Nondual Guided Meditation with Michael Taft
Okay, so let’s begin. I need you to easily check in with yourself, ask yourself the query; what’s it wish to be me right away? And by me, I mean you. And just tune in to your mind, your body, your emotions, all that and just see what it’s like. Sort of a unadorned noticing, not an evaluation but just more of, oh yeah, that’s what’s occurring. And whatever it’s like, whether it’s nice or unpleasant, chaotic or smooth, painful, pleasurable, neutral, whatever, simply accept that situation, that state, that weather report exactly the best way it’s and let it’s exactly that. Nevertheless it’s, is good.
Good, now in a really reductive, simplified way of talking about it, the meditation we’re doing is more about openness and fewer about constrictedness. So openness within the mind is essential, just feeling that sense of spaciousness, openness, rest within the mind and the analog for that’s just openness and rest within the body. So let’s do some shamatha here. Remembering that we’re staying nice and still, not moving and also you’re simply following your breath in a really open way. We’re gonna calm down the body for some time here simply to get into that embodied spaciousness.
So together with your awareness, your attention very broad, very, very broad just notice the breath rising and falling, not focused on the breath you’re not narrowly attending to the breath, simply noticing that it rises and falls, rises and falls. That takes no extra attention in any respect. It’s simply as we sit we notice the rising and falling of the breath while the mind awareness stays nice and wide, nice and open, broad expansive prefer it naturally is. So remember it’s not an effort, it’s not some form of pushing effortful exertion to make awareness broad. Awareness is broad without us trying. Forcing awareness to be narrow attention takes effort but allowing it to only be naturally broad, naturally spacious, that’s just relaxing. So just let it’s broad and spacious.
And it notices the rising and falling of the breath, the rising and falling of the breath.
So let’s do this for a number of minutes after which I’ll begin doing a guided rest of the body together with it in order that our body becomes an increasing number of expansive.
Now with the notice very broad, very open, very relaxed, and noticing the rising and falling of the breath very naturally just begin to note the releasing of any tension in your head and face. We’re not moving in any respect, not stretching, not forcing any muscle activity, we’re just relaxing. Fairly often after I suggest that we let go of tension people deal with the strain and check out to fight with it as an alternative what we do is just notice any part that feels relaxed and open up into that.
Let the relief just feel good and form of grow and that naturally, without very much effort, just allows the strain within the face, the pinnacle, the eyes, the cheeks, the lips, the mouth area to only drain away. And as an alternative, a sense of, form of, slack, warm release, and openness enters the pinnacle and face. Any fixed expression releases, any tightness within the mouth just releases, any tension within the jaw just let’s go in order that your upper and lower teeth are not any longer touching. and then you definitely just feel into how nice that rest feels. And the rising and falling of the breath just seems to open that up even further. And see now that tension is draining out of your neck and throat and shoulders.
That muscle, that when you tighten it makes your voice a bit higher, relaxes. And it’s as in case your voice goes deeper, that muscle just releases, your neck becomes soft and supple, and your shoulders let go. It’s an actual feeling of openness and ease and relief, not only through the pinnacle and face, but now through the neck, the throat, the shoulders. Don’t fight with anything, just notice the part that’s already released, already relaxed. It could feel very neutral and that neutrality feels nice.
Continuing to breathe on this very open relaxed manner, noticing that awareness stays vivid, awareness stays clear and wide awake. In actual fact, the more relaxed we get, the more awake awareness becomes. And with this awakeness, we notice that the arms, the hands, and fingers all release and calm down and let go. Arms come to an entire rest, so limp and so very similar to noodles that you could’t move them anymore because it will take tension to maneuver them. As an alternative, they’re just utterly loose, utterly relaxed. Chances are you’ll even feel the heat and tingling in your fingers of the increased blood flow as your wrists calm down and hands calm down. After which the shoulders, the muscles of your chest and upper back calm down and release and open.
