Welcome to tonight’s meditation. This can be a guided meditation. I’ll talk lots and suggest things to meditate upon. You’re very welcome to follow that guidance. You’re also welcome to not follow it, and just do whatever you would like. The one rules are: be quiet and stay unmoving, okay? So whatever meditation you’re doing within the depths of your personal experience is wonderful so long as you’ll be able to sit still in a comparatively quiet way. If you happen to do take part the guidance and I’m moving along, and moving along, and also you’re liking it, after which it goes right into a place you don’t need to go, otherwise you don’t get what I’m doing, or it doesn’t feel comfortable, just back up, and stay where you were at. Just keep doing whatever we were doing the last time it felt good. You’re in control of your personal meditation. If you happen to don’t like what I’m doing then, do something else. You’re your personal boss and accountable for your personal vehicle. These are all meditation suggestions.
Let’s begin, as usual, by asking ourselves the query, What’s it prefer to be me straight away? Don’t imagine the reply. As a substitute, look in your personal experience right this very moment. What’s it prefer to be you straight away? Just feel your feelings, and see your thoughts, and check in with how your body’s doing, etc. Just take the weather report of your personal being. What’s it prefer to be me straight away? Then just sit with that just a little bit, and whatever it’s prefer to be straight away–that is the essential part–let it’s that way! Don’t attempt to fight it, or control it, or change it, especially don’t judge it, or determine it’s the incorrect state or something. Somewhat, just let it’s the best way it’s. Let’s sit with that together for a couple of minutes just constantly checking in with what it’s prefer to be you straight away.
Now, just in whatever way, see should you can come into just a little bit more presence, just by noticing what it’s prefer to be you straight away. Then just being with that as completely as possible. Just what you’re feeling in your body straight away, just what emotions you’re feeling straight away, just what thoughts occur to be passing through your neurons straight away. Just be with that, and be with the deafening roar of the HEPA filters and the sunshine within the room and the opposite sounds around you. Just allow yourself to be with this multi-sensory John Cage-type moment, as totally as possible. It’s really reasonably easy to do. Feel what it’s prefer to be present with all of that straight away. Possibly your nose is running, perhaps you’re yawning, perhaps you’re mildly nauseous, it’s all good. Just sit with exactly that, just the best way it’s coming up. But staying with it, not trying to resolve it, not trying to vary it, not wishing it wasn’t there, not deciding it’s unjust, that it’s not there or anything like that. Just let it’s there. Notice the urge to get away from it, or to vary it or to guage it, or to distract, distract, distract, and chances are you’ll even notice a type of self-pity. I shouldn’t have to sit down with this back pain, I shouldn’t have to sit down with my crazy racing mind, I shouldn’t have to sit down with these emotions straight away, or whatever. That’s the resistance, that’s the ego drama that’s playing out, even being present along with your own experience. I shouldn’t must take care of this shit–but that’s just one other thing to sit down with, and let be that way, and just notice.
Are you able to sit within the presence of your personal inability to sit down in presence? Sit in presence, or with the current. I find it intolerable that we forgot to light all of the candles. Why should I actually have to take care of this, God rattling it. It’s all the time something that we’re resisting. That’s just the best way it’s.
Now we’re going to boost our energy level just a little bit to do the remainder of this work tonight so should you know the right way to do Bhastrika pranayama, just have at it. If you happen to don’t, then keep in mind that’s not alternate nostril respiration, that’s fast bellows respiration. If you happen to know the right way to do this go for it. If you happen to don’t, what you’re doing is, you’re pulling your stomach in in a short time on the in breath as like a pop after which just letting go but you’re doing it fast. If you happen to’ve just eaten numerous food, just do just a little little bit of that, and do it slowly. If you happen to’re in a very good place to do it, we’re going to do it for some time here, so just go ahead and do some Bhastrika. If it’s helpful to do it with a mantra, the mantra I might suggest using is “So’ham.”
If you happen to didn’t have a giant dinner, and it really works for you, you’ll be able to do it at a pace reminiscent of this. We’re going to do it for several minutes, so make it be just right for you. If you happen to don’t need to do pranayama, that’s wonderful, but the concept is to boost our energy level just a little bit in order that we’re in a position to get outside our conditioning just a little bit. Let’s go ahead and do this.
