not engaging, we’re not getting caught up within the content. So the wind of thoughts is moving through the sky of awareness and we because the sky are unperturbed by the thoughts and yet we’re meditating upon them. That is taking : we’re meditating on the stream of thought without changing it in any way.
Again, simply letting the stream of thoughts, the wind of thoughts move through without really engaging it. And yet we’re still specializing in it, we’re noticing it, we’re hearing the wind but just not manipulating it in any respect. Not attempting to have good thoughts, not attempting to have bad thoughts, not engaging with the thoughts in any respect but simply specializing in them, letting them just–let the winds go.
Now, continuing to permit awareness to meditate on the flow of thought, you could notice something interesting. Despite the fact that we’re probably not getting involved in a deep way within the content or following the content or considering on purpose, you recognize, considering is just ‘occurring’. So I need you to note that thoughts are simply occurring. The wind is blowing within the sky but there doesn’t, you’re probably not attempting to think: the thoughts are only happening. And moreover, as we sink deeper into this you could notice something interesting and that’s, the thoughts might probably not, sometimes, make that much sense. There is perhaps incomplete sentences, there is perhaps garbled thoughts. Sometimes it doesn’t even sound just like the language English, or whatever language you normally think in. Sometimes it’d sound like several streams of talk. It will possibly get sort of weird in there. And what I need you to do is to not attempt to force it to make any sense. Let it’s as fragmented or jumbled or garbled or muddy, when it comes to the content of the thoughts themselves, because it wants. Don’t attempt to make it into logical chains of verbal considering; allow it to be just as, allow it to be nevertheless it’s actually showing up.
This is an element of the chaos that I used to be describing. Sometimes the mind is kind of a bit more loose and open and incomplete in a way than we’re normally used to. So just let it present the way it’s presenting.
Good. Now continuing to simply rest because the vast, open sky of awareness. Observing, aware of the stream of thoughts as they pass. On purpose just allow yourself to sort of gently notice the a part of considering that seems probably the most non-linear, broken up, muddled, incomplete, or jumbled indirectly, and just sort of allow awareness to note that part more. So there’ll be parts which can be, you recognize, speaking in regular sentences and guiding you and considering. But I need you to go towards the stuff that’s probably the most jumbled. And that is just very, very light; you’re not jamming gears, switching between. You’re just very calmly allowing awareness to be more aware of the a part of thought that’s much more non-linear, non-rational, jumbled, broken up, muddled. And I need you to simply meditate on that. And let it’s okay that there’s a component of the mindstream that’s quite chaotic, okay? So, and perhaps you’re only noticing that just a little bit, or perhaps you’re not even noticing that in any respect. So just go together with what’s there. I don’t want you to alter the content on purpose. Don’t try to alter the way you’re considering. That is nearly–sort of like, an example could be, or a metaphor could be; when you were listening to a song and I said, “I need you to simply hearken to the bass guitar in that song.” The remainder of the song goes on and also you’re not making a bass guitar occur, you’re just picking out that and listening. So let’s select the a part of the mindstream, the a part of considering that’s probably the most, let’s say chaotic, and just be okay with that; let it’s there.
Good. Now let’s come back to simply being the sky. Allowing the stream of thoughts to maneuver just like the wind through the sky and allowing awareness to note all the spectrum, all the wide selection of each sort of thought. Not only more narrowly taking a look at the one band but reasonably all of the thoughts moving like wind within the sky. Notice that we’re not trying to alter them, we’re not trying to manage them. The wind gets to blow whatever way it wants; the numerous winds get to blow in whatever directions they need and the sky just isn’t disturbed. The sky is aware of the considering but it surely just isn’t involved within the considering and it just isn’t disturbed in any way by just allowing the thoughts to flow. That is our actual mind, that is what it does, that’s okay. The sky of awareness has room, good enough room, for all those thoughts.
Sometimes it’s just so nice to let go of all control of considering, all evaluation of considering, all critique, all attempting to make thoughts at all times make sense or be nice, or whatever. And just allow the train of thoughts, or the wind, the flow of the wind of thought, to simply do whatever it wants and to not interfere with that in any respect. There’s a sort of vast relief in letting go of that control and letting go of that anxious monitoring and easily to let the thoughts do what they need. Chances are you’ll notice that thoughts just occur. There are thoughts and not using a thinker, right? No person’s actually in there controlling that. It’s just happening and awareness is aware of it.
Now let’s let go of that now and easily let go entirely of monitoring the flow of thought and just come into resting because the open sky, uninvolved with anything. We’re just wide awake, wide aware, vast, spacious, totally accepting. But not even monitoring the breath, not even monitoring the thought. If you ought to you may keep that type of rising and falling within the background. But for probably the most part, we’re just sitting doing nothing.
Sometimes once we’re just resting as awareness, doing nothing, we wish it to be a certain way, we wish it to be peaceful. But awareness itself is at all times peaceful. We would like it to make sense or have a pattern but awareness itself doesn’t need that in any respect. It’s vast, it’s spacious, it has room for the whole lot. We would like it to not be distracted or by some means not be full of upsetting emotions, or whatever. But awareness is rarely upset. Any emotions can arise and it’s high quality. So whatever is going on straight away, just let that be okay, just let that be okay. Allow the sky of awareness to simply let the whole lot be what it’s, without interfering in any way. And yet totally accepting, not ignoring or denying, accepting the whole lot, just because it is.