Feel how good that feels, even the areas within the armpit region and even inside your upper chest all release and calm down and let go. And as you notice the nice feelings in your face, your head, your throat, your neck, your shoulders, your arms, your hands, your upper chest–all so relaxed, all so released–you just and with none effort drop now more deeply right into a state of wide-open rest and spaciousness, simply respiratory like wind moving through an enormous empty sky. Wind effortlessly blowing in an enormous, open, empty sky, tremendously free, tremendously fresh, utterly clean and clear.
Now, noticing that tension is releasing from the diaphragm region, the diaphragm is relaxing, softening, opening, making it much easier to breathe freely. Belly region is relaxing and the kidney region in back opening, allowing you to breathe way more deeply, way more freely, way more pleasantly, less impedance. Noticing how the spaciousness and openness of the mind is now becoming the spaciousness and openness of the body, very natural, very easy, no big deal. And see the pelvic region is relaxing and opening, letting go. The hips are releasing, finding freedom, letting go. After which the legs, too begin to completely release, the big muscles of the thighs, the knees, the calves, the shins, ankle joints releasing and opening, the feet, especially the soles of your feet, opening. And the toes relaxing so you may actually feel this warmth and tingling of much greater blood flow within the legs as they turn into jello-like, tremendously relaxed, so relaxed that there’s just no method to move them anymore. Since you’d must tighten them up to maneuver them and in the event that they’re still tight enough to maneuver just see when you can let go just a bit further in order that they really can’t move.
After which let that sensation of; so relaxed that movement is inconceivable, so relaxed that it will just be an excessive amount of effort to try to maneuver. Let that permeate your entire body in order that it’s just utterly like a giant water balloon, perfectly settled into the underside of a bowl. Really, really, really partially full water balloon that’s just flopped with zero tension. And see that feeling of zero tension permeating every a part of your body now so deeply that it just means that you can simply and naturally express a form of fundamental freedom by just allowing every a part of your being to only drop now into a fair deeper sense of total non-doing.
Awareness just noticing the breath moving like a fresh wind through pine trees within the mountains. And see how this deep openness, this profound spacious feeling within the body now feeds back into the mind, allowing the mind to only melt. There’s no must hold the mind together in any way. The mind just falls apart, falls open, opens like a flower becoming the sky, perfectly clear sky of awareness with no effort. Let’s sit as this clear sky of awareness just noticing the rising and falling breath for a bit while together here.
Now into this vast spacious sky of awareness comes a seed of fireplace and the fireplace begins burning away the whole body. The entire body burns away, and burns away, and burns away, leaving only ashes, white-gray ashes. After which, all emotions burn away. Any emotion catches on fire and burns away completely, leaving no trace.
After which, any thought within the mind bursts into flame and burns away with none trace, after which any sense of any boundary in any direction, any constructing, any boundary, anything in any direction catches on fire, bursts into flame, roars, after which vanishes and not using a trace.
After which, any sense of time; the past, the longer term, even the now, any sense of any time catches on fire, bursts into flame, after which burns away utterly, leaving no trace. After which, any sense of evaluating or measuring or tracking, judging bursts into flame, roars brightly, lighting the vast sky for a moment after which vanishing and not using a single trace. Any urges of any kind, any discomfort, any itches, any pain, anything pleasurable all bursts into flame, and burns away completely leaving no trace of any kind.
After which any sense of self, of me, of a location, or a history, or a personality burst into fire, burns powerfully, roaringly, ragingly, after which vanishes leaving no trace. After which, any sense of anybody doing anything in any respect, any effort, any intention bursts into flame, flares brightly, after which vanishes leaving no trace.
All that’s left is vivid, clear, shining wakefulness with a way of vast ease, openness, and space. If you happen to’re feeling sleepy sit up open your eyes and proceed the meditation. Now all these items have burned away so we’re just going to rest on this vast open space of awareness with no objects of any kind to grab onto remaining perfectly still the whole time. Anytime the mind tightens up in any way, grabs onto something, engages a thought, that just immediately burns away and we drop back into just vast openness, the openness so vast that it may well sometimes, at first, be uncomfortable and even scary until you realize there’s no problem.