I’m talking, so I’m not constantly doing it, but I wish I could constantly do it. Remember, you don’t must move your shoulders in any respect. You don’t must move your face, it’s just your belly. So it may be a really relaxed thing to do. We’re going to go one other 90 seconds, so keep going, don’t wear out, unless you’re done. If you happen to’re done, that’s okay. It may possibly be really helpful to, should you’re a very good visualizer, visualize a white light in your brow while doing the mantra soham, soham soham soham.
You didn’t think you were going to get your core workout tonight as a part of your meditation, but here’s added value. It’s going to be a hot meditator winter with numerous pranayama. In a minute, I’ll offer you a direction, only do that direction should you feel prefer it. Keep going, keep going, keep going. Don’t stop, just just a little more, little little bit more, now a big big big big big in-breath. Hold on the highest of the in-breath. When your lungs are completely full, hold it so long as you’re comfortable. I mean if you need to breathe out, go ahead, but otherwise, hold it, hold it, hold it. Then, plugging your right nostril along with your thumb, let it out the left nostril.
Superb. Now just sit with that for a minute, feeling the energy in your body. We raise our energy just a little bit to present us just a little extra juice, so we will step outside our habitual patterns. If we stay at our normal energy level, the habitual patterns normally have that so optimized, they simply proceed to take over. But when we raise it up just a little bit, we’ve the chance to do something different.
Good. What I’d such as you to do, as usual now, is to simply notice the natural wide openness of awareness. Not making it wide, not forcing it, but simply feeling the already existing wide openness. How do it’s wide open? Well, should you’re not narrowing your concentration on anything particularly, you’ll be able to hear the entire room around you. You possibly can see even behind you, you’ll be able to hear in all directions, you’ll be able to see throughout you. Without doing anything, you’ll be able to feel your whole body. Awareness is just naturally open. It’s not narrow, so we call that boundlessness, or the sky-like quality of awareness that it’s just open and free. You’re not doing anything to make it open, it’s identical to that. Some people have been practicing their breath-holding. Superb.
From this place of wide open awareness that is of course free, naturally boundless, simply privilege the attention of the rising and falling of the breath very, very barely. We’re not narrowly specializing in it, and we’re not definitely not drilling down into the breath or anything. We’re just noticing the rising and falling of the breath wave on this very open, boundless wide awake clarity of the sky-like mind. Even a baby could do that, it’s nothing hard. You’re just sitting, allowing your mind to be wide open, and noticing that respiration is going on.
The essential part here that’s just just a little bit harder, is should you notice that you just keep narrowing attention, should you’ve got a habit of narrowing, tightening attention, we’re letting go of that. We’re not doing vipassana on the breath on the nose or something. It’s almost the alternative move of attention, it’s very naturally broad, wide-open, no tension in it in any respect, but moreover, don’t narrow the mind into grabbing onto thoughts. We like thoughts, we’re glad thoughts are happening. Thoughts will not be an issue. Thoughts will not be the enemy. Think as much as you would like, just don’t think on purpose, and don’t grab on to any thoughts that arise.
This will be either super easy–I’m just not going to the touch those things –or if you’ve gotten a powerful habit of meshing, of velcroing, right onto thoughts, then it’s just a little bit more effort to type of disentangle yourself. You ever had a friend or a relationship where you only couldn’t disentangle? It may possibly be like that sometimes, where there’s just lots there, and it desires to stay tangly. So, don’t get in a giant fight with that. Just as much as you’ll be able to, don’t grab on to pondering or narrow your attention onto pondering, or, and this is significant, don’t think on purpose in any respect.
You’ll notice, even should you don’t think on purpose, numerous thoughts are happening, because they simply occur. Thoughts are like respiration, thoughts are like digesting, thoughts are like, your blood salinity level, it’s just certainly one of those things that just changes. It changes, it does its thing. But you don’t must be involved with it, identical to you’re probably not all that involved along with your blood salinity level. I mean you is perhaps, but probably not. So it’s just happening. Don’t grab onto it.
I’m going to be quiet now for some time and we’re going to sit down with a sky-like mind, noticing the breath wave rising and falling and never engaging with any thought in any respect. If you happen to do this’s okay, just disengage, and to the extent you could, just keep feeling that presence. Feel your body, feel your emotions, feel that thoughts are happening, but don’t engage. Just keep sitting with that rising and falling breath while remaining very very present, right within the here and now. How can we stay within the here and now? Just connecting with the senses.