Good. Now only for the last moment of the meditation here, the last minute or so, I need you to, on purpose, to send out this peace that you just’re feeling. Any peace in any respect that you just’re feeling, send it out to the entire universe. Any sense of joy that you just’re feeling, send it out to the entire universe. Any sense of loving connection and caring about others, send it out to the universe. And just let your open heart send out open-heartedness to each other being in the entire universe.
We still have problems, we still have difficulties, we still have interactions, we’re still human beings with human problems and yet we’ve . Now we have friendliness, we’ve openness, we’ve kindness and we’re sending it out to the entire world, leaning into the sunshine, because it were. And just radiate that now with as much real kindness and real caring and real openness and even playfulness as you may.
Good, so let’s end the meditation there.
Dharma Talk
Allowing yourself to maneuver and stretch. If you ought to do a pleasant cat stretch, letting your fingers and toes and hands and feet, or paws because it were, stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch in a way that feels very nice. Allow your body to maneuver in whatever way feels good. Have a drink of water or, you recognize, scotch. Whatever feels good straight away, and possibly not Scotch–good, so–but when I did have Scotch I’d have some Highland Park.
So tonight is the complete moon and the truth is, as we’re recording this, let’s see Pacific Time, so about five and a half hours from now the moon might be perfectly full. So straight away we’re really feeling that full moon energy. And it’s funny, you recognize, there’s different moods on different days. Today has a definite full moon feel. And something that I talked about with several different people in several different conversations today was the indisputable fact that: it was concerning the ‘wisdom mind’. We were talking concerning the wisdom mind. It was just funny, I didn’t bring this up, it got here up independently in several conversations. So perhaps this was today’s full moon theme, who knows? But we were talking concerning the wisdom mind. And the funny thing concerning the wisdom mind, or what in Sanskrit could be called prajna; in, you recognize, in Buddhism or Hinduism we might speak about prajna which suggests wisdom. Nevertheless it’s higher translated because the wisdom mind since it’s not typically what within the West we would consider as wisdom, which is like, you recognize, knowing some smart, deep shit about easy methods to cope with stuff. That’s not exactly what is supposed by the wisdom mind. What is supposed by the wisdom mind is that the a part of your mind that’s linear and rational and sort of put together is identical to this surface of the mind. It’s the uppermost surface of the mind. It’s barely one or two percent of your mind, right? It’s a tiny part that’s logical and rational and the whole lot is smart in a sort of normal way. And we would call that just the regular mind. But slightly below that’s, you recognize, the dreaming mind: the unconscious, the a part of your mind that’s non-linear and non-rational and speaks within the language of metaphor and is in a way, to speak metaphorically now, in a way is at all times dreaming. And it’s funny because within the West we don’t really, I don’t know, we don’t like that a part of our mind very much since it doesn’t make sense in that standard, linear, rational way.
After all, it does make sense in dream logic. It is smart in a metaphorical, associated, symbolic way. Nevertheless it doesn’t really work in a linear, rational way. And so, because we within the West are so focused and provides a lot attention to and provides a lot credence to being rational and logical and linear, we don’t really like this other a part of our mind very much. And so, as you do more meditation on considering, we’re taking the mind as path. But even when you, there’s alternative ways we are able to meditate on considering, one among them would just be regular old vipassana on thoughts, you recognize? Or as we did tonight, taking the mind as path, and just allowing thoughts as we sort of listen to them, and other ways too. As we meditate on considering we notice after some time, you’ll notice that you just’ve got this predilection to remain within the a part of considering that is obvious, that’s linear, that’s following a sequence, that’s orderly, that’s rational. But you would possibly start noticing, perhaps even to your dismay, you would possibly start noticing that there’s a complete lot of non-rational, non-linear thought occurring.
So, once I say that, you would possibly not have a concrete idea of what I mean. So to make it concrete I’d say, for instance, the thoughts are broken up; the thoughts are garbled just like the language, you recognize, is garbled. Perhaps it doesn’t even sound really like language, it just feels like sounds, like phonemes. Like, sometimes it feels like many various trains of thought without delay. Sometimes even when the sentences are complete sentences they’re like, they don’t make any sense, you recognize? Despite the fact that those are all perfectly legitimate English sentences, they’re not, they’re, they’re like a dream. They’re saying something that doesn’t really appear to mean anything. So there’s all these various things occurring within the mind.