Just let it’s wide open.
Notice that this vast spacious awareness is perfectly still it never moves, it’s never ruffled, utterly still. It doesn’t must deal with anything, it’s already perfectly clear, perfectly awake, perfectly still with none object in any respect. Whatever story you’re telling yourself in your head right away is meaningless. Come back to only awakeness without hanging on to a thought object. At any time when something arises within the sky of awareness be what notices the arising. It doesn’t matter what it’s, perhaps your whole meditation is nearly discomfort. That’s just an arising. Be what knows the discomfort, be what notices it. If there’s a thought, be the notice that notices the thought.
Notice how totally easy this meditation is just resting because the open awareness you’ve got all the time been, there’s literally nothing to do, it’s inconceivable to fail. Notice that there’s a form of joy on this openness, a form of enjoyment of the liberty and space.
It could be subtle at first, but when you tune into it you’ll notice there’s an amazing sense of joy, tremendous sense of openness, and form of freedom in that openness that brings an actual sense of wanting to share that, to provide that to others. And so allow that to essentially blaze forth right away, really open up in your heart a fireplace of affection and kindness that burns away all cynicism, all doubt, all fear fire burns away that sulky, crappy a part of yourself, the cynical, complaining, sarcastic part and as an alternative opens as much as that sky of just kindness and laughter and peace and joy that radiates out the heat of this hearth in all directions. Feel that fireplace burning away, burning away all crusty tight restrictions leaving no trace, burning away all thoughts of our inadequacy or imperfection or inability and leaving no trace. Radiating out the heat of affection and kindness to others regardless of how imperfect and leaving no trace of sick will, no trace of judgment.
All that’s left is a radiant fire in the guts, a burning fire that’s each sorrow for the world and love and kindness towards all beings
Okay. Good, now let go of the meditation.
Dharma Talk, Q&A
Noticing that nothing has modified after we stop. Our awareness remains to be vast and spacious, absolutely relaxed and awake, and fairly than involving ourselves in all of the arisings, just be what knows the arising. That’s it. We already are that but we just noticed that.
In a method of it, that is the simplest possible thing, right? We’re simply tuning into what we’ve all the time been since beginningless time. In other words, tuning into what we will’t help but realize, can’t help but notice we all the time are. So in a method of it, there’s no more obvious, no easier possible thing to do or to note. And in case that’s still not clear; be what notices. And since experience is going on, noticing is going on already without you doing anything in any respect.
In actual fact, attempt to turn off experience right away, give it your best shot. Attempt to turn off awareness when you’re doing awareness. If awareness is a few form of activity that you just’re making occur then stop doing it. Shut it off right away. Notice that that’s a bit bit hard to do. You would do it, I mean with a chainsaw or something, I mean probably, or perhaps a momentary cessation when you were really up for that but it surely’d still come back, still come back.
So notice, it’s not an activity, it’s not something that you just’re with-effort making occur. Moderately, it’s all the time there with none effort of any kind. It’s happening right away. Oh look, it’s happening again, never stops happening. And so what everyone keeps specializing in is the stuff that’s happening in awareness, and trying to vary something about that–like get real focused on some arising in awareness and keep attention on that constantly or whatever, which is cool. I mean I’ve done a whole lot of that, we’ve all done a whole lot of that but that’s not what we’re doing here, really. The arisings in awareness are interesting, there’s nothing improper with them, they’re cool, they’re beautiful, etc. but that’s not what we’re doing, you understand?