Now, should you can, feel this breath wave rising and falling within the sky of experience, notice the energy related to that breath wave. I don’t mean imagine, just notice you could feel that it’s type of bubbly and tingly, or has this real vibrational or wave-like quality that is sort of nice. So, it’s not simply, oh, the meat is opening and shutting, expanding and contracting, there’s actually an actual sense of this buzzy tingly energized quality.
A fast solution to notice that, should you’re having trouble noticing it, is to let go of any mental image of your body in any respect. Don’t imagine anything, not even your normal imagination of what your body looks like. Then, you’ll just feel the sensations with no containing, or restraining, or defining, or confining body image, and that’s when it’s very easy to note this energetic quality of the breath. Then just feel that energy quality rising from the perineum all the best way up above the top with each breath.
As you do this, notice the central channel opening. This is just not your spine, that is the central channel, directly out of your perineum in a straight line to the highest of your head. You’ll just feel that energizing and opening and energizing and opening, and because it opens and and and becomes more alive and more awake and more vibratory, begin to note that there’s numerous space available in there. Room within the the central channel, very large, boundless space right up the middle of your body that’s just energized and free flowing and free and awake. In a way it’s almost like there’s all of the space within the room around you after which the body has this energized feeling of being, after which inside that’s one other just space, almost like a torus. If that’s available to you, notice that inside this moving energy is just wide open, boundless, wide awake space within the central channel, primordially pure, all the time already present, wide awake. It’s very interesting, inside all that movement, and all that energy, if we glance into that spaciousness within the central channel, just notice its primordial purity. Notice that it’s never, ever not absolutely fresh and clean. Notice that fresh and clean quality.
Tuning into this spaciousness that’s available, not only is it primordially pure, fresh and clean, notice that it’s welcoming. It doesn’t say no to anything. It has this tremendous quality of welcoming whatever arises, whatever is there. The space says hello, yes, welcome, to all the pieces. It’s fundamentally warm and welcoming in that way.
Tuning into this wide open, boundless, pure, and welcoming spaciousness, at the middle of our being. Moreover, notice that it’s playful and spontaneous, it’s never stuck, it’s never dull, it’s never collapsed or concrete. It’s playful, it’s spontaneous. That’s a part of its freshness–it’s all the time recent, it’s all the time playful. And, notice that that’s there without us doing anything. We’re just noticing it. It’s all the time there, it’s all the time been there, it’s been there before you were here. In a way of talking, you’re just its expression, a part of its playfulness.
Notice that this endless space inside is, in reality, boundless. It’s not inside, it’s not in some way enclosed by the skin or by the image of the body. It has no boundary in any respect. It radiates out in all directions without limit. It is really boundless. Notice that it’s also groundless. You possibly can’t find any ground there. It’s spontaneously arising from nothing.
Now, you’ll be able to either stick with that, or if you should try something just a little more intense, we’re going to do this now. But should you’re not within the mood for intense, just stay here, be with this warm and spontaneous, welcoming, pure openness that’s wide awake, and just keep dwelling with that.
For many who feel able to try something type of intense, kind of inauspicious, tune into that real groundless wide-open space that’s boundless. It has no limits of any kind. Into that boundless space, I would like you to start, on purpose, bringing up the sorrows of your life straight away. Things that you just are sad about, and, without denying that sadness in any respect, but reasonably being present with it completely, let it also meet that wide open, infinite, vast, boundless, groundlessness, which is wide awake to its sadness.
On top of it, what in regards to the sadness of those around you? The people you like, the people you care about, their trials and difficulties and problems and sorrows. As a substitute of denying that, or attempting to in some way distract from it or make it go away, really bring that up very clearly straight away. Persons are sick, individuals are broke, individuals are crazy, individuals are dying, individuals are going through terribly sad breakups, individuals are losing their jobs, individuals are getting in automobile wrecks. Really bring up those feelings very clearly, but don’t wander off in it. Allow it to arise inside this vast, pure, boundless, wakeful spontaneity. Again, if it’s too hard, just hit the panic button and return to simply respiration with space. But I encourage you here since you’ve got this endless space as your resource. If that’s very clear, then just really bring up these feelings with none limit.
And why limit it to simply those around you? What about people in all places? There’s definitely enough murder and mayhem, and disease, and bad luck, and starvation, and oppression, and torture, and all the pieces else you’ll be able to imagine. Way greater than you would ever imagine. Just feel the true sorrow of that. It’s just sad.