As I said, it’s like a dream, okay? Or like hypnagogia or hypnopompia, it’s dreamlike, okay? And so you could notice–you would possibly not but you most likely will notice that you will have a preference. You don’t like that part that’s sort of dream-like. You don’t like that part because you would like things to be clear. And so what we’re doing in these, once we meditate on thought, it’s very essential to let the thoughts be as unclear, as non-linear, as non-rational as they need. Just allow them to do their thing, we’re not trying to manage them in any way. And the very first thing most individuals notice is like, ‘whoa it’s, you recognize, it’s just a little weird, there’s all… you recognize’. But after some time, when you just let it occur, you don’t try to manage it, don’t attempt to force it to make sense, don’t attempt to force it to talk in proper sentences, or whatever. After some time, you’ll notice something interesting happening which is that for some reason. It’s an actual relief, it’s an actual load off: take a load off, it’s an actual load off. Why is that? Why does that feel so good? It feels so good because we’re not controlling the mind, we’re just letting it’s itself for once. Just letting it breathe easy, letting it take a load off, letting it do what it wants. As an alternative of consistently attempting to whip it into some sort of artificial shape. ‘I used to be just letting it’s’.
But when you work with it much more in this manner, when you just sit with it, much more, it gets even deeper. It doesn’t just feel good, it’s going to begin to do a funny thing, a very interesting thing. You’ll begin to notice that there’s creative thoughts coming up. Like, you suddenly have a recent idea for a project otherwise you suddenly understand easy methods to do something in a recent way otherwise you suddenly could have solutions to problems arising without you having tried to make an answer occur. You weren’t sitting there fascinated about that but an answer to some problem in your life will just arise. So there’s a sort of creative problem-solving thing that just starts to occur. Now you’re not attempting to make that occur. That is once we’re totally just letting the mind do . And it’s going to just, every from time to time, you recognize, not on a regular basis but every once… well, super creative thoughts, problem-solving thoughts will arise.
Now don’t stop your meditation to write down those down, in the event that they’re essential you’ll remember it. Just let it go and afterwards you may write it down. So there might be that level of, you recognize, creative problem-solving. But then when you proceed to work with, you recognize, taking the mind as path, meditating on considering, letting the thoughts be whatever they wish to be, it’s going to go even deeper. And also you’ll begin to notice you will have insight into yourself, like your personality and why you do stuff. You’ll have insight into other people, what they really want, what’s their deal? What’s occurring with them? That may be really, really – especially when it’s about ourselves – it could actually be sometimes unpleasant. Perhaps you don’t wish to see that about yourself but it’s going to be deep, it’s going to be meaningful. So that you get insights like, sort of like psychological insights into yourself and others. And you may’t say why necessarily. It’s not like, ‘oh, I suddenly understand this about myself and that is why I do know that’. Again, it’s just presented as a fait accompli; it’s like boom, here’s this insight. But if you go to work with that insight it’s going to ring true, it’ll actually work.
So we’ve sort of this creative problem solving after which we’ve these psychological insights. After which much more deeply we’ve insights in, well, spiritual insights. Insights into the deepest questions on life: who am I? What’s the meaning of life? That sort of stuff. It is also, those answers aren’t logical, they’re not rational, they don’t make that sort of sense. They make sense on this other way, the dream logic, this non-linear, open-minded sort of sense. And all spiritual traditions, especially mystical or meditative traditions, really agree on this point. It’s like, that type of dreaming mind, the deep mind or what we’re calling the wisdom mind speaks this other language, the language of metaphor, the language of dream. But you’re going to search out as you simply allow the mind to do this, these very deep, spiritual insights arise every from time to time. Not only creative thoughts like, ‘oh I found out my screenplay’, and never just psychological thoughts that are deeper, like ‘oh I suddenly get this really clear understanding, a deeper understanding of, you recognize, why I try this thing sometimes’. But every from time to time we’ll get even these deepest sort of answers to the questions on life.
In order that’s prajna, that’s the wisdom mind and to get there you will have to permit the thought process. Again, whether it’s visual thought, the photographs in your mind, or verbal thoughts, the words in your mind, you will have to let it just do whatever it wants. Because when you control it then you definitely’re forcing it to be this sort of linear, rational thing, okay? So it’s super essential to grasp that we wish the mind to, a minimum of during meditation, have this sort of real freedom, real acceptance, real openness. I’m not saying that you just show up for work and begin babbling or, you recognize, making non-linear statements. I’m saying, in your personal meditation you permit the thought process to simply do whatever it’s going to do, in whatever way it desires to do, and never control it. And also you’ll find it has this very deep, very powerful, and even really, actually beautiful feeling if you try this. It feels really, very nice and it’s going to have a strong effect in your life.
So, you recognize, that is intimacy with our own mind. That is, you recognize, the alternative of what we typically do, which is, you recognize, there’s stuff we don’t wish to take into consideration, stuff that’s too scary to come across, stuff that we don’t wish to cope with and we sort of lock it away within the basement of the mind and we not sleep here. But what meaning is we’re at all times hearing the monsters within the basement and we’re afraid of our own mind, right? And that’s not a pleasing state of being. We would like to be friends with our own mind, we wish to be intimate, meaning really, really know deeply our own mind. And to do this we’ve to love open the cage door on the basement and let the monsters in and make friends with them, make them tea and have some conversations with those monsters. And sometimes, especially in the event that they’ve been in there a protracted time – they’ve been locked away a protracted time – at first, that is perhaps really scary and so we only do it, you recognize, perhaps just a little bit. But eventually, you’ll realize that every one the monsters are only you and so they’re your mates and you may check with them, right?
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