It’s like–there might be whatever arisings you wish, that’s not the purpose–be what notices the arising. Listen, if you ought to put it that way, to the incontrovertible fact that you’re aware of it in any respect which, when you concentrate on it, that’s a really different game. It looks like only a variation on the sport but it surely’s a really different game, it requires no attention in any respect. And in reality, attention almost makes it harder, it doesn’t really but it surely almost makes it harder. Since the wakefulness, the notice, is there with or without attention and if we’re listening to something that’s rising in awareness and that’s potentially form of, to place it in a funny way, distracting us from the very fact of the notice itself, which just isn’t tense, it doesn’t take any tightening, it’s already there. It’s all the time been there. Consider some moment in your life when it wasn’t there. You’ll be able to’t because you possibly can only remember what was before or after such a thing anyway. So all experience is, after all, experience of awareness. It’s like a tautology.
So we use sometimes special states, we use attention perhaps to get in special states since it tends to normally simplify what’s occurring within the mind a bit bit, so there’s fewer arising, so we’re grabbing on to fewer arisings. That makes it easier to note the noticing, the notice itself. Or perhaps it raises our energy to the purpose where we will come out of grabbing onto things and just notice because there’s such a habit around grabbing onto all of the arisings that perhaps our energy needs to boost up a bit bit to note the noticing.
There’s an entire bunch of reasons that we would do special concentration exercises at first, or visualizations at first, and even working psychologically at first, simply to make it easier to do the simplest thing on this planet. And that is the paradox is that–as someone who tries, with some measure of success sometimes, to indicate people do that thing, it seems that describing it is tough because we don’t discuss it as a society principally ever. We discuss arisings, that’s what we’re all for–the stuff that’s in the notice.
And so regardless that it’s like, okay, you’ve spent your whole life as a fish every part within the water but now someone’s saying no I need you to see the water and also you’ve just never been, never done that. And so it’s hard to explain. But even when you do it for a minute you’re like, okay, I did it for a second, so what? And by the best way, when you were capable of do it even for a second good, that’s cool. You’re getting the concept, but is now do it again and do it again and, in reality, start noticing on a regular basis. Then it starts to be a giant SO WHAT, starts to essentially actually be useful, necessary, helpful, beautiful, deep.
Because that background, we will call it ‘the background’, it’s not likely the background but that background of awareness is since it’s the foreground and the center ground too, it’s every part, right? But we’ll call it the background of awareness is stable and sane and clear and unruffled, nothing bothers it. And it’s, to place it in a funny way, it’s in form of a superb mood on a regular basis. It’s not likely a mood but openness and freedom and non-constrictedness just feel good. After which, regardless of how clogged up all of the arisings get or painful or difficult or overwhelmingly whatever, that background or foreground or middle ground or total ground of awareness is just wonderful and at rest and open and straightforward, and it’s all the time there. and if there’s anything that you just “actually are,” that’s what you really are.
And so, as you’re tuning in to the story in your head, just recognize that that’s just an arising. The story in your head just isn’t really–it’s not a foul thing, we use it for various stuff but notice how much the story in your head is about what’s improper right away, and it just goes on and on about it, or why you may’t be/do that thing, or why you’re not like that, or why this other person can’t be different, or whatever. And, you understand, in some ways in which might be useful for manipulating the relative world, but it surely’s–especially while you’re identified with that as who you might be–that’s a reasonably miserable place to live. Nothing’s ever right. That is improper, this just isn’t, this isn’t, that is improper, this just isn’t good, I’ve got to vary it, change it, change it, change it. Notice regardless of how much you’ve modified it, the quantity of change that seems essential is similar. It’s an countless game that, you understand, it’s a part of being alive.
We’d like to only proceed, you understand, regardless of how much you clean the kitchen you’re gonna must clean it again tomorrow. In order that’s just a part of reality but this sense that, ‘I can’t rest until it’s fixed,’ and it would never be fixed. That’s the trap that if we’re stuck being fixated on the arisings or if we’re identified with a story in our head and that’s all that’s occurring for us that’s going to be a reasonably miserable place by definition.
Whereas, the thing that it’s not a thing, however the thing that’s noticing that I’ll say, the noticing itself, doesn’t have any of those problems. You would, even when you fixed all those problems, the noticing itself wouldn’t change. It’s already wonderful. It’s all the time been wonderful. On the day that you just were born, you were a miracle, like a shocking miracle. Coming out of nothing into, you understand aware, sentient somethingness.