And why limit it to people? Animals are having a rough time. Is there suffering any less sad? It is perhaps worse. So, really feel that in your body, feel it, let your heart ache, while maintaining contact with this vast, clear, spontaneous, open, welcoming, pure spaciousness. It doesn’t make the sentiments vanish, but it surely does offer you the flexibility, the facility, we would say, to sit down with all that and never be destroyed by it. So just breathe, and within the easiest way, just feel all that sorrow right in your body, with none filtering, just let it really be there. The sadness of the world.
Notice how there’s also a type of very intense poignant beauty right in that very same spot, but we’re specializing in the sorrow. I encourage you here, where you’re in touch with this resource of this tremendous spaciousness, to simply turn it as much as 11. Really feel it–let your heart break, don’t hold back. Notice the urge to distract, or get abstract, or focus away, focus away, focus away. I would like you to give attention to the way it feels in your heart, and in your belly, and in your mouth, to simply feel the sorrow of the whole world. The veil of tears, because it is known as. This can be a horribly sad place sometimes.
Nevertheless much suffering are you experiencing now, just magnify that by billions and billions and billions, never losing contact with this wide open spacious freedom and clarity. Even in case your chest is seizing up and also you almost can’t breathe, it still has room to breathe. The energy continues to be moving, you’re sitting with the sentiments, just feeling it, not attempting to escape it, letting it’s there. Attempting to not feel–this is the reason you’re all the time numbing out and distracting and doom scrolling, since you’re attempting to escape this. But notice, you’ll be able to feel it, and again, come back to the easy presence of those feelings, these emotions in your body, in your belly, in your heart, in your jaw, in the best way it almost makes you unable to breathe when it’s really intense. It’s simply feeling it, but remaining present with the wide open, wide awareness.
Don’t take a look at, stay here, right on this room, right with these feelings, letting the boundlessness and welcoming and spontaneity give the room it takes to handle it. That’s its gift, is that there’s a lot room, it’s boundless, it’s a billion galaxies larger than your body, there’s good enough room for these feelings, without denying them or suppressing them.
Now, letting go of pondering of those things. Just sit in easy openness, respiration with that vast boundlessness in the middle, the vast groundless, boundless, wide awakeness. Simply respiration with this, noticing you could sit with these feelings, not denying them, really there with them for once, and yet not spun out. You might notice that the energy that you just were feeling before, the energy that we were seeing within the breath, is now really through the entire body. Very much energy is going on. Why? Because we’re coming into our actual body, our actual feelings, we’re not distracted. While you really feel the body directly with none conceptual mediation, and it just seems like buzzy energy, that’s very nice.
Just let the boundlessness handle it. Feel the sentiments, let the boundlessness handle it, let that vast space be with it. Notice how present you’re straight away in your body, in your experience. Feel the energy and wakefulness that has arisen, just by not numbing out and distracting. Don’t engage with all those thoughts–that’s numbing out and distracting.
Feel how wide awake you’re straight away. A type of clarity arises. It’s actually there all along but we’re just recognizing it now, and since this wide-awake, wide openness is boundless, it’s truly boundless, there’s no limit. I would like you to do something very brave and really loving, which is, just open up this wide awake, wide openness to all beings. Remember, it’s welcoming, it doesn’t ever say no or push away, so open it to everyone who’s suffering in all places. Every animal, every body in all places, grant them this wide openness, so that they, too, find this relief, this infinite ability to be with what’s happening. This ability to search out relief, to search out caring and kindness and love, this ability to feel secure and cozy and held, and to belong. Lend the entire universe this space. It’s large enough for all of it. Give it away, lend it out, just release it entirely, letting the entire universe into the vast spacious, primordially pure, ever fresh, spontaneous playful, thankfulness, and feel how gentle that’s, and the way kind it’s, and the way comforting it may be, and the way sweet it’s.
Keep sitting with easy respiration, feeling the sentiments, not engaging with thought, just being with this moment here. Simply present, simply wide awake, hearing, feeling, seeing. We didn’t generate the vast boundlessness, we didn’t make it up, or in some way imagine it, so there’s nothing to do. It’s just there so long as we’re not distracting ourselves from it.