Now we have all these baby birds in our backyard and the incontrovertible fact that an egg can plop out of a bird after which eventually grow and begin flying around and singing a song and hanging out with other birds and splashing within the bird bath. And yesterday one landed on the chair with me, right there at the back of the chair, a blue bird. I mean a jay, you understand, a bird that was blue, not a blue bird, a blue jay, I mean that’s fucking insane.
Consider your closest person, let’s say your closest friend or relationship partner the person you understand the most effective, and think in regards to the intricacy of their being; their likes and dislikes, their feelings, the things they’re very involved in that they know a lot about, their history, the sensitivity they’ve towards this or that…All of that got here out of nothing. And we’ll return to nothing and in between, it’s just hanging there in awareness, it’s a miracle, it is senseless, it’s insane.
How is there wakefulness even happening right away? The attention that’s here, how is that occuring? Notice that it’s no one’s doing it but it surely’s here. There’s an experience happening, that miracle of the day you were born remains to be happening, something’s awake, something’s experiencing. Did that experiencing come from anywhere? Take a look at it right away. Did it come from anywhere? I’m not talking about going to your ideas and your memories or biology or something, I’m talking about experience right away. Did it come from anywhere? Did it start sooner or later?
Take a look at it right away. It’s a miracle and see how in comparison with that our ideas of the story of our life, or what we’re involved in, or any of that, which is all super fascinating, in comparison with that miracle is sort of a side effect, or like an ornament, just one other cool thing that incredible miracle can do.
So in this sort of meditation, we’re that, or that thing is noticing itself, it’s not a thing, but it surely is noticing itself. The miracle notices itself. Watch yourself slipping back into mundanity, to quotidian thoughts and cut through and are available back to the wakefulness the awakeness that’s beneath that, that supports that, that’s the substrate of that. That’s amazing.
Questions or comments or reports?
One time I saw within the courtyard of our apartment constructing a baby hummingbird get born which they’re in regards to the size of like an acorn or something teeny after which there have been these two morning doves they usually killed it. Morning doves had a nest nearby they usually’re very territorial they usually you understand they killed this baby hummingbird, which pissed me off it was like hanging out of the nest, all tousled. So I yelled on the morning doves.
But then a few seasons later, one other one was born, one other baby hummingbird, little the dimensions of a marble, and that one lived. And the parents, parent hummingbirds, right, are feeding the infant, and eventually–we were watching this very fastidiously–it’s time to show it to fly. You realize a hummingbird is sort of a helicopter, right, since it’s barely controlled chaos. It shouldn’t even give you the chance to fly, definitely not in a controlled way, and that, at first, was the hilarious thing. The child hummingbird would get to the sting of the nest after which like form of just zoom off in a single direction then just stop and, you understand, the parents would go attempt to help it out. It’d stop on a branch and be like oh since it couldn’t control the direction you understand after which it will be like over to a different branch. It’s principally the good thing I’ve ever seen.
After which someday–took a few day and a half of that just totally chaotic, kind of like, you ever see someone attempt to ride a bike who’s never done it before they usually hit the gas too hard, which makes the motorcycle lurch forward, which makes them hit the gas harder. It’s like, yeah, that’s what a baby hummingbirds like. After which they’re wildly attempting to hit the brakes. Anyway, after a few day and a half the mother hummingbird like zoomed straight up and over the apartment constructing back to where all of the flowers were, because we had huge wall of morning glories back there, like purple and blue morning glories that the hummingbirds liked and a number of other flowers and the infant saw the mother go over and it. You knew what was going to occur next but it surely form of like was fascinated with it after which finally shot over the apartment constructing and that was it. It knew fly then. I just needed to have some uncontrolled freakout flights first. So, thus endeth the lesson.
Join Michael’s mailing list and get notified of recent offerings and courses.
Donate to assist create more of those videos and more.