Now, see should you can remain in touch with this simplicity, and this purity, and welcoming
openness, even after the meditation involves an end. It’s still there, it’s not an imaginary thing, it’s not a special state we’re generating. We’re calming down enough to note it, or alternately, energizing up just a little bit enough to get out of our distraction, and noticing it.
Okay, superb. Let’s end that there.
For those of you who went with me to the harder a part of that meditation, good on you. That’s just a little bit difficult, perhaps even upsetting. But, in a way, what’s actually upsetting is that we ever stop fascinated about that in any respect. It’s probably the most obvious thing in regards to the world, is that it’s a tough place to be, and it’s a tough place for mainly everybody. A way greater than others, but it surely’s still a spot where we’re going to get old, and get sick and die, and doubtless struggle quite a bit along the best way, to that end.
An enormous a part of our existence, the best way we live it, is just testing from that in a technique or one other or some ways. You possibly can put in like 2500 hours into Battlefield and get like 50 points for each time you stab someone, and that’ll just distract you from this particular thing. You possibly can spend numerous time doing all of the things we do particularly just fascinated about whatever, simply to not feel what you’re actually feeling, or notice what you’re actually noticing, which is–everybody’s suffering, everyone seems to be having a tough time, everyone seems to be doomed to be broken on the wheel and fucking croak. That’s it, right there, it’s so obvious and there’s nothing, I just must say, it will be easy to sit down here and judge that, but in fact, I do it, you do it, and there’s very comprehensible reasons for just testing of that brutality. I never would say that that’s in some way immoral, but alternatively, there’s a giant price to be paid, which is that after we numb out and distract from all the good things, too, the sweetness is gone, the aliveness is gone, the
spaciousness is gone, because we’re type of packing ourselves into just a little cotton ball inside a mummy, inside a baby protection egg, so nothing can really bump us around an excessive amount of in there.
So, it gets really stale, and unavailable for joy, and unavailable for beauty, and unavailable unavailable for just the sensation of being alive. Because, should you’re going to feel joy, and be available for friendship and love and communication and phone, should you’re going to be available for all the nice feelings, you’ve gotten to be available for that thing we just did. All of it comes together. If you happen to feel like–I can’t take all that pain and sorrow, and I have to distract, and I have to numb again, okay. Nevertheless, just be an informed participant and recognize that then you definitely won’t feel all the opposite stuff, too. It’s unattainable, you’ll be able to’t have one without the opposite.
Again if we’re not actively working through severe trauma or something, which is a special case, the goal with this type of practice is to give you the chance to open up an increasing number of and more to the complete range of feeling, the complete range of experience, and the complete, not only beauty and joy and love and creativity, but the complete cosmic horror of this place, which could be very real. Your ego cannot do this. The machinery of your thought cannot do this, it may’t take it. A big point of the machinery of the ego structure is to guard you from ever having to do this. It has other functions, but that’s certainly one of its things: I’m going to simply contract down into this little drama as a substitute of what’s experiencing and feeling what’s actually happening here.
The structure of thought and the ego, and your regular sense of your body having this very constrained experience space just can’t handle it. But that’s not what you’re, that’s just a little fantasy that we construct to attempt to not feel stuff. But it surely works the opposite way. If we start feeling stuff, and we start opening up, perforce, we’ll begin to crack out of that egg shell, come out of the layers of mattresses, masking tape, and stuff, and begin to really feel what’s happening. That’s going to only occur after we’re also dropping the sense of the boundary, dropping the sense of being trapped within the mind. Noticing that there’s this vast space by which all of this will occur. And this endless, groundless, primordially pure, ever fresh, wide-awake, clear space, can metabolize any amount of emotion. Not only one person’s emotion, a universe of emotion.
So it type of cycles. If we open just a little bit to to spaciousness, we will feel more, and as we feel more, it’s going to crack open the spaciousness just a little bit, allowing us to experience more, which cracks open the spaciousness just a little more. So it just it doesn’t must be one big boom. Little by little, you’ll notice that there’s way good enough space to experience what’s there to experience, and so although we were using real via negativa, the really difficult, crushing machine of infinite death and pain to point to tonight, which is all real, that’s not some type of fantasy. Look outside, that’s what there’s. We’re using that to open up, but as soon as you speak in confidence to that, you speak in confidence to the opposite part, too. You begin to note the incredible beauty and the kindness that’s there in people and animals, and all the opposite wealthy emotions which might be present after we open up that way.
It’s not like, open up irrespective of how much it hurts. You possibly can handle this should you do it little by little, working with spaciousness, energy, and wide-awakeness. You’ll notice that, after some time, you’re not afraid to have feelings. In actual fact, even a number of the really big feelings which might be normally very unpleasant will begin to be, oddly, welcome, because they’re just opening as much as the wide-awake spaciousness much more. It’s not some type of fantasy. Just feeling your feelings, feeling the openness. It’s quite simple.
I’ll stop there for now. If anyone has any questions, or anyone has any reports or comments? If nothing’s coming up, otherwise you don’t feel like sharing anything, just sit and remain within the openness, feel what you’re feeling.
Questioner 1: Hi, I’m gonna be that guy and admit to my worst thing. I didn’t feel anything in regards to the sorrow of the world.
Michael: Okay, what did you are feeling?
Questioner 1: Nothing. That’s something I’ve all the time been attempting to work on, developing compassion and what-not.
Michael: I didn’t say anything about developing compassion.
Questioner 1: That’s how I related to it.
Michael: What do you are feeling straight away, about anything?
Questioner 1: On this moment, I’m experiencing quiet, just curious why doesn’t that track for me? I’m envious of people that can feel things like that, they appear very motivated.
Michael: Normally in a day do you’ve gotten any emotions about anything?
Questioner 1: Yeah, lots.
Michael: Do you ever feel sad?
Questioner 1: Yeah.
Michael: That’s all we were pointing to. Hey, sometimes you’ll be able to feel type of sad. So perhaps it got too abstract. The world is form of abstract, that’s why we began with the regular stuff you’re sad about. What about people around you? So, if you should engage this, it’s not about some compassion idea, nearly what makes you sad. Let’s start there, super easy. I bet some people who find themselves having a tough time, and it’s type of sad, so you only start with that. That’s enough, really. You notice how uncomfortable we will be with sadness. It’s almost, like, I don’t need to feel that, in order that’s all we’re talking about. It doesn’t must be big. I took it big, and I may need lost you there. Come back to the simplicity of your personal life, the people , that type of thing.
Questioner 1: Thanks.
Michael: Yeah, it’s easy to search out.
Questioner 2: That is a very good follow-up for me. I feel I used to be type of the alternative. I felt it very, very deeply. I’m just visiting this week. I normally do these online. I got here here with a matter. The weird thing was what happened for me with this emotional opening and what normally happens pertains to the query I got here here with. On this opening, it seems like something that comes very easy to me, but it surely leads me into the state where it’s very easy for me to type of fall into people, and for people to fall into me.
Michael: You’ve lost the sense of boundary, right?
Questioner 2: Yeah, exactly. I turn out to be quite permeable, quite porous, and in that state, it may occur that either people transmit something to me or I transmit something to people. I don’t necessarily feel like I’m at a stage where I can fully control that. I’m sure I’m giving an invite and I’m not forcing anything, and I ask for feedback on that. It seems like numerous responsibility, in a way, to do that very consciously and without doing harm, or not give you the chance to not do it, and what I’m on the lookout for is a solution to hold that boundary, to give you the chance to ask but to never overwhelm, and to not be overwhelmed myself.
Michael: Yeah, this it’s an exquisite query, complex, beautiful query. I’ll try to reply it, partially, anyway. In a technique, we could just type of turn it as much as 11 and be absolute about it, and just say the boundlessness can take anything, so just be wide open on a regular basis, right? The total view of cosmic-ness. But, in fact, we’re also relative world beings. You wouldn’t just drink poison for no reason, we do have to keep up our relative world boundaries, and so although the relative world boundaries will be present, they’re still empty. That’s the key–you’ll be able to maintain the relative boundary while still recognizing its emptiness. That’s the trick. It doesn’t must be not there. Simply because something is empty, doesn’t mean it’s not there. The hammer that hits your thumb is empty and the thumb is empty and the pain is empty, but it surely’s all
there. In the identical way, you’ll be able to have an emotional protection sense, or emotional boundary sense, that’s each practical and yet not reified. Know what I mean?
Questioner 2: 70%, I feel. Emptiness as a type of linguistic reduction for the thing we’re speaking about tends to be something I type of struggle with.
Michael: It just means spaciousness, or that it is just not a thing. It’s there, but not a thing. In order that’s something to play with, and it’s the direction that can work. But it surely might take some time to unfold.
Questioner 2: Thanks
Michael: Very, superb.
Questioner 3: Hey, Michael. Going off the reification, I assume it’s type of like a codependent arising query.
Michael: It’s dependent co-arising.
Questioner 3: Right. One in every of the instructions you had was we’re not imagining the energy of the breath wave, but we’re tuning into it, and yet it seems like that gets fabricated, or arises for me with the prompt, right? I’m not necessarily imagining it, but it surely doesn’t necessarily arise until that.
Michael: This can be a subtle point, but fabrication and reification are different. They often go together, but you’ll be able to fabricate without reifying, so all I’m doing is mentioning that it’s there. I might assert that that energy is there on a regular basis. I’m just saying notice that, and then you definitely notice it. Not notice that, after which suddenly you’re generating it.
Questioner 3: Right. I actually have a follow-up. When the instruction is to rest into the spaciousness or tune to the spaciousness, and then you definitely might bring in several shadings or points of that perhaps, like the nice loving compassion that we will rest into. Once we’re sitting alone, it’s like a subtle practice. Sometimes the instruction appears to be non-doing, but it surely looks like there’s a subtle doing if I’m leaning, inclining towards something like that, but when I don’t, if I just sit and non-doing, that will never arise, which isn’t necessarily an issue, but just inquisitive about the right way to navigate cueing ourselves, but not cueing ourselves. Does that make sense?
Michael: Yeah, in fact it does. I may give a facile answer. I don’t know if it’ll help, but when the doer is seen as empty, again the fabrication of a doer isn’t the issue, it’s the reification of a doer. You’re still respiration. Something is doing that, but you’re not reifying it. You possibly can still undergo an entire meditation technique with an amazing amount of stuff to do, but when it’s non-reified, it’s just type of happening, okay? That’s hard to work into, but that’s the direction.
Questioner 3: That does help, thanks.
Questioner 4: To start with, I just need to say it’s great to give you the chance to practice with you in person in any case these years, so thanks for that.
Michael: I do know, welcome, thanks for coming.
Questioner 4: It was an amazing experience. One thing that I desired to ask about, you discuss spaciousness lots. For me, the thing that I can point to more is that this sense of solidity versus type of flow. Once I feel that type of existential dread in regards to the world, it actually gives me numerous suffering. The sense of futility or nihilism, it feels very solid. It seems like it’s type of weighing down, but after I’m in a position to practice with it, that opening up is admittedly more for me a way of movement. Once I’m in a position to do it, I don’t sense as much as spaciousness, but I don’t know, are they the identical thing? The sense of type of breaking up the solidity into more of a flow and type of with the ability to…
Michael: They’re not the identical thing, however the sequence that I often teach, and I led us
through here, which is that you just’re in something seemingly solid, just like the breath, after which eventually you’re noticing the wave-like properties of that. Eventually, you notice those super movements in that, so that you’re going that far. But should you sit with the movement quite a bit, you’ll notice it starts to open up. The movement, the changing-ness and the energy will begin to appear bigger and more roomy, after which eventually, really numerous room–that’s the spaciousness. So it’s into that energy and beyond.
Questioner 4: Okay
Michael: But, that’s the appropriate direction, obviously. The one thing that keeps it contained is a mental image of containment. That is like an excellent easy thing to do by way of simplicity, but is perhaps unattainable, but a few of you would possibly immediately get what I mean. You only drop the mental image of your body, which is the image of containment, after which the sensation of energy will just go because that’s what it really seems like. All we’re doing is mentally picturing the containment. So, in other words, the spaciousness is all the time there. We’re just type of jailing ourselves again and again with our imagination of what the body’s boundaries are. So, it’s not the identical thing, but it surely’s in the appropriate direction, okay? The impermanence results in the openness.
Questioner 4: Okay, thanks.
Michael: Thanks for all of your questions, and only for being willing to undergo that meditation, which is just not a simple one. I might say that’s the direction that actual–I don’t know what word to make use of here, but I’ll just say, spirituality, goes, right? It’s not hey, I got mine I’m just gonna feel great, and fuck everybody. That’s just called narcissism, that’s not spirituality. That is about, hey, how are you doing? Connecting with the world, connecting with life, connecting with other beings, and that will be pretty intense. That is how we work with that intensity. It brings us right into the truth of life and death, and it brings us right into just this very moment, along with your butt on the cushion. So thanks for being willing to work with that for just a little while tonight.
